Chapter One: The Last Night

The room had never felt like hers.

Myla stood in the centre of it for the last time, hands loose at her sides, bags packed neatly by the door. She waited for something to move inside her. Grief. Relief. Fear. Anything.

Nothing came.

She wasn’t surprised. Bloodstone Ridge had given her shelter, training, a name to carry into the world. It had never given her a home. You couldn’t mourn something you’d never truly had.

A knock at the door. Soft. Deliberate.

She already knew who it was.

“Come in.”

Alpha Darius filled the doorway the way he always did, like the space was never quite big enough for him. He was a tall man, broad through the shoulders, with silver threading through dark hair and eyes that had always reminded Myla of cold stone. Tonight those eyes were warm. Carefully, precisely warm.

“I wanted to see you before tomorrow,” he said.

“I figured.”

“You’ve grown into exactly what this pack needed you to be, Myla.” He stepped inside, surveyed the bare walls and empty shelves, and smiled. The smile of a man proud of something he had built.

What this pack needed. Not what she needed. Not who she was.

She smiled back anyway. “Thank you, Alpha.”

He crossed to where she stood and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder. Paternal. Practiced. The kind of touch she had grown up believing was warmth.

“Crimson River is a powerful pack. Alec is a strong Alpha.” His thumb pressed slightly, just once. “Remember who you represent when you’re among them.”

“I will.”

“And Myla.” His eyes held hers a beat longer than necessary. “Don’t let your wolf get ahead of you.”

Something about those words snagged on a quiet part of her. She filed them away behind her ribs, where she kept everything she didn’t have answers for yet.

“Goodnight, Alpha.”

When the door closed she stood very still and listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor. She stayed like that longer than she needed to, her eyes on the dark line beneath the door until she was certain he was gone.

Her wolf, usually so quiet and so obedient, pressed briefly against the inside of her chest. Once. Like something restless turning over in sleep.

Not now, she told it silently.

It settled. It always settled.

Myla turned off the light and crossed to the bed, moving through the dark the way she always moved. Certain. Quiet. Alone. She had made her peace with tomorrow weeks ago. A contract was a contract. Alec of Crimson River needed a Luna. She needed a fresh start. There was nothing complicated about that.

She was almost to the bed when she stopped.

Something was on the pillow.

Something she hadn’t placed there. Something that hadn’t been there when she’d packed that morning.

She reached for it slowly.

A small token, carved from dark wood worn smooth with age. Threaded through the centre of it was a single cord.

Red. Deep and unmistakable.

Myla turned it over in her fingers. Her wolf went absolutely still.

She didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know who had placed it there or why. She didn’t know why the sight of that small red cord made something pull tight deep inside her chest, like a thread being drawn toward something just out of reach.

She set it on the nightstand, lay down in the dark, and stared at the ceiling until sleep finally came.

In the morning, when she walked out of Bloodstone Ridge for the last time, she left the token behind.

She would spend a long time wishing she hadn’t.