Chapter 2

On the third morning after Kael arrived, sunlight filled the pack house. At breakfast, he acted like the perfect little boy. He ate only bread crusts and barely touched his milk.

Eden watched him with pity. “Such a good boy, cursed with a hard life. His family sent him here as a hostage to suffer.”

Selene pushed a plate of roast meat toward him. “Eat. You're still growing.”

Kael gave her a sweet smile. “Thank you, Selene.”

After breakfast, he came over to me on his own. “Leo, can we go play in the yard?”

I asked, “What do you want to play?”

He blinked innocently. “Scent tracking. It was my favorite game back home.” I knew exactly what he was doing. In my previous life, he had used this game to study Selene's scent without anyone noticing.

Still, I pretended not to know. “How do we play?”

Kael looked toward Selene, who was about to leave on patrol. “Selene, can we borrow the coat you wore yesterday?”

“Why?” Selene asked.

Kael lowered his head and fidgeted with his fingers. “I want to follow your scent and guess where you went yesterday. That way, it'll feel like you're always with me.”

His act worked. Selene gave in. She took off her windbreaker and handed it to him. “Go play. Just don't go far.”

Kael took the coat and buried his face in the collar. He breathed in deeply, and a cruel look flashed in his eyes.

It was the same coat Selene had worn on her morning patrol.

The next day, after Selene's midday training, he shyly asked for her training shirt. On the third day, he waited in the hall until she came back from night patrol. He refused to sleep without saying good night to her.

Selene thought he missed his family, so she gave him her wrist guard to sleep with. Under the covers, Kael held the leather guard to his nose and sniffed it over and over. Now he had Selene's scent from morning, noon, and night. He carefully studied how strong her scent was at different times of day.

Late on the third night, Kael thought I was asleep again. He pulled a sharp piece of stone from under his pillow and carved Selene's schedule into the bottom of his bed frame.

But I had been preparing for this since the day he arrived. In my previous life, I had read every book I could find while trying to save Selene. Along the way, I had learned a lot about herbs.

My mother, Elara Vale, had been an herbalist. The herbs she left behind still hung drying in the storeroom, including a string of purple moonshade.

Moonshade doesn't affect humans, but it ruins a werewolf's sense of smell. It works especially well on Alphas. On Kael's first day, I crushed some leaves and rubbed the juice into Selene's coat. After that, I did the same thing to everything she gave him.

Moonshade tricks a wolf's nose. Strong scents seem weak, while weak scents seem strong.

After three days of sniffing, Kael believed Selene was weakest at three in the morning. He had it completely backward. That was when she was most alert.

Three nights later, Kael pulled a small black packet from his clothes. Inside was a bitter-smelling black pill. He stared at it with disgust, then swallowed it.

The moment he did, he grabbed his throat in pain. His bones cracked loudly as the drug forced his adult body back into the size of a child.

The banned bone-shrinking drug was made from wolfsbane. It could shrink an adult wolf's body, but every dose damaged the channel connecting him to his wolf.

Sweat poured down Kael's face. He bit his lip and refused to make a sound. Half an hour later, he finally collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

I slipped out from under my covers and crept over to him. A few black crumbs from the pill had fallen onto the floor. I picked one up with my fingernail and sniffed it.

A bitter, rotten smell hit me at once. Wolfsbane.

I pulled Mom's notebook from beneath my pillow and opened it in the moonlight. One passage caught my eye. “After more than ten years on the bone-shrinking drug, poison will accumulate around the third cervical vertebra. That spot will decay first and become the weakest point in the wolf channel.”

Kael had taken the drug for twelve years. Maintaining a child's body eroded the channel along his spine day after day. That weak spot in his neck had to be badly damaged by now.

I carefully folded the residue into a handkerchief. Then I looked at Kael sleeping peacefully in his fake child's body and smiled.

He wanted to cripple Selene on the night of the full moon?

Then I'd give him a full-moon night he would never forget!