Chapter 3

Anara POV

The first thing I learned about being hunted was how quiet the forest gets. Every bird and cricket with any sense had gone still, and all I could hear in my good ear was my own breath sawing in and out and my one bare foot slapping the frozen ground.

"Come on," I whispered to nobody. "Come on, come on."

The bond hurts worse with every step. It dragged under my ribs whenever I moved, as if Cassian were still holding the other end and pulling, and twice I had to bend over and gag on nothing. The second time, a growl rolled out of the dark behind me and I didn't need my left ear to know how close it was because I felt it in the ground.

Lyra's wolf came out of the trees on my right, so big and pale I thought for a second it was a horse. She didn't rush me. She ran alongside at an easy lope, matching my stride like it was a game she played before, and her yellow eyes slid over me as if she was choosing which part to start with.

"Please," I panted. "Lyra, I'm going, look, I'm already going…"

She snapped at my heel. Teeth closed on the back of my shoe, ripped it clean off and flung it into the dark, and I went down on both hands with the frozen dirt biting my palms. She circled me once, close enough that her fur brushed my arm, and then her claws came down across my back.

"Aaah! Ahh.. ugh… get off!" The dress tore, and so did what was under it, four hot lines straight down the old scar on my spine. The scar answered with a burn I never felt, a thin bright line of heat that ran from my neck to my hip and didn't feel like Lyra's doing at all.

"Say something," I begged the quiet place inside me, spitting dirt. "Anything. Help me!" Nothing answered. Only the same thin, high whine, far down, like something hurt and hiding.

I threw a handful of dirt over my shoulder without aiming, and some of it must have gone in her eyes, because she let out a sharp, startled yip and the claws left me. I didn't think. I got up and ran to the sound of water.

She recovered faster than I hoped. She caught me once more before the river, teeth sinking into my calf and dragging, and I kicked her in the snout with my other heel until she let go.

The Ravenmere was black and fast at the bottom of the slope, swollen with snowmelt, and every child in Silverfang was raised on the same warning about it. On the other side lay Nightfall. The Butcher's land.

"Better a butcher than you," I said out loud, and jumped.

The cold hit me like a slammed door. It drove the air out of my chest, and the wet skirt wound around my legs until I was kicking against my own dress as much as the river, and the current dragged me sideways over stones that scraped my knees raw. I went under and came up spitting. I went under again. All the while the scar down my back kept burning, and the water around it felt almost warm.

My hands found mud, then roots, and I hauled myself up the far bank on my stomach and lay there coughing river onto Nightfall ground. Behind me the water churned. I rolled over in time to see the white wolf skid to a stop at the edge of it, front paws sliding in the shallows, her whole body shaking with the urge to follow.

She didn't. She paced the bank, snarling, and the sound she made was somewhere between a growl and a sob.

"Well," a man's voice said above me. "That's not something you see every night."

There were two of them. One was lean, with a lantern in his fist and a grin he was trying to hide, and the other stood a step behind him in the dark, tall enough that I had to tip my head back, with the lantern light catching a pale scar that ran across his throat.

"Sebastian," the tall one said. "Not now."

"I'm only saying, Alpha, it's the middle of the night and a girl just swam the Ravenmere in a dress that's mostly holes."

Across the water the white wolf crouched, hindquarters bunched, ready to leap. The tall man turned his head toward her, slowly, and did not raise his voice.

"That's far enough."

I felt it more than I heard it, a heavy pressure that rolled over the river and over me, and across the water the wolf folded down onto her belly with a thin, dragged-out whine as if someone had stepped on her. Nothing in that voice was shouting, and that was the frightening part.

"Cross, and I'll treat it as your father's declaration of war," he said. "Do you want to explain that to him over breakfast, Princess? Now go home."

She held there another heartbeat, hackles up. Then she backed into the trees, still snarling, and the dark closed over her white fur.

"Well, damn," Sebastian said softly. "That's the Alpha King's daughter. Which means this one is…"

"Don't," said the Alpha.

"I'm only saying, if she's who I think she is, the king's riders will be at this river by sunrise."

"Then they can wait at the river. Your cloak."

"My cloak?" Sebastian said. "It's my good one."

"Sebastian."

"Fine, fine." He was already unclasping it.

I tried to get up again and couldn't. My arms gave out under me, and my teeth were chattering so hard I bit my tongue. "Please," I got out. "Don't send me back. I'll work, I'll do anything, I just can't go back there."

He crouched in front of me. Up close he was younger than the stories made him, and there was nothing cruel in the way he looked at me, only a flat, careful attention, like a man handling something that might go off. "Nobody's sending you anywhere," he said. "Can you stand?"

"No." I laughed, and it came out wrong. "I think I'm dying a little. Everything inside me hurts. I've got no wolf and no mate and I just jumped in a river to get away from my own sister."

"You're not a stranger," he said, and his voice made me look up. "Not to me."

"I've never seen you before in my life."

He didn't answer that. The cloak came around my shoulders,and smelled of woodsmoke, and then his hand brushed my back through the torn dress and stopped. "Lantern," he said. Sebastian brought it closer and swore under his breath.

"Hell. Those are deep, Alpha."

"I know." The Alpha's voice hadn't changed at all, but his hand had gone very still against the cloak. "Who did this to you?"

"My sister."

"Of course," he said quietly. "Sebastian, wake the healer. Tell her to ready the east room."

"The east room? That's your…"

"Now."

Sebastian went, still muttering, and the lantern light went with him. A warm arm slid under my knees and another behind my shoulders, and the ground left my feet.

"You're him," I mumbled into his collar. "The Butcher."

"People say that."

"Are you going to chop me up?"

"Not tonight." Something that wasn't quite a laugh moved through his chest. "Stay with me, Anara Moonvale. Don't close your eyes yet."

It took me a moment to understand what was wrong with that. I never told him my name.

"How do you.." I started, and the rest of it went wherever the lantern had gone.