The Alpha's Rejected Mate Returns for Revenge

Rule one of being cast out beyond the ridge: do not stop walking.I learned that approximately four hours ago, when the adrenaline wore off and the cold started getting creative. Now my feet are blocks of wood inside shoes that belong to a smaller woman, my borrowed dress is a joke the wind keeps telling, and the road behind me is gone. Not metaphorically. The actual road. It just ended somewhere back in the dark, dissolving into pine forest and rock, and now there is only the ridge ahead of me, black against a sky that is starting to go gray at the edges.Dawn is coming. Maren Vane said before dawn, and I have always been excellent at following instructions I hate.The cold is the kind that gets into your bones and starts rearranging the furniture. My breath comes out in ragged white puffs. I think about turning around approximately every thirty seconds, and every thirty seconds I picture Celeste's smile, and I keep walking. Pride is a terrible survival strategy. It is also the only

The unarmed one is in charge. I know that before he says another word, because of the way the other two angle their bodies toward him without looking at him. Like iron filings around a magnet. Like a pack around an Alpha.They give me a blanket. It smells like woodsmoke and old leather, and I wrap it around myself and try to remember how legs work. The white wolf stays pressed against my side, and none of the three will look directly at her. The bowman's hands are shaking."Can you walk?" the unarmed one asks."Can you carry me?" I ask back, because my mouth apparently works fine even when the rest of me doesn't.Something that might be a smile touches his face. "Sable could. She won't enjoy it."The spear-carrier — Sable, presumably, built like a barn door with a scar through her eyebrow — mutters something that is definitely a curse. But she crouches, and I climb onto her back, blanket and all, and the white wolf pads alongside us like an honor guard, and we go into the trees.The c

The road into Ashford doesn't know me anymore, and that's the whole point.Three years. I walked out of here in borrowed shoes in the October rain with the rejection still smoking on my tongue, and now I'm coming back in a Nightbane coat worth more than this entire town's dignity, riding a truck that smells like diesel and someone else's cigarettes. My hair is longer. There's a scar splitting my left eyebrow that wasn't there before, and my shoulders carry muscle the old me never dreamed of. I catch my reflection in the truck window and barely recognize the woman staring back.Good. If I don't recognize her, they won't either."Wren Marlowe," I tell the border checkpoint, because that's the name on the envoy papers, my mother's maiden name. The guard, a Bloodmoon pup barely out of his teens, scans the papers twice and waves me through without a second glance. My heart is hammering so hard I'm sure he can hear it. He doesn't.The barrier arm lifts. That is the whole of my homecoming —

08I have faced down rogue warlords with my throat bared and my wolf half-shifted. I have negotiated hostage exchanges with a knife at my own ribs. Nothing — nothing — prepared me for walking into the Bloodmoon great hall in a dress.The dress is Nightbane formal: black silk, cut like armor, slit high enough to reach the knife strapped to my thigh. My hair is up, the scar over my eyebrow on full display, and I've painted my mouth the color of fresh blood. Let them look. Let them wonder.The hall smells like beeswax and roast meat and old ghosts. The banners are the same. The long table is the same. Half the faces around it are people who watched Kade reject me, and not one of them knows me. I feel my wolf pace, coiled tight, and I breathe her down. *Not yet. Not yet.*Every head turns as the doors close behind me. I let them look — the dress does its job, black silk and a scar and a stride that says I don't ask permission — and I catalog the watchers the way Rhys taught me. Curious el

I make it out of the clinic without being seen — or without whoever it was letting me see them. I spend the walk back turning the name over like a coin with blood on both sides.Maren Vane.By morning I've rebuilt the file from memory in my room at the inn, every page, every dosage, my mother's torn-paper terror. I write it all down in my cipher and burn the notes after, because paper trails are for people who plan to survive their enemies' curiosity. Then I go downstairs for breakfast, and Celeste Vane is sitting at my table.She's alone. No guards, no attendants — which is either confidence or a statement, and with Celeste it's always both. She has tea already poured, and she's wearing a smile that could cut glass. The whole dining room has gone quiet around her. Mrs. Hollis is wiping the same spot on the counter over and over, pretending not to stare."Envoy Marlowe," she says. "Do sit. I so rarely get to talk to anyone interesting."My wolf rises, hackles up. *Careful,* she warns,