Lira Voss had always loved the smell of wolves.
Even as a child, before her first shift, before her body knew what it was to bend and break and reform into something faster and truer, she’d curled up against her mother’s wolf side and breathed in.
Fur and earth and wild, copper and pine. Safe.
Now, as she knelt in Thornfell’s main infirmary, scrubbing dried blood from the gap between two floorboards, the scent turned her stomach.
It wasn’t the blood—she’d long grown used to that, to the metallic bite of it, to the way it clung to her skin no matter how hard she scrubbed. It was… everything else.
So many wolves moving through the stone halls. So many shifting bodies. The air heaved with fur and heat and dominance, the low-level buzz of pack instinct pressing on her skin like static.
She felt none of it in herself.
Empty.
“Holt,” someone snapped behind her. “You missed a spot.”
“It’s Voss,” she murmured reflexively, then flushed. “And no, I didn’t.”
She dipped the brush again, working it into the crack under the bench where a warrior had bled out three days ago. No matter how she dug, the stain clung.
“Don’t get clever with me,” Master Healer Edrin said, her tone as sharp as the lines of her painfully neat tunic. “You think you know your way around this place because you can poultice a wound and sew a straight line? You don’t. You’re here because the alpha says you’re useful. Remember that.”
Lira kept her gaze on the floor. “Yes, Master.”
Edrin sniffed. “And stand when I’m speaking to you. You look like a servant.”
Lira rose slowly, joints protesting. She had been on her knees for an hour. The infirmary was quiet now—mid-morning lull between patrol drills and idiot pups testing their limits. Sunlight fell across the long rows of cots, picking out the dust motes in the air, the worn patches on old blankets. It should have felt peaceful.
It never did.
Edrin’s gaze skimmed over her, lingering on the simple, mud-brown dress and the plain braid that fell between her shoulder blades. “You’re going to Ashridge looking like that?”
Lira’s hands tightened on the scrub brush. “I didn’t realize I was going anywhere.”
The older woman’s lips thinned. “Then the alpha hasn’t spoken to you yet. Typical.”
A dull thud went through Lira’s chest. “Spoken to me about what?”
“A treaty,” Edrin said. She said the word like it tasted bad. “With Ashridge. And—as part of that treaty—we’re sending *you*.”
Lira’s fingers went numb. The brush slipped, clattering to the floor. “Me,” she repeated.
“Yes, you,” Edrin snapped. “Don’t make me say it again. Alpha Cael wants Mara of Ashridge here for a season. They have injured, we have need. He doesn’t trust anyone else to keep you from embarrassing Thornfell.”
Lira’s breath came shallow. “I—I don’t—”
“You will pack your things,” Edrin said briskly. “You will present yourself at the main house before moonrise. You will speak only when spoken to, you will not argue with their customs, and you will wear this.”
She thrust a folded bundle of dark green fabric into Lira’s hands.
Lira stared at it. “What is it?”
“Your healer’s mantle,” Edrin said. “Thornfell colors. Don’t stain it.” Her gaze sharpened. “And don’t forget your suppression collar.”
Heat flushed Lira’s face. She lifted a hand to the thin strip of silver around her throat, fingers brushing the dull metal.
“It doesn’t work,” she said quietly. “It never did. I don’t have—”
“Spare me your sad little speeches,” Edrin said. “You think I don’t know what you are?”
Lira stilled.
“A wolf born under a blood moon, loses her wolf in a surge of wild magic,” Edrin said, voice low and cold. “Unheard of. Unnatural. The elders whisper about curses. The pups whisper about bad luck. Only Cael thinks you’re anything but a walking omen.”
“I never asked him to—”
“No,” Edrin cut in. “He just decided you were his personal project. You should be grateful.”
Lira swallowed. Gratitude. Yes. That was what she should feel.
Not resentment. Not shame.
Not that endless, gnawing ache in her chest where her wolf had been, like a tooth ripped too deep, nerves still raw and exposed.
Edrin’s eyes narrowed. “You think you’re the only wolf who’s ever suffered loss?” she said softly. “You think you’re special in your emptiness? You’re not. You’re just… louder.”
Lira stared at the floor.
“You reek wrong,” Edrin went on ruthlessly. “Wolves smell *whole*. They smell of fur and blood and pack and *wolf*. You smell like herbs and old magic and something broken under glass. It puts everyone on edge.”
“I can’t change how I smell,” Lira whispered.
“True.” Edrin’s tone turned almost thoughtful. “But you can change how quiet you are. Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, do your work well—maybe Ashridge won’t send you back in pieces. Or maybe they will. Either way, Thornfell fulfills its end of the deal.”
Lira’s eyes snapped up. “Send me back in—”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” Edrin said, turning away to fuss with a jar of dried sassafras. “Ashridge is old-fashioned, not rabid. They care about honor and borders and what color the sky is on feast days. They hate us, of course. But they hate rogues more. You’ll be safe enough.”
Safe.
The word felt meaningless. Safety had been torn from her in a storm of fire and teeth three years ago. No alpha’s decree could bring it back.
“I don’t understand,” she said slowly. “Why *me*? There are other healers. Senior healers. Whole healers.”
“That,” Edrin said, “is a question for Alpha Cael, not me. And you will not ask him. You will say *thank you* for this opportunity to prove Thornfell’s honor, and then you will leave and make yourself useful somewhere else.”
Lira’s mouth opened. Closed. Her stomach churned.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Good girl,” Edrin said absently. “Now pick up that brush. I want this floor clean enough to eat off by the time you go. If Ashridge sends their healer here and finds we stink like a slaughterhouse, Cael will have my head. And I don’t intend to die because you can’t clean properly.”
Lira knelt again, dress creaking. The scrub brush bit into her palm. She pushed it into the stubborn stain, watching the brownish smear streak and thin.
You’re going to Ashridge.
The thought circled like a bird in a small cage. It didn’t feel real. Nothing had felt entirely real for a long time.
Not since the night the world cracked.
***
She’d been twenty-two. Freshly blooded, her wolf a bright, eager thing that ran circles around her mind every time she smelled rain or heard a rabbit rustle in the underbrush.
Thornfell’s old alpha had been… careless. More interested in petty raids on neighboring packs than in the creeping sickness in the land. He’d dismissed the elders’ warnings about the boundary stones. He’d ignored the way the forest undergrowth blackened in strange patches, the way prey animals started vanishing, the way rogues’ eyes gleamed an unnatural pale in the dark.
Lira hadn’t ignored it.
She’d grown up half in the infirmary, half in the wild, her senses tuned to the balance between body and land. She’d watched the herbs she gathered twist into strange, bitter shapes. She’d listened to the stones at the edge of Thornfell’s claim hum with a discordant note.
When the surge came, she was in the clearing by the old standing stone, gathering moonwort for a difficult birth.
The air had gone *wrong*.
Her wolf had lifted its head, ears pricking. The hairs on Lira’s arms rose. The scent of ozone and burnt sugar filled her nose.
Then the earth buckled.
She’d gone to her knees, hands flying out to brace against roots that suddenly writhed like live things. The stone at the center of the clearing had glowed, veins of red crawling through gray like blood through marble.
Her wolf had howled inside her, a high, panicked sound.
Then everything exploded.
Magic ripped through her like a physical force. It tore at her bones, at her skin, at the delicate threads that bound her human self to her wolf.
She’d screamed. Or maybe that sound had come from both of them.
And then—
Silence.
When she’d woken, hours or days later, she’d been back in human form, lying in a circle of scorched earth. The standing stone was cracked clean in two.
And her wolf was… gone.
Not hiding. Not distant. Not curled deep in some feral part of her soul.
Gone.
She’d reached for it and found only that raw, gaping emptiness.
The pack had found her like that—naked, shivering, eyes wild. Half the forest around the clearing had turned gray and brittle, leaves crumbling to ash when she touched them.
The whispers had started that night.
*Blood moon. Cursed. Wolf-eater.*
Edrin had taken her into the infirmary, more out of curiosity than kindness. Tested her. Prodded at her with potions and rituals. Pronounced her… stable, if aberrant.
“You’re alive,” she’d said. “You can still heal. If anything, your sensitivity to disruptions in the body’s magic is stronger. But your wolf is—not there.”
Lira had laughed, high and sharp. “I *know* that, Master.”
“Don’t get snippy,” Edrin had said. “Be grateful. Most who get caught in that kind of surge die screaming. Or go mad. Or become… something else.”
“Something else?”
“Rogues. Shifters who can’t get their skins straight. Blood drinkers.” Edrin had shrugged. “You got off light.”
Light. Yes. So light she felt hollow.
Alpha Cael had taken power two months later, after his father finally made one too many mistakes and got himself killed by an Ashridge patrol. Cael had been different. Calculating where his father had been rash. Watching where his father had lunged.
He’d watched *her*.
“Show me what you can do,” he’d said, standing in the infirmary with his hands folded behind his back.
She’d sutured wounds. Mixed tonics. Laid her palms on warriors with twisted magic and straightened them out.
He’d nodded once. “Useful,” he’d said. “We keep her.”
“She’s broken,” one of his lieutenants had muttered.
“So are half the stones on our borders,” Cael had replied. “We don’t throw those away. We reinforce them.”
So, she’d become a reinforcement. A patch over a tear. A tool.
Wolves didn’t invite her to their beds. Didn’t seek her out in heat. Didn’t curl around her at bonfires.
Without a wolf, the mating pull never came.
She’d made peace with that. Or something like peace. Her hands were always busy. Her days always full. At night, she slept with herb-scented sheets and her own quiet bones.
Now, Edrin wanted to send her away. Cael *was* sending her away.
To Ashridge.
The rival pack she’d seen only in old maps and war reports. The pack whose patrols had traded blood with Thornfell’s raiders for a generation. The pack who had lit so many pyres with Thornfell fur.
And she was supposed to go there as a gesture of goodwill.
A healer without a wolf. A symbol, perhaps, of Thornfell’s willingness to be vulnerable.
Or a sacrifice.
She scrubbed harder.
***
“Voss.”
She straightened so quickly her head spun. Her braid slapped the middle of her back.
Alpha Cael stood in the doorway, tall and spare, his dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck. His eyes were gray—cold, assessing—set in a face that always seemed a little too sharp for kindness.
He didn’t waste time on it.
“Alpha,” she murmured. Her hands were damp. She wiped them on her skirt.
“Leave us,” Cael said to Edrin without looking at her.
The master healer opened her mouth. Closed it. Bowed her head and swept out, skirts swishing.
The infirmary felt larger with just the two of them. Colder, despite the banked fire in the hearth.
Lira bowed her head. “Master Edrin told me about Ashridge.”
“Good,” Cael said. “Saves me breath.”
“I don’t understand,” she said quietly. “You have healers with stronger wolves. With *wolves*, at all. Why send me?”
He stepped farther into the room, boots whispering against stone. He stopped a few paces away, hands still clasped behind his back.
“What do you know about Ashridge’s latest patrol losses?” he asked.
Lira blinked. “Latest…? I only hear what reaches the infirmary. Rumors.”
“Rumors,” Cael said, “tell us twelve dead in the last two moons. Rogues. At least that’s the official line.”
“That’s… a lot,” she said slowly. “Even for a rough border.”
“Yes,” Cael said. “And their alpha is not a fool. Nor is their beta.” He watched her face. “Do you know his name?”
She shook her head. “No, Alpha.”
“Bram Kade,” Cael said. “Strong fighter. Stronger wolf. Cautious, for a male his age. He should not be losing wolves like this.”
Lira swallowed. “You think it’s something else.”
“I think,” Cael said, “that whatever cracked our stones three years ago did not stop at our borders. I think there are tears in the land between Thornfell and Ashridge. And I think anyone who’s paying attention is… worried.”
“Alpha Corin,” she said. “Of Ashridge. He agreed to this treaty because he’s worried.”
“Yes,” Cael said simply.
“Then—why me?” she asked again, more softly this time.
He tilted his head. “Because you are the only one here who has stood in the eye of that crack and lived.”
Her stomach twisted. “I barely—”
“You survived,” he cut in. “You stand in a room and you feel where the magic pulls wrong. You sense when a wolf’s shift is off before they do.”
“That’s just—practice,” she said weakly.
“That’s talent,” he said. “And it came from that surge that took your wolf. You are not whole, Lira. But you are… attuned. To what’s broken.”
The way he said it didn’t feel like comfort. Or insult. Just… fact.
“And Ashridge,” she said, “needs someone to read their wounded.”
“They need help they will never admit they need,” Cael said dryly. “They need a sign that Thornfell can be more than teeth and fire. And we”—his mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile—“we need Mara of Ashridge in exchange. She has a reputation.”
“I’ve read her work,” Lira blurted, then flushed. “I mean—the letters she sent to the southern coven about treating silver poisoning.”
Cael’s brows rose, faintly. “Of course you have.”
“I collect healer correspondences,” Lira mumbled. “Sometimes they send—”
“Voss,” Cael said. “Focus.”
She snapped her mouth shut.
“You will go to Ashridge,” he said. “You will observe. You will report back to me on anything that smells of the surge that took your wolf. You will assist their healer, and you will not, under any circumstances, forget that you are Thornfell.”
Her throat tightened. “Yes, Alpha.”
“You’re nervous,” he observed.
“I don’t…” She swallowed. “Ashridge hates us. Their wolves will smell that I’m—wrong.”
“Yes.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. “They will test you. Snarl at you. Some may refuse your touch. That is their right. But you will stand your ground. You will do your work. You will show them Thornfell is not weak enough to send them scraps.”
“I’m not—”
“Scraps,” he said, more firmly, “do not crawl back from a blood moon with their minds intact. Scraps do not stitch warriors well enough that they fight again. Scraps do not argue with Master Edrin about herb ratios.”
“I don’t argue,” she protested automatically.
“You do,” he said. “Constantly. Quietly. With that frown.” He flicked his fingers at her forehead.
Her cheeks warmed.
“You are… unconventional,” he said. “But effective. And you are not bound here by mate or litter. If Ashridge decides to keep you longer than a season—”
Her head snapped up. “Keep me—”
“—we lose less than if we sent Edrin,” he finished coolly.
The room tilted for a moment. “You’d let them keep me.”
“If you chose to stay,” he said. “I would not trade a healer against their will. That would sour any alliance.”
“But you would… allow it.”
“If you were useful to them and felt more… at home… there, I would not drag you back,” he said.
The word *home* stung.
“This is my home,” she said quietly.
He studied her. “Is it?”
She flinched.
Once, she’d thought so. Once, she’d run Thornfell’s forests in fur, the beat of her paws echoing the pulse of the land. Once, she’d known every wolf’s scent like an extension of her own.
Now, she navigated stone halls and avoided crowded bonfires. Her world had shrunk to beds and herbs and the quiet click of her own teeth when she clenched her jaw against the hum of pack energy she couldn’t fully feel.
“I don’t…” She took a breath. “I don’t belong anywhere else.”
“Perhaps not,” Cael said. “But I’ve learned not to assume where wolves will find their place.” He tipped his head. “Pack your things. Edrin will give you supplies. My second will escort you to the border at moonrise. Ashridge will meet you there.”
She hesitated. “Alpha… why the collar?”
His gaze flicked to the thin band of silver at her throat. “Because Ashridge doesn’t know what, exactly, we’re sending them,” he said bluntly. “They know you lost your wolf in a surge. They know you are valuable to me. They do not know whether that surge left… cracks in you I can’t see.”
“It didn’t,” she said sharply.
“I believe you,” he said. “But they don’t. The collar soothes them. Makes them think we’re taking precautions.”
“It doesn’t suppress anything,” she said. “There’s nothing to—”
“I know,” he said. “You know. Let them believe what they need to. Think of it as… armor. A story you wear.”
She touched the cool metal. Armor. It had always felt more like a brand.
“Yes, Alpha,” she said.
He nodded once, then turned to go. At the doorway, he paused.
“Lira,” he said. It was rare for him to use her given name.
She straightened. “Yes?”
“Ashridge’s beta,” he said slowly. “Bram. He was injured in their latest attack. Badly, from what we hear. A wolf like that—if his wolf is hurt, he may… lash out. At anything that smells of weakness or threat.”
The words dug under her skin. “You expect me to treat him.”
“I expect you to go where their healer needs you most,” he said. “That will likely be near their alpha and beta. If Bram Kade looks at you with hate, you will remember that you are not there to be liked.”
“I don’t expect to be liked,” she said, more sharply than she intended.
“Good,” he said. “Then you won’t be disappointed.” His gaze softened, almost imperceptibly. “You’ve walked through worse than hostile stares, Lira Voss. Do not forget that.”
Then he was gone.
She stood in the empty infirmary, the sunlight slanting across the beds, the herbs hanging from the rafters drying in fragrant bunches. It smelled like antiseptic and smoke and old fear.
She’d grown used to that smell.
What would Ashridge’s infirmary smell like? Pine pitch and stubborn pride? Smoldering resentment?
She bent, picked up the scrub brush, and finished the floor.
***
By the time the sun kissed the horizon, Lira’s room was bare.
Not that there had been much to begin with.
A narrow bed. A chest at the foot with spare tunics and dresses, all in dull, practical colors. A small shelf crammed with herbals, healer correspondences, and one battered book of old pack stories she’d read so many times the spine had given up.
She ran her fingers over its cover—the embossed image of a wolf standing on a cliff, head thrown back in a howl.
“Myths,” Edrin had called it when she’d found Lira reading it as a child. “Stories for pups.”
But Lira had loved them. Tales of fated mates feeling each other’s presence across mountains. Of wolves whose scent could bring a man to his knees. Of bonds that burned like wildfires and healed wounds that should have killed.
She’d thought she’d have that, once. That some wolf would catch her scent and their world would tip.
Now, she couldn’t even smell herself half the time.
She shoved the book into her bag anyway.
The healer’s mantle lay folded on the bed. When she shook it out, it unfolded into a sleeveless, knee-length cloak of deep forest green, edged in silver thread. Thornfell’s crest—three mountain peaks under a crescent moon—was embroidered on the left breast.
It felt too heavy when she settled it over her shoulders. Like she was pretending at a role she didn’t quite deserve.
She buckled it at her throat, fingers brushing the collar. The silver was cool. Her skin beneath it felt hot.
In the small metal mirror on the wall, she looked… odd. The mantle gave her shoulders she didn’t feel she’d earned. Her face was too pale, eyes too large and dark in a narrow face. Her brown hair, braided simply, made her look younger than her twenty-five years.
“Scare them with your big witch eyes,” Edrin had said dryly. “They’ll think twice before snarling in your face.”
Lira suspected they’d snarl anyway.
A sharp rap sounded at her door.
“Come,” she called.
Thornfell’s second, Malen, filled the doorway. Massive and blond, with the easy confidence of a wolf who’d never doubted his place in the world, he took her in with one quick sweep of his gaze.
“You travel light,” he said.
“Easier to run if I have to,” she said before she could stop herself.
His mouth twitched. “Hope it doesn’t come to that. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she said.
He stepped aside, gesturing. “After you, healer.”
The walk to the border took the better part of an hour.
They moved in a small group—Malen, two other pack warriors in wolf form padding silent and watchful, and Lira, very aware of the eyes that followed them.
Thornfell’s main hall loomed behind them, all sharp angles and dark stone. Beyond it, the pack’s village sprawled—wooden houses clustered around a central square, smoke rising from chimneys, children darting between legs.
Some of those children paused to stare at her as she passed. She caught a few older wolves murmuring to each other, glances sliding off her like she was a shadow at the edge of their vision.
She kept her eyes forward.
As they left the village proper, the trees closed in around them—tall pines and old oaks, their branches knitting overhead. The path to the border stones was well-worn, the earth packed by generations of paws and boots.
“Ever been this far east?” Malen asked after a while.
“Once,” she said. “Before…”
“Ah.” His gaze slid to her, then away. He didn’t say the word.
“How far are we meeting them?” she asked instead.
“Neutral clearing,” he said. “Half a mile past our stones, half a mile before theirs. We use it for prisoner exchanges, talks, that kind of thing.”
“Prisoner exchanges,” she repeated faintly.
“Used to,” he amended. “Before Cael. He’s more interested in not wasting wolves than in trading them like livestock.”
She thought of Cael’s cool, assessing eyes. Of the way he’d said *If you chose to stay*.
“What’s Ashridge like?” she asked quietly.
He snorted. “Proud. Stubborn. Smell like sap and snow and self-righteousness. They keep their traditions close and their secrets closer. They’ll bristle when they see Thornfell colors.”
“Comforting,” she muttered.
“They care about their own,” he said, surprising her. “That much I’ll say. They’ll die for each other before they’ll let an outsider see them bleed.”
“And I’m… an outsider,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “But you’re also a healer. They respect those, even when they hate them.”
“Hate seems strong,” she said.
He gave her a look. “Do you forget the raiding parties your old alpha sent?”
“No,” she said softly. “But I didn’t go on them.”
“I know,” he said. “They won’t care.” He shrugged. “Time and blood. That’s how grudges fade. This treaty’s a start.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes. The trees thinned, the air growing colder. A faint line of power hummed ahead—Thornfell’s boundary stones.
They stepped over them.
Lira felt… nothing.
Once, crossing a border had made her wolf stir, bristle at the foreign magic. Now, the hum slid over her like water. Her collar stayed cool.
“It gets stronger,” Malen said quietly as they approached the neutral clearing. “The air. The old power. You feel it?”
She hesitated. “A little.”
He grunted. “Thought so.”
They stepped into the clearing.
It was a shallow bowl of land, ringed by stones taller than a man. Moss clung to their sides, threaded with pale veins of magic. In the center, a wide, flat rock bore deep grooves from too many meetings gone badly.
Lira shivered.
The other side of the clearing was empty. Yet.
Malen led her to one side, where Thornfell’s mark—three claw scratches—had been carved into a stone. “We wait,” he said.
She nodded, hugging her mantle closer around herself. The air here bit with a different cold. It smelled… cleaner. Sharper. Ashridge, she supposed.
Her heart beat too fast. She tried to slow it. Tried to think of this as any other errand. You go, you heal, you observe, you come back.
Maybe.
A wind gusted through the clearing. It carried wolf scent—strong, controlled, edged with a faint hint of… something else. Pine sap and old snow and smoke.
Ashridge.
Lira’s fingers dug into the fabric at her sides.
“Steady,” Malen murmured.
Shapes moved in the trees opposite. Three wolves stepped into the clearing first, fur thick and well-kept. Behind them, in human form, came two men and a woman.
The woman wore Ashridge colors—dark blue tunic, black trousers, a thick fur-lined cloak. Her hair was shot with gray, pulled back into a severe knot. Her eyes were sharp.
Mara.
Beside her walked a man with a soldier’s bearing and lines of tired authority around his mouth. Alpha Corin, Lira guessed. His presence pressed against her skin like a heavy hand.
The third was younger, all sharp angles and muscle, with a ruddy beard and a scar along his jaw. His gaze slid over her, assessing, then dismissed her.
Not Bram, then. She’d have recognized the weight of a beta’s gaze.
Malen stepped forward, bowing his head slightly. “Alpha Corin.”
“Second Malen,” Corin said. His voice was deep, with the slightest rasp. “I see Thornfell sent the prettiest of you this time.”
Malen snorted. “You must be desperate if you’re complimenting *me*.”
Some of the tension in the air eased, just a fraction.
“Alpha Cael sends his regards,” Malen said. “And his healer.” He gestured to Lira.
She stepped forward, heart in her throat, and bowed her head. “Lira Voss,” she said. “Thornfell’s… healer.”
Mara’s gaze pinned her. It was not unkind. It was not kind either. It was… clinical.
“You’re the one who danced with a blood moon,” Mara said.
Lira’s cheeks heated. “I… was there when the surge hit, yes.”
“Lost your wolf,” Mara said. “Kept your hands.”
“Yes,” Lira said.
Mara sniffed. “Could be worse.”
Corin’s gaze flicked to the collar at Lira’s throat. “Suppression?” he asked.
“A precaution,” Malen said smoothly. “She’s stable. Thornfell wouldn’t send you something volatile.”
Lira bit her tongue. *Something.* Not someone.
Corin’s pale eyes rested on hers for a heartbeat. In that glance, she saw… calculation. Curiosity. A hint of unease.
“Welcome to Ashridge lands, Healer Voss,” he said. “We have wounded that need your hands. And souls that need your insight.”
Lira swallowed. “I’ll do what I can.”
“I expect nothing less,” he said. He turned to Mara. “Are you ready?”
Mara glanced back at Malen. There was history there—years of wary distance, perhaps, now forced into something like truce.
“As I’ll ever be,” Mara said. “Try not to get yourself killed while I’m gone, Corin.”
He grunted. “You think I’d leave Bram in charge?”
Mara snorted. “You already did. Look how that turned out.”
A muscle jumped in Corin’s jaw. “Watch your tongue.”
She held up her hands in mock surrender, then turned to Lira. “You any good with stubborn, self-hating idiots?” she asked.
Lira blinked. “I… have some practice.”
“Good,” Mara said. “Because our beta’s a walking disaster right now, and if he doesn’t pull his furry head out of his ass, he’s going to drag half the pack with him.”
Lira’s pulse stuttered. “Bram Kade.”
Mara’s eyes sharpened. “You’ve heard of him.”
“Only… rumors,” Lira said. “From Master Edrin’s letters. And Alpha Cael.”
“Rumors don’t do that boy justice,” Mara said dryly. “Come on, then. Let’s see if Ashridge can stomach Thornfell’s broken witch.”
The words stung. Lira lifted her chin anyway.
Malen squeezed her shoulder once, hard. “Send word if they mistreat you,” he murmured. “Cael doesn’t want this alliance that badly.”
Lira nodded, throat tight.
Then she stepped away from Thornfell and toward Ashridge.
The air shifted around her.
The boundary stones at the far edge of the clearing hummed low, like a warning. Or a welcome. It was hard to tell.
She passed them.
Nothing dramatic happened. No lightning. No cracking earth. No surge of magic.
Just a different taste on her tongue.
Ashridge.
Behind her, voices murmured. Malen and Mara exchanged a few last words. The Ashridge wolves watched her with open curiosity and closed mistrust.
She didn’t look back.
As she followed Corin into the trees, every nerve vibrating with a strange, hollow anticipation, she had no idea that miles ahead, in a dimly lit infirmary that smelled of smoke and stubbornness, a scarred beta shifted restlessly in his bed.
No idea that his wolf—wounded, wary—lifted its head at the first hint of her scent on the wind.
No idea that though she’d lost her wolf to a blood moon, some part of her *still* called to him.
And he had *always* answered calls.
Even broken ones.
---