Chapter 5

Faela

Three days in the dark.

They'd given me water twice. A metal cup pushed through a slot in the iron door, no words attached.

The first time I drank so fast I choked. The second time I made myself go slow, sip by sip, because I didn't know when the next one was coming.

My body felt wrong. Hollow and heavy at the same time. My arms weighed too much and my legs wouldn't stop shaking. My stomach had stopped hurting on the second day. That scared me more than the hunger itself.

When your body stops asking for food, it's not because it doesn't need it. It's because it's given up asking.

The bite mark on my neck still throbbed. Faint and distant, a pulse from somewhere far away. A heartbeat that wasn't mine, barely there and getting weaker by the hour.

Some moments I pressed my fingers against it just to check it was still real. The skin was warm, swollen, tender to the touch. Proof that something had happened to me in that alley, even if nothing good had come after.

I was sitting against the wall with my knees pulled to my chest when the bolt slid.

The door slammed open. Two men filled the doorway. Tall, broad, dressed in black coats with the Council's silver crest stitched onto their shoulders. Their faces were blank.

One of them grabbed my arm and hauled me upright. My legs buckled and he caught me by the elbow, holding me steady while the other pulled my wrists behind my back and tied them with rough cord. The fiber bit into my skin.

"Walk."

I walked. Through the corridor, up the narrow stairs, through the service door and out into sharp, blinding sunlight.

I flinched and turned my face away. When my vision cleared, I saw the lawn.

My father's lawn. The wide green stretch behind the estate where the pack held ceremonies. A wooden table had been set up near the fountain, draped with a white cloth. Beside it stood a man in a long gray robe with metal instruments laid out on a tray.

My father stood next to the table. Arms crossed. He didn't look at me.

The Council men pushed me forward across the grass. I could hear voices around me. Low, measured, the kind of careful talk people use when they're discussing something they don't want you to understand.

But I understood.

"...the mark is incomplete, which is what makes removal possible. A finished bond would be permanent."

"And the method?"

"The skin at the nape must be excised down to clean tissue. Then we carve the totem of the Moon Goddess into the exposed area as a purification seal." A pause. "She'll be conscious through the entire procedure. Anesthesia interferes with the seal."

"What are the risks?"

"Blood loss. Infection. Shock from the pain itself. It is not without danger."

My father's voice cut through the rest.

"Do it."

I threw myself forward against the hands holding me.

"No — please—"

"The mark has to come off." He still wouldn't look at me. He was looking at the man in the gray robe, his jaw set, his tone flat and final. "If she arrives at the palace carrying another wolf's mark, the King will kill her inside three days. And the rest of us pay for the insult."

"Father, please don't do this—"

"This is for your own good, Faela."

My own good. He said it the way he said everything about me. Not like a father talking to his daughter. Like a man solving a problem.

The men forced me down. My knees hit the grass, then my chest, and I was face-down on the ground with my wrists bound and two sets of knees pressing into my spine. Someone pulled the torn collar of my dress down past my shoulders, baring the back of my neck to the air.

Cool wind on the bite mark. Then the sharp sting of alcohol wiped across the skin, clinical and cold.

My stomach lurched. I turned my head and retched into the grass, but nothing came up. There was nothing left inside me.

I tried the mark.

I reached for the thread. That faint, thin line connecting me to the man in the alley. The man who'd held me in the dark, whose heartbeat had drummed against my palms. I pulled on the bond as hard as I could, sent everything I had through the dark.

Nothing came back. The thread was barely there. A whisper of warmth, then silence.

He couldn't hear me. Or he could and he didn't care. The last words I'd heard from his mouth were *I swear I'll kill her*, and now I was alone on my father's lawn with a knife about to cut him out of my skin.

I reached for the Moon Goddess instead.

Please. I never did anything wrong. I never hurt anyone. I'm eighteen years old and my father is about to let them carve me open on his lawn.

If you're there, if you're listening, please. I don't deserve this.

Silence. The sky above was wide and blue and empty.

The metal tray clinked behind me. The man in the gray robe was selecting his blade. The soft scrape of steel lifted from the tray. Then the tap of the handle tested in his grip.

"Mom." My voice broke. I pressed my face into the grass and let the tears soak the dirt. "Mom, I'm going to see you soon."

The blade touched my skin. One point of cold, then a sharp bright sting as the tip broke through.

And then — shouting.

The weight on my back shifted. The men holding me turned their heads. The blade pulled away, and I heard footsteps crossing the lawn, heavy and fast, and voices rising in confusion.

Then a voice. Deep. Male.

It carried across the lawn, and everything else went quiet.

"What are you doing?"