CHAPTER FOUR

The snow had no end.

I do not know how long I walked. Hours, maybe. The cold had dropped so low that the snow squealed under my boots like wet leather, and the pines along the track popped and cracked as their sap froze. My breath turned to ice on my scarf. The sled rope sawed through my gloves and into my palms. Inside me, my wolf whimpered, small and hurt, and every step sent a white spike of pain up my wrist.

My father had stopped talking. He only breathed, a thin wet rattle that scared me more than silence.

"Stay with me, Papa," I said. "I'm right here."

The forest closed in. Black trunks, white ground, a sky the color of iron. The wind shoved against my chest as if it wanted me to turn back.

I knew where I was heading. I had memorized the map in Kael's study. North of Draven lay the Blackthorn border, where the two packs had been bleeding each other for forty years. 

Kael's men called Blackthorn wolves savages. I did not care. Savages could not be crueler than the man I had just left.

My legs gave out at the edge of a frozen stream. I dropped to my knees and could not rise again. The cold had worked its way into my ribs, and I could no longer feel my fingers. I held them up in the moonlight. The tips were gray.

So this is how it ends, I thought.

I curled my body over my father's to hold in what warmth we had left. I shut my eyes. I thought of my mother, whose face I could barely remember. I thought of the sanctuary garden in summer, the silver-leaf shivering in the breeze, and I tried to remember what it felt like to be wanted.

A wolf howled.

Then another, and another, drawing closer.

I opened my eyes. Shapes slid between the trees, large and gray, their eyes burning amber in the dark. Five wolves. Then ten. They circled us in perfect silence.

"Draven scent," a man snarled. He had shifted back to human form, bare-chested in the killing cold, a spear in his fist. "She's one of Kael's."

"A spy," said another. "Cut her throat."

"I'm not." My voice came out as air. "Please. My father is poisoned. I only want…"

A new wolf stepped out of the dark.

He was the biggest I had ever seen. His fur was dark gray-brown, thick across the shoulders, and his eyes glinted deep green, the color of pine needles in shadow. 

The others pulled back to make room. He padded straight to me and pushed his nose against my wrist, right where the mark had been. He inhaled.

His whole body went still.

Then he shifted. It took one breath. A man stood where the wolf had been, tall and lean, in a torn leather coat. Dark hair. A short beard. A burn scar ran down his right forearm, shiny and old. His face was hard and tired, and not cruel.

"Back away," he told the others, low and level. "Now."

"Alpha Blackthorn, she's from Draven…"

"I said back away."

They obeyed.

Ronan Blackthorn crouched in front of me. He did not touch me. "Name," he said.

My mouth was frozen stiff. I pushed out the only lie I had. "Mira."

"Mira." His eyes never left mine. "You smell of Draven, and you smell of Frost wolfsbane. And you smell of something else I can't name." He glanced at my father. "He's dying."

"I know."

"Why come to me?"

"Because there was nowhere else."

It was the truth, and it must have sounded like one.

He studied my hands, gray and raw. He studied the rope burns that cut across my palms. Something crossed his face, and I could not tell if it was pity or suspicion.

"If you're lying," he said quietly, "I will know."

"I'm not."

He rose, scooped my father off the sled as if the old man weighed nothing, and said to his men, "Bring her. Carry her carefully. She can't walk."

"Alpha, if Kael Draven finds out

…"

"Then Kael Draven can come ask me himself."

Someone draped a fur over my shoulders. Someone else lifted me, and I did not fight. The world went in and out like a candle in a draft. I remember woodsmoke. The groan of a gate swinging wide. The heat of a fire against my face like a hand.

I remember a hall of timber and stone, nothing like the black granite of Draven Keep. Its roof was shingled in birch bark, and the air smelled of juniper and smoked fish. Wolves watched me from the doorways.

 A girl my own age brought a basin of warm water and a rough wool blanket. An old healer with sharp blue eyes slit open the sleeve of my gown to look at my frostbitten arm.

"What's this?" the old woman muttered. "A fresh cut on her wrist. A torn bond mark, and it's still bleeding silver."

Silver. I looked down. She was right. Thin threads of light seeped from the wound and ran along my skin like starlight poured through a sieve.

Ronan stood by the fire with his arms folded, watching me. When the healer wiped my face, a strand of hair slid away from my forehead.

Under the firelight, a pale crescent glowed on my brow, bright as a new moon.

The healer dropped her bowl. It clanged across the stone floor, and every wolf in the room went silent.

"Alpha," she whispered. "That's the Moonstone crescent."

Ronan drew his knife.

"Everyone out," he said. "Now."