WELCOME BACK, SISTER

I stood frozen in the lamplight for a long time, staring at the little black vial in my palm.

The wax seal had been broken and pressed back together with a careful hand, and the crescent moon on the glass was the same one the Elder had shown the whole pack at my trial. In my first life I never saw this vial until the day it was used to destroy me, which meant someone had planted it here long before anyone knew a crime had been committed. This time I had found it first, and I was not going to waste that.

My training as a healer took over before my fear could. I pulled out the stopper, held the vial under the lamp, and let a single drop slide onto a clean white dish. It was thick and faintly silver, and the smell that rose from it was bitter and sweet at the same time, like crushed almonds mixed with old flowers.

Moonroot and nightshade. I knew it right away, because my mother had warned me about this exact blend when I was a child. It acts so slowly that the victim feels tired for weeks, then weak, then sick, and by the time the healers understand what is happening, it is too late to stop it.

My hand went cold as I did the math. The vial was half empty, and Alpha Roderick had been so ill for the last month that everyone blamed his age. In my first life I had been too busy preparing for my ceremony to notice what was really happening to him, and nobody else had thought to look. Someone had already been giving him this poison, little by little, and they had planned to blame me for it from the very beginning.

I wanted to run to the old Alpha's bedside right then, but I forced myself to sit down and think. If I walked into the pack house at midnight holding that vial, I would only prove everything they planned to say about me. I needed something stronger than suspicion. I needed to catch the hand that did this while it was still holding the evidence.

So I made a plan, and it took me less than five minutes.

I walked to the fireplace and poured the rest of the poison into the flames, where it hissed and gave off a thin gray smoke that I carefully waved out through the window. Then I rinsed the vial, filled it with a harmless mixture of sleep herbs and water that looked almost the same, pressed the wax seal back into place, and carried it back to the cupboard. I set it exactly where I had found it, arranged the jars around it the way they had been before, and left the cupboard door open just a tiny crack.

Whoever planted the vial would come back for it sooner or later. They would want to make sure it was still here, or they would want to move it to a better place for the day of my trial. Either way, I intended to be waiting.

I blew out the lamp and let the cottage fall into darkness. Then I climbed into the narrow space behind my mother's tall wardrobe, pulled the curtain across it, and settled in with my back against the wall and my heart thumping in my ears.

The minutes crawled by. The wind moved through the trees outside, and a branch scratched against the window like a fingernail. Once I thought I heard footsteps, and my whole body went tight, but they passed the cottage and faded away.

Nearly an hour went by before I heard the sound I had been waiting for, a soft metallic click at the front door.

Someone was using a key.

I held my breath as the door swung open and a thin line of moonlight spilled across the floor. A pair of small feet stepped inside, light and careful, and the door closed again with hardly any noise at all. Through the narrow gap in the curtain I could see a pale figure in a white cloak moving slowly through my dark home.

It was Naomi.

I had hoped with every part of myself that it would be someone else, a stranger or a servant or even Veda. Some small, foolish part of me had wanted to believe that my sister was only a victim in all of this. But she walked through my cottage as if she owned it, with no fear and no hesitation, and she went straight to the herb cupboard without looking around.

She opened the door wider and slid the vial out from behind the jars. She held it up to the thin moonlight and checked the seal with her thumb, and I saw her lips curve into a small, satisfied smile.

I did not breathe. I did not blink. I only watched her slip the vial into the pocket of her cloak, and I waited for her to turn around and leave.

But she did not leave.

Instead she walked slowly across the room to my bed, the one where I had woken up that very morning, and she sat down on the edge of it. She smoothed her hand across my pillow with the same gentle touch she used to have when she was little and wanted to wake me up. The moonlight caught the side of her face, and what I saw there made my blood run cold.

It was not the soft, innocent look she wore in front of the pack. There was no sweetness in it at all. Her eyes were sharp and tired and much, much older than eighteen, and they looked like the eyes of someone who had already lived through a long and terrible story.

"You were so quick this time," she murmured to the empty room, and her voice was calm and almost fond. "I did not think you would reject him first. I will admit that I did not see that coming."

My fingers dug into the wall behind me.

Naomi tilted her head and gave a quiet little laugh, then lowered her voice to a whisper that carried through the darkness like a blade.

"Welcome back, sister."