Tonight is my eighteenth mating ceremony under the full moon, and once again every wolf in the pack files out behind my adopted sister. My father's mindlink slams into my head, sharp and impatient. "Ivy's wolf is whining again. She can't shift. We're taking her to the healer. Call it off. You know the drill." Then Rhea, my maid of honor, my best friend since we were pups, cuts into the link with a scoff. "Selene. Your mate bond is not more important than Ivy's wolf. She almost dropped on the ceremonial grounds and you didn't even come check. When did you get this cold?" And my chosen mate doesn't even open the bond. He just fires one flat line down the mindlink: Ceremony's off. Talk later. Then he slams the bond shut on his end. My head goes dead silent. Eighteen times he's used that same line. A cold laugh comes out of me and I feel nothing at all. Eighteen times. Enough. I'm done crawling for scraps from wolves who already made their choice. Whatever comes next, my wolf and I handle alone. I climb the moonstone altar. The whole platform is buried in wolfsbloom violets. Ivy's favorite. Never mine. I lift the ceremonial horn. "I'm sorry. Tonight's mating ceremony is called off." Not a single wolf in the crowd looks surprised. Their mindlinks are wide open. They think I can't hear them. I can. "Ha. Called it. Not one of these ceremonies has ever made it to the mating bite. If I were her I wouldn't have dragged myself out under this moon." "You seen the way the whole Vane pack fawns over the little one? Please. If I were Selene I'd hand him over and bolt for the border. At least keep my throat in one piece on the way out." "You really don't know? The elders swear she's Silver-Born. Every pack she sets foot in gets fat and happy. Word is every time Alpha Kaelen even thinks about ditching her, Silverpine wakes up to dead livestock and empty snare lines by morning." "Oh, he's tested it. More than once. Lost half his hunting grounds each round. Last winter three of his warriors got shredded by rogues right at the border. That's the only reason his ass is still standing next to hers." I walk off the altar under their stares. My lips pull into something that's not a smile. This time it won't stop at a dying territory. I shift out of my ceremonial robe on the walk back and pull on plain clothes at the Vane pack house. I'm packing a bag when the front doors bang open. Ivy at the center of a parade. Every wolf laughing and fussing over her like she just walked off a battlefield. The second they spot me, every smile drops. Kaelen's eyes go pitch black. His Alpha aura fills the whole hall and every wolf under his rank drops their gaze. Except me. "Selene. You called the ceremony off in front of every neighboring pack and didn't give a reason? Now every wolf between the mountains and the coast is going to blame Ivy again. That's on you." My father scoffs and won't even look at me. "You dropped the ball this time, Selene. Every other ceremony you handled the packs yourself and we never had to think about it. Send word to the border packs. Tell them you were the one being difficult." Rhea is already on her mindlink. "I'll get word to every pack from here to the coast. If Selene sends a formal apology through the runners tonight, we can still save face. Push a few rogue rumors about her along the border and by next moon no one will even remember Ivy's name." I don't answer any of them. I just stand there. Fine. Enough. Three days. Three days to cut every last tie and cross the Vane border for good. "Selene. Are you even listening? If you don't fix this, I'm not promising when the next moon is." Kaelen stops right in front of me. His voice is sharp, and his aura is pushing straight into my chest, trying to make my wolf submit. She doesn't. She just watches him. Then Ivy finally opens her mouth, voice thin and shaking. "It's my fault. My wolf ruined everything. Kaelen, please don't be angry at Selene. Blame me." "There are still a few good moons left this month. Please don't push it back any further." She starts coughing before she finishes. Kaelen crosses the hall and pulls her against his chest, rubbing slow circles down her back. "It's not your fault. Don't overthink it. Her wolf can't survive without mine anchoring hers. Once we complete the bond, my wolf holds hers. Doesn't matter when we mate." The whole hall hears him. He just said, in front of every wolf in the Vane pack house, that he plans to use our mate bond to keep another female's wolf alive. Something inside my chest goes very, very quiet. "Then you're the one overthinking it." Those are my first words since I walked in. Every wolf in the hall freezes. I lift the bag in my hand. "I'm leaving." The words are barely out. The next second, a crack splits the air. My mother's hand connects with my face and the slap echoes off every wall of the pack house.
I lick the blood off my teeth and smile at her. Her Luna aura is still crashing against my chest, trying to force my wolf to belly-up like a scolded pup. My wolf doesn't move. Not a twitch. Not a whine. First time in eighteen moons she's refused a Luna command from this female. My mother's hand is still shaking. Her claws are half-out. Four thin lines of blood run down my cheek where they caught skin. "Are you done? After everything this pack has poured into you, this is what you turn into? A spoiled, ungrateful pup?" "You want to walk out? And go where? So every pack from here to the coast can howl about how the Vanes drove out their own blood? When are you going to stop shaming this bloodline, Selene? Goddess, I wish I'd never whelped you. Ivy would never pull this crap." Blood pools inside my mouth. I swallow it. Yeah. Every other time, I would have thrown a fit. Because I didn't get it. I didn't get why, when Ivy shattered my father's ancestral moon-stone with her own paw, they told the whole pack I was the one who smashed it. I didn't get why, even after the border sentries poured their scent-memory straight into my father's mindlink, he still swore I was the one who shoved Ivy off the cliff trail. I didn't get how picking wolfsbloom on a morning run — the one flower that makes Ivy's wolf sneeze her lungs out — turned me into a bully. This isn't the first time my mother has drawn blood on me. Last time was two nights ago. Because Ivy wanted to walk down the aisle in my mating gown and I said no. She dropped on the spot. Her wolf whimpering inside her, her human body limp on the moonstone floor of the pack house. My mother slammed me into the wall and shredded my mating gown with her half-shifted claws. Six moons I'd waited on that gown. Gone in ten heartbeats. Over Ivy, my own mother and I have become almost enemies. So yeah. I used to fight back. I used to howl and beg someone, anyone, in this whole damn pack to tell me I wasn't losing my mind. But not tonight. I've always been the lucky one of the Vane bloodline. The Vane pack was one bad winter away from folding when I was born. Rogues clawing at every border. Half the warriors laid out sick in the healer's den. My father coughing black blood into the snow, wasting sickness gnawing through his wolf. The morning after I came into this world, the rogues packed up and vanished into the treeline. My father's wasting sickness dried out overnight. The old healer said in forty moons of tending wolves she'd never seen a wolf-soul knit itself back together like that. Within one moon cycle the Vane pack had swallowed two neighboring territories and my father was the most feared Alpha on the western coast. My best friend Rhea was a scrawny, plain little she-wolf before she met me. After we ran together as pups, she grew into the kind of she-wolf every Alpha's son at the annual meet-up couldn't stop tracking with his eyes. She got mating offers from every pack between the mountains and the sea. Turned down every one. Became the most talked-about she-wolf on the coast. And Kaelen. He used to be nothing. A rogue. Half-starved, chased across three borders, dragging a shattered back leg the healers swore would never carry weight again. Until the night he stumbled across me at the edge of Vane territory when I was thirteen and lost in the pines, and my scent yanked him back from turning feral. I imprinted on him before I even understood what my wolf was doing. After that, everything went his way. His leg healed clean by the next full moon. He challenged an Alpha and tore his throat out in three heartbeats, no scratch on him. Built Silverpine from six rogues to eighty warriors and locked down the biggest hunting grounds on the western ridge before he turned twenty-five. For over twenty moons this pack looked at me like I was carved from silver. Kaelen treated me like I was the only she-wolf under the moon. And every single one of them got everything they ever wanted. Then Ivy walked into the Vane pack house. And every last one of them turned on me. My father's voice goes cold. "Take everything of hers. It all belongs to this pack. She doesn't walk out with so much as a scrap on her back." "You want to go, Selene? Go. But nobody's coming after you this time. I'll send runners to every Alpha on the coast myself. Formal renouncement, howled under tonight's moon. You won't carry the Vane name by morning." They don't even let me grab a change of clothes before they shove me out the front doors of the pack house. Kaelen follows me down the steps and quietly presses something into my palm. A single carved bone token. The kind Alphas hand out to allow crossing into their territory. "A den on the far edge of Silverpine. You can hole up there. Selene, we're done. None of us have the strength for this anymore." "I wish I'd let you die that night in the pines and pulled Ivy out instead." I scoff. "Then mate her." Kaelen lets out a long, tired breath. "Don't start. I said I'd take you as my Luna and I will. That doesn't change." "Ivy is a good she-wolf. A genuinely good one. I'm not going to let you talk about her like she's some rogue mutt you toss over the border. Don't say it again." He turns and walks back up the steps. I drop the token on the stone and turn to leave. Ivy comes flying out and clamps a hand around my wrist. "Don't go, Selene. It's me. I overstepped. I wanted a mate that was never mine to want. I don't deserve any of it." "You stay. I'll leave. I'll cross the border tonight." I know exactly what she's doing. So I just stand there and let her cling to me and fake-cry into my sleeve. But the second she realizes I'm not going to snarl and shove her off like I always do, she gasps like her lungs quit and drops at my feet. "Ivy!" "Somebody get the healer! Ivy, sweetheart, look at me!" Every wolf in the pack house comes tearing out and swarms around her. Kaelen's hand shoots out and closes around my throat. His eyes are wolf-yellow, half-shifted, one fang already lengthening past his lip. His Alpha aura slams into me so hard the wolves behind him drop to one knee. "You put a hand on her? You really think I won't tear your throat out?" Turns out when you're past the point of anger, all that's left is a laugh. I didn't even touch her. And somehow I'm still the one who did. "Kaelen. I hope none of you ever regret this." My father's voice cracks like a whip across the pack grounds. "Get her out of my sight. Silver-chained cellar. I'll deal with her myself."
The cellar reeks of damp stone and old blood, and the silver chains humming on the walls make my wolf shrink to the back of my chest. This is the second time they've locked me down here. The first time is still fresh. I'd caught Ivy sneaking into Kaelen's den in the dead of night. Found her curled up in his bed, in nothing but his shirt, her scent smeared all over his sheets. She cried and said her wolf did it. Sleepwalking, she called it. Trauma from her rogue pup years. She didn't know why her paws had carried her across the border into Silverpine. She just felt safe near his scent. She didn't mean it. My parents and Kaelen swallowed every word. Kaelen even told her, all soft and gentle, that her wolf was welcome near his any time she got scared. Back then I was drunk on the mate bond. I wouldn't let a single unmated she-wolf inside a mile of his den. No female warrior on his guard rotation. Nothing. So I shifted halfway and raked my claws across Ivy's face. And my parents dragged me down here. Seven days. One bowl of raw scraps a day. Not enough for a wolf my size to hold her form. They didn't unlock the silver door until my wolf was ready to eat itself alive and I choked out an apology. This time, they're clearly not stopping at starvation. My father walks in with a switch in his hand. Kaelen follows two steps behind him. The second the switch clears the doorway, my wolf lets out a whine so sharp it rattles my ribs. Silver-soaked. The whole thing. "Thirty would've been fair. But Ivy begged me to go easy on you, so I'm using the switch instead of the cat-o'-claws. That means fifty." Crack. The first strike lights my whole back on fire. Not just skin. The silver goes deeper than skin. It burns straight down into my wolf-soul and she howls inside me, clawing at the walls of my chest trying to get away from it. He hits me a dozen times. The welts split one after another. Silver starts eating into the open flesh and I can smell my own blood cooking. Every strike after that comes with a burn that goes numb and then wakes back up, over and over. I remember them saying Ivy begged for the switch. Silver-soaked. She soaked it herself, probably. Sat there dipping it and imagining every stripe on my back. "Apologize to your sister!" "Are you going to apologize or not?!" He doesn't get the answer he wants, so he just hits harder. By fifty, my back and arms are one open wound. Skin peeled up in raw strips. Blood running down my spine, hissing where it hits the silver still burning in the cuts. My wolf has gone quiet. Not dead-quiet. Cold-quiet. I can feel her looking through my eyes at the male who fathered us, and she's not looking away. I curl up in the corner and drag air into my lungs. My father drops the switch on the stone and walks out. His parting shot: "Stubborn to the bone." Kaelen crouches in front of me. He doesn't even flinch at the smell of silver-burn coming off my back. "Ivy sent salve and a clean shirt down for you. She's never been anything but good to you, Selene. You're her older sister. I'm about to bond her into this pack as family. We should be looking after her. Why do you have to keep making her the villain?" "Just apologize and be done with it. Stop dragging every wolf in this pack through your drama." He shakes out the shirt Ivy sent and lays it across my raw back. The fabric touches my open wounds and my whole body locks up like I've been shoved into a vat of pure silver dust. The lining. She lined it with silver thread. Every fiber of it hisses against my skin. My wolf finally breaks and howls inside my chest, loud enough that I bite down on my own tongue to keep it in my head. I fold in half and drop into a ball. "Goddess, dramatic. Ivy goes white every time her wolf hurts and you don't see her rolling around like a wounded pup." Kaelen stands up with a look like I disgust him and walks out. I finally get my breath back. I claw the shirt off my shoulders with what's left of my strength and shove it into the corner as far from me as I can get it. My wolf presses her nose against the inside of my ribs and I can feel her looking up at the small barred window near the ceiling. A sliver of moonlight is coming through. It lands right on the silver still burning in my back. And where the moonlight touches me, the burn goes quiet. Not healed. Just quiet. Held. My wolf lets out a long, low breath inside me. Two more moons, I tell her. Two more moons and we're gone. She rests her chin on her paws and waits with me.
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