Chapter 2

I called Adrian. For three years, my number had gone straight to voicemail. This time, he answered on the second ring.

“So you finally decided to contact me.”

His voice was calm, as if there weren’t three years of hunger between us. As if I didn’t have a medical file stamped terminal Silver Lung.

“Why did you report my PackAid fundraiser?”

“Because it’s fake.”

“My records came from a licensed private healer. Every page is signed.”

Adrian sighed. “Aria, is this your way of forcing me to make the first move?”

For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. “You think I’m pretending to be sick?”

“You’ve always been stubborn. You refuse to admit what you did three years ago, but life outside the Pack is harder than you expected. So now you’ve made up a terminal illness just to get my attention and force me to break the silence between us?”

His tone softened, almost indulgent. “Fine. You win. Come home—but apologize to Serena first.”

I heard china clink in the background, followed by Serena’s sweet voice. “Is that Aria? Tell her to come back. I forgave her a long time ago.”

“You may have forgiven her,” Adrian said, clearly intending me to hear, “but she still needs to understand what she did. She is my sister. I won’t let her use her status to steal another wolf’s work and future.”

My chest felt packed with silver shavings. Every breath scraped.

Three years earlier, Blackwood Pack’s only Royal Healer Academy nomination had been decided through a blind research trial. My entry—a silver-purification protocol I had spent nearly a year developing—placed first.

Serena had asked to study my drafts for the final exam, and I’d handed them over without thinking twice. The morning after the results were announced, she broke down in front of Adrian and claimed the protocol had been hers all along.

She produced a backdated draft that appeared to predate mine, a voice recording in which I seemed to threaten to revoke her Blackwood protection unless she signed over the work, and security footage of me entering her room the night before the submission deadline.

The evidence looked airtight. Serena begged Adrian not to report the “theft” to the Academy, claiming the scandal would destroy the Pack’s reputation and my future.

Instead of ordering an independent audit, he revoked my nomination and sponsorship. When I called the evidence fake and refused to apologize, he slapped me in front of the senior Pack members, then ordered every Blackwood business to deny me work or shelter until I confessed.

At the Alpha House doors, he delivered the final punishment.

“Leave Blackwood territory before sunrise. When you’re ready to take responsibility, I’ll lift the order.”

I sat on the front steps all night, convinced Adrian would cool down and open the door. Every time a light moved behind an upstairs window, I stood, wiped my face, and waited for him to call my name. No one came.

My wolf hurled herself against the Pack mindlink, calling for her Alpha until her cries went hoarse. She didn’t understand the accusation or the punishment. She only understood that the male who had raised us, protected us, and promised we would never be alone had suddenly shut us out.

Adrian never answered. By dawn, even the guards had stopped looking at me. One of them placed my suitcase beyond the gate without a word, as though I were already a stranger whose scent didn’t belong on Blackwood land.

At dawn, the link slammed shut. Familiar Pack scents vanished from my awareness, and hundreds of voices disappeared into silence.

One command had turned me from his sister into a rogue.

“Adrian,” I said now, “I wrote that protocol. I didn’t steal Serena’s work, and I’m not faking my illness. I won’t apologize for something I never did.”

“After everything life has done to you, you still won’t bend?”

“No.”

“Then keep going.” His voice hardened. “Let’s see how long that pride lasts.”

I gave a quiet laugh. “Not long.”

I ended the call before he could ask what I meant.

That night, Silver Lung kept me from lying down. My wolf curled deep inside me, too weak even to whine. At four in the morning, instinct drove me to reach for the old Pack mindlink.

I hit the same frozen wall, and a text from Adrian arrived minutes later.

[I’m disappointed in you.]

I didn’t reply.

The following morning, PackAid ordered me to complete a new examination within forty-eight hours or forfeit the fundraiser. I couldn’t afford the tests, so I closed the campaign and watched nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars return to the donors.

To make the cemetery deposit, I carried a torn canvas sack to Northpass’s shopping district. The dumpsters behind the luxury stores were better than the ones near my shack. I found empty cans, copper wire, and a few discarded electronic parts I could resell.

After two hours, a black SUV stopped at the mouth of the alley.

Serena stepped out first. She wore the white stole my mother had once worn at a winter solstice ceremony, and the obsidian crest reserved for the Alpha’s family gleamed on her wrist.

Several wolves leaving the mall greeted her warmly.

“See you at Pack dinner, Serena.”

“The Alpha’s sister looks gorgeous tonight.”

Her smile brightened at the title as Adrian climbed out behind her. The moment he saw me crouched beside a dumpster, he froze.

“Aria?”

I lifted my sack and tried to leave, but he caught my arm. His gaze moved over my stained coat and split shoes, and his expression darkened.

“You’re digging through garbage?”

“Yes.”

“How did you end up like this?”

A laugh almost escaped me. “Your orders.”

“I only banned Blackwood businesses from hiring you.”

“No one inside your territory would defy an Alpha. Outside it, Packs see your seal on my banishment order and assume I’m dangerous. Nobody wants the trouble.”

His grip loosened when Serena came closer and covered her nose. “Aria, at least clean yourself up. When people see you like this, they’ll think Blackwood abuses its own blood.”

“Don’t they?”

Her smile slipped, and Adrian’s jaw tightened. “Come home. Apologize to Serena, and I’ll restore your status.”

“I did nothing wrong.”

“You would rather pick through trash than say two words?”

“Yes.”

I pulled free and walked past them.

That evening, the scrap dealer shoved my sack back across the counter. “I’m sorry. The Alpha ordered Blackwood members not to buy anything you collect. He says he’s trying to stop you from degrading yourself so you’ll come home.”

I stared at the wires and metal that had cut my palms, then carried the sack back to my shack.

The courier app showed that someone had accepted my delivery request. Chloe, a young she-wolf, said she was already heading toward the cemetery and would place the bracelet beneath the white oak.

When I handed her the wooden box, I managed my first genuine smile in months. “Thank you.”

It was the last task I had left in this world.

Three hours later, Chloe sent me a shaky video.

The box lay in the Alpha House parking lot. A white sports car rolled over it slowly. Wood splintered. The moonstone bracelet snapped into several pieces.

Chloe’s sobbing voice followed.

[I’m so sorry. Serena said you stole it from the Alpha House and wouldn’t let me enter the cemetery. I tried to pick it up, but her guards held me while she backed over it.]

I knew that white car. Adrian had given it to Serena on the third anniversary of her joining Blackwood Pack.

I took a rusted crowbar from my toolbox and headed for the Alpha House.