Chapter 1

Twelve years after I died, the first thing to react to me was the wolves.

Before anyone in the stone hall saw my face, the guard wolves at the doors rose together. Their ears flattened. One backed into its handler hard enough to scrape claws across stone. Another let out a low, uncertain growl and then abruptly tucked its tail.

A faint smell moved through the hall.

Burned pine. Wet ash. The same smoke that had filled my lungs the night I died.

Moonlight thickened around the open doors, and I walked out of the forest mist.

Someone recognized me first.

"Erin?"

A chair slammed backward.

"That's impossible. She died twelve years ago."

Another voice came immediately after it, sharper and uglier.

"Of course the final trial would drag that curse back. If Erin hadn't leaked our border routes twelve years ago, the sanctuary never would have burned."

The old accusations returned as easily as if no time had passed at all.

I looked down at the leather cord around my wrist. A small silver stone was still pressed into the center. It should have burned with me twelve years ago. So should I.

Across the hall, Vera Ashford moved closer to Ryan.

Ryan did not look at her.

He had been staring at me from the moment I appeared.

The confusion in his eyes told me what I already knew: he still did not remember me.

Ryan and I had grown up together at the border sanctuary. We were both eighteen when the fire happened. Back then he was a boy without a pack name, without a family, and without any idea why his first shift had nearly torn a cabin apart.

I was the one who spent that entire first night on the floor with his wolf's head in my lap, talking until the growling stopped.

By the time of the fire, his wolf had already recognized me as its fated mate. Ryan had promised that when he finally found where he belonged, I was going with him.

Then the enemy pack came.

A silver blade went into his shoulder. Smoke filled his lungs. I dragged him out of the burning sanctuary, and he survived with huge gaps in his memory and his wolf buried so deep inside him that even the healers could not reach it.

He forgot our childhood. He forgot the leather cord. He forgot that his wolf had chosen me.

Vera stayed beside him when he woke and told him she had been the one to save him. She also told him I had betrayed the sanctuary.

Twelve years later, Ryan was no longer the nameless boy from the border. The Blackwood line had found him and recognized him as the High Alpha's blood heir. Ninety-nine succession trials had turned him into the cold, controlled man standing in front of me now.

Vera had stood beside him through those years, and the pack had gradually begun to speak of her as the woman who would eventually become his mate.

But the bond had never been completed.

Ryan's wolf had not fully awakened once since the fire.

For twelve years, people had used one word before my name.

Curse.

A deep bell rang through the stone hall.

The first Moonlight Trial had begun.

The rule was simple: a person could force a lie through their mouth, but their wolf could not completely hide what it knew.

The first question went to Vera.

"Have you ever deliberately hurt Erin?"

Vera went still.

"No."

The shadow of her wolf immediately took a step backward. Its ears flattened, and its tail pressed tight against its legs.

The hall fell silent.

Vera tried to explain that she was only nervous. Before she could finish, one of the trial guards lunged at me from the side.

It was a false attack meant to test instinct.

I did not move.

Ryan did.

He caught my wrist, yanked me behind him, and put his own body between me and the guard before conscious thought could stop him. One hand came up to the back of my neck, tucking me beneath the shield of his scent.

When we were seventeen, a wild wolf attacked us during a border patrol. Ryan had stepped in front of me then, too.

It left three deep gashes across his back, but afterward he still complained that my hands shook while I treated them.

Now he froze as soon as it was over.

Ryan stared down at his hand around my wrist.

He looked as if he couldn't understand what he'd just done.

I met his eyes.

We were close enough for me to see the shock that flashed across his face.

"Let go."

I kept my voice quiet.

His grip tightened for a beat before he slowly released me.

The others had started to recover.

"It's probably just muscle memory."

"Ryan grew up with her. Of course the instinct to protect her might still be there."

"That doesn't erase what she did afterward."

Vera returned to Ryan's side and reached for his arm.

He didn't pull away.

But he was still looking at my wrist.

I ran my fingers over the old leather cord.

"You don't remember this either?"

He frowned.

"Should I?"

I smiled.

"Someone once caught his first silver fox. He needed new shoes, but he spent the money on this instead."

"He said he'd give me something better once he found his pack."

The stone doors were already opening.

I turned toward the next trial.

For a long time, no one behind me said a word.

Just before the doors closed, I heard Ryan ask one question.

"Who gave it to you?"

I didn't look back.

"You did."