Chapter 4

DYLAN

I didn't sleep that night. I kept telling myself I'd made the right call, staying with Ivy instead of running to Aurora. Any future Alpha would have done the same thing. That's what I told myself, anyway.

It didn't feel like the right call. It felt like something rotten was sitting in my chest.

My father found me in the hallway the next morning, already dressed, acting like nothing had happened.

"You look terrible," he said.

"I didn't sleep."

"You'll sleep fine once this is behind you." He straightened his jacket in the hallway mirror. "The engagement announcement goes out today. I need you sharp for it."

"Is there any word on Aurora?"

He didn't even pause. "She's stable. Weak, but stable. The doctors are handling it."

Relief hit me so hard that my knees almost buckled. "Can I see her?"

"No." His voice was flat, and his tone had an air of finality to it, like the conversation was already over. "You have a fitting in an hour, then the Council call. Ivy's family will be watching everything today. This isn't the day to go soft, Dylan."

I wanted to argue. God, I really wanted to. But I didn't, because the cowardly part of me was relieved to have an excuse not to see what I'd let happen to her.

Three days later, my father called me into his study and told me Aurora was gone. Her injuries had been too severe. She hadn't made it.

I sat with that for a long time after he left the room. I thought about the baby. I thought about her voice cracking when she told me, and how I'd just stood there and said it didn't change anything.

It should have changed everything.

The guilt flooded me in waves for about a week. Then, slowly, it started to fade, and that scared me more than the guilt even did. By the time the engagement was formally announced, I could almost look Ivy in the eye without flinching.

Almost.

More than once I caught myself standing outside Aurora's old room, staring at a door I had no reason to open. I never went in. I told myself there was nothing left in there worth seeing.

I was wrong about a lot of things that week. That was just the first one.

AURORA

Nobody in Silverlake Pack knew I hadn't died.

A patrol from the north had found me in that hallway, barely breathing, and got me stable enough to move before anyone from my own pack could reach me. But we never made it out. We were ambushed before we cleared Silverlake's border, and I woke up days later in the back of a truck with my wrists bound with a thick length of rope and my whole body aching really badly.

Traffickers. That's what the older woman across from me said when I finally managed to ask. She had a long scar down one arm and eyes that didn't have much life left in them.

"First time?" she asked.

I nodded. My throat was too dry to talk.

"You'll want to stay quiet," she said. "They don't like noise."

I pressed a hand against my stomach under the blanket, just to check. Willow was still there even though her presence was faint, and so, I hoped, was the baby. I didn't let myself think past that.

The woman's eyes dropped to my collarbone, to the small silver pendant my mother had left me, the one I never took off. Her face changed instantly.

"Where'd you get that?" she asked, her voice quiet but sharp.

"From my other."

"Hide it now," she said. "Under your shirt."

"Why?"

"Because things like this get women killed up here, and it also gets them noticed by the wrong people." She wouldn't say more than that, no matter how many times I asked, and I was too weak to push.

We drove for two more days. The roads got rougher, the trees got taller and darker, and the cold started biting through the extremely thin blanket.

When the truck finally stopped, I heard boots on gravel and men talking in low voices, which meant they didn't want to be overheard. One of the guards started reading names off a list, checking prisoners against it one by one.

"Hale," he said, stopping at me. "Aurora Hale."

Another younger trader frowned at his own clipboard. "She's not on my list. I don't remember putting her name in."

"She's on the updated list," the first one replied. "Came through late last night. Somebody paid extra to make sure she made this shipment specifically. Gave me her full name and all."

My stomach dropped.

"Paid by who?" I managed to ask, my voice barely more than a breath.

Neither of them answered me. They just looked at each other for a second too long, like they both knew something they weren't about to say out loud in front of a prisoner.

"Who added my name?" I asked again, louder this time, panic clawing up my throat. "Why would anyone even know I was here?"

The younger one finally looked at me, and for one second, something like pity crossed his face.

"Don't know, don't care," he said. "All I know is somebody wanted you delivered to Ravenwood specifically.”

He hauled me up by the arm before I could ask anything else, and my legs nearly gave out beneath me, but all I could think was that someone had done this on purpose.

Someone had made sure I ended up here, in the one place people whispered about like it was a forbidden territory that you’d never be allowed to leave alive.

And I had no idea who or what was waiting for me at the end of that chain was going to cost me.