Chapter 1: The Silver Blade

POV: Aria

The silver blade missed my throat by an inch.

Cold metal whispered against my skin and air whooshed where flesh should have parted. My stepfather's hand trembled as he raised the blade again, and my fingers closed around the letter opener on his desk.

I drove it into his shoulder.

William screamed, animal and raw, nothing like the controlled voice that usually delivered my punishments. Blood bloomed across his shirt, dark and spreading, and we both stared at it.

"You..." His voice cracked and his good hand clutched at the wound. "You stabbed me."

"You tried to kill me." My voice didn't shake, though my hands trembled so badly I could barely grip the doorframe.

"Kill you?" He laughed, wet and bitter. "I was going to chain you. There's a difference, girl. Alpha Kullen paid good coin for you. Fifteen hundred silver marks. Do you have any idea what that kind of money means to a man like me?"

The chains still lay on his desk, iron and heavy, with locks that looked forged for prisoners.

My throat closed. "I'm not cargo."

"You're whatever I say you are." He took a step toward me, blood dripping from his fingers onto the floorboards. "You think you can run? You think anyone will help you? You're nothing, Aria. You have no pack, no family, no protection. The only reason you're still breathing is because I kept you alive after your mother died, after you killed her."

The words hit like they always did, like a fist to the stomach. My mother's face flashed through my mind, pale and sweating and screaming as the midwife worked, then silent, so silent.

"She died in childbirth," I whispered. "The midwife said..."

"She died because of you." William's face twisted and his eyes gleamed wet. "My mate. My Elara. She was mine, and you ripped her away from me. So yes, I sold you. And if Kullen breaks you? If he uses you up and throws you away? Good. You deserve every second of it."

He lunged.

I ran.

Down the stairs, through the house with its locked doors and dark corners I knew too well. My feet hit the dirt road and I kept running, past Silvermist Village, past the last houses with their warm lights, into the forest where humans weren't supposed to go.

Behind me, William's voice echoed through the night.

"You can't hide! I'll find you! You hear me? I'll drag you back and chain you myself!"

My lungs burned and my bare feet slammed against roots and rocks. Blood slicked my soles but I pushed harder, faster, deeper into the trees.

Great. Sixteen years with William just to die in the woods. Typical.

The thought slipped through sharp and bitter, the way thoughts did when screaming wouldn't help and crying had stopped working somewhere around my twelfth birthday.

The trees thickened around me and moonlight struggled through the canopy. My dress, thin cotton meant for serving not running, caught on branches and tore. Fabric ripped and skin opened, but I didn't stop.

Footsteps thundered behind me, heavy and multiple. William had brought help, or maybe Kullen had sent his men early.

The forest changed.

The air turned cold enough to see my breath, thick enough to taste like metal on my tongue. The trees twisted differently here, their branches reaching like clawed fingers, and moonlight died completely.

I stumbled into a clearing and my feet locked to the ground.

Stone pillars rose in a circle, ancient and covered in symbols that seemed to writhe in my vision. They glowed faintly, silver-blue and pulsing like a heartbeat. The air between them shimmered like heat rising from summer roads.

The border. The stone circle.

William's bedtime stories flooded back. Wolves the size of horses. The Lycan King who skinned trespassers alive and hung their bodies from trees as warnings. Cross into Shadowpeak and you belonged to him, every part of you, forever.

I'd laughed at those stories once, before I understood what monsters really looked like.

"There!" A man's voice behind me, rough and eager. "She went this way!"

I looked at the shimmering air, at certain death on one side, then back at certain torture on the other.

My feet moved.

I ran through the circle, through the barrier, and magic crashed over me like diving into ice water. It burned through my veins, hot and electric, making every nerve scream. The birthmark on my left shoulder blade, the silver mark I'd kept hidden under bandages and high-necked dresses my entire life, suddenly blazed like someone had pressed a hot iron to my skin.

I collapsed and my knees hit earth while my palms scraped stone.

The men stopped at the circle's edge.

"She crossed." One of them, voice nervous. "She actually crossed."

"So what?" Another voice, harder. "She's just a human girl. We grab her, bring her back, collect our pay from William."

"You want to cross into Shadowpeak? You want to risk the King's wrath?"

"The King doesn't care about one human."

"The King cares about his borders. You know what he does to trespassers."

Silence stretched and my gasps for air sounded too loud.

"Fine. Let the wolves have her. We'll tell William she's dead."

"And Kullen?"

"Kullen can find another whore."

Their footsteps faded and the forest swallowed the sound.

I stayed on my knees, trying to breathe through the pain still crackling under my skin. The birthmark had stopped burning but now it pulsed in time with my heartbeat. It had never done that before, had never felt this alive.

A branch snapped.

I spun, still on my knees, and saw them.

Three wolves emerging from the darkness between trees, but these weren't normal wolves. They stood six feet tall at the shoulder, muscles rippling under fur, eyes gleaming with something that looked far too human and far too hungry.

The largest one, grey and scarred across its muzzle, shifted. Bones cracked and popped and reformed. Its snout shortened and its body elongated, and within seconds a man stood there instead.

Naked. Scarred. Smiling.

"Well, well." His voice scraped like rusted metal. "What do we have here? A little human, all alone in the big bad woods."

The other two wolves circled me, one black and one rust-colored, both with lips pulled back to show teeth longer than my fingers.

I tried to stand but my legs shook too hard. The magic from crossing had drained something from me, left me hollow.

"I..." My voice came out hoarse. "I didn't mean to cross. I'll go back."

"Oh, no, no, no." The scarred man stepped closer and moonlight caught the raised tissue across his chest and arms. "You don't understand how this works, little human. You crossed into Shadowpeak. That means you belong to the King now. All of you. Every single inch."

He crouched down, eye-level with me, and his breath hit my face, all rot and old meat.

"But the King isn't here, is he? And we're so very hungry."

The black wolf growled, low and eager, saliva dripping from its jaws.

"Not for food." The man's smile widened, showing too many teeth. "Well, not just for food. See, it's been a long time since we had something this soft, this breakable. We're going to have so much fun with you before we kill you."

My hand closed around a rock and sharp edges bit into my palm. Heavy enough.

"Don't," I said.

He laughed. "Don't? Oh, sweetheart, you're not in a position to give orders."

His hand reached for my face.

I swung the rock.

It connected with his temple, the crack echoing through trees, wet and solid. He stumbled back and blood streamed from the wound, black in the moonlight.

I ran.

Again. Always running.

Behind me, the man roared, not words but just rage. The other wolves howled and the sound vibrated through my chest. They crashed through undergrowth, close and too close, gaining.

The ground disappeared.

I skidded to a stop, my toes curling over the edge of a cliff. Below, at least fifty feet down, a river rushed over rocks, white and violent and deadly in the moonlight.

Behind me, the rogues burst through the trees.

The scarred man had shifted back to wolf form, blood matting his grey fur. All three of them stood there, eyes reflecting moonlight, blocking any path back. They moved slowly now, deliberately, savoring it.

"Nowhere to run, little human." The scarred wolf's voice distorted through his throat but still understandable. "Nowhere to hide. Just you and us and all the time in the world."

The black wolf's muscles bunched.

I stepped backward and my heel found air. Wind caught my hair and pulled at my torn dress. Below, the river roared. Above, the moon hung full and silver, watching everything and caring about none of it.

My whole life, someone else had controlled where I went, what I did, how much I hurt.

Not this time.

I closed my eyes and leaned back.

And a roar erupted from the darkness, ancient and primal, shaking the earth beneath my feet.

My eyes snapped open. The rogues froze, their heads whipping toward the sound, and even the scarred one took three steps back with his tail dropping.

The roar came again, closer, and it rattled through my bones and vibrated in my teeth. It was the sound of something massive, something that made the rogues look like puppies.

From the shadows where even moonlight died, something emerged.

A wolf.

No. Calling it a wolf was like calling a wildfire a candle flame.

It stood taller than the rogues, taller than any horse I'd ever seen. Its fur was black, not grey-black or brown-black, but the black of midnight, of the space between stars, of the deepest ocean where no light ever reached. Muscles rippled beneath that dark coat with each step and claws dug into earth, each one as long as my hand, carving furrows in the stone.

And its eyes.

Its eyes burned crimson, not reflecting light or catching the glow of anything, but burning like coals pulled fresh from a forge, like fresh blood under sunlight.

Those eyes found mine and time stopped.

The rogues disappeared. The cliff, the river, the moon, all of it faded. Because those eyes didn't just look at me, they saw me.

Not the servant girl who scrubbed floors.

Not the burden who killed her mother.

Not the merchandise William sold.

They saw through the dirt and blood and torn dress, through the fear, through the walls I'd built brick by brick to survive. They saw straight down to whatever was left of my soul.

And they didn't look away.

My chest pulled tight and the birthmark on my shoulder blade flared hot, not painful this time but responding, like a candle recognizing its match, like metal recognizing a magnet.

The wolf's massive head tilted slightly, as if asking a question I didn't understand.

My lips parted but no sound came out.

The moment shattered.

The black wolf moved, and when something that large moved, death followed in its wake.