Chapter 1

I was the girl they sent to feed the pack’s monsters.

So the night my fiancé crowned my foster sister as Luna, my family knew exactly where to throw me away.

Belowground.

Back to the cages.

For eight years, I had fed the beasts the Vale pack chained below the hall — the sick, the war wolves, the ones too broken to run with the rest.

I cleaned their cages and closed their wounds.

I could read a growl the way other girls read a room.

Tonight was supposed to be the night I stopped being that girl.

Maris wore silver, pearls braided through her pale hair, her shoulders bare beneath the Luna mantle.

The mantle had been measured for me.

“You clean up well enough,” Cassian had said at the fitting.

I had held on to that for weeks.

Now Maris wore it, Cassian’s hand resting at the small of her back.

My mother’s comb had gone to her when she cried that she owned nothing to remember.

Now the mantle.

Now the crown.

My foster father found me in the crowd.

“You’re standing in the wrong place, Elowen.”

His eyes slid to Maris.

“Stand with the attendants.”

Not family.

Not future Luna.

Maris turned as if she had only just seen me.

“Please don’t make this harder,” she whispered — soft enough to sound kind, loud enough for the front rows.

“I never asked him to choose me.”

Cassian finally looked at me.

For one stupid heartbeat, my chest lifted.

Then he said, “Don’t stand there bleeding all over the ceremony.”

A clasp on the feeding key had cut my palm.

I closed my fist.

And then, under the Blood Moon, my wolf woke.

Twenty-two years of silence, and she chose now.

I dropped to the marble, the dress tearing at my shoulder, a sound ripping out of me that was neither human nor wolf.

I lifted my head, still shaking, and looked straight at Cassian.

Mate.

The word burned through me like moonlight through bone.

Not chosen.

Not arranged.

Fated.

The whole hall felt it land.

For one breath, I believed fate had finally chosen me.

Cassian’s face did not open.

It closed.

“The Goddess paired me with a cage-girl.”

His voice went flat.

“Then the Goddess made a mistake.”

I knew only the first half of the rule then.

A rejection could wound a bond.

I did not know the cast-aside mate could finish it.

Cassian raised his voice so every wolf beneath the Blood Moon would hear.

“I, Cassian Veyr, reject Elowen Vale as my mate and future Luna.”

The bond tore.

Not cleanly.

Not fully.

It ripped open inside me and left every nerve bare.

Maris dropped beside me.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Her nails dug into the old silver-burn scars on my wrist.

I flinched.

That was all she needed.

She fell backward with a small, perfect gasp.

Cassian’s hand cracked across my face before I understood what she had done.

I tasted blood.

“Don’t touch her,” he said.

Not to Maris.

To me.

The whispers swept the hall.

“His mate?”

“The cage girl?”

“No wonder he rejected her.”

“She should be grateful he said it before the crown.”

Not one of them looked at my face.

Cassian lifted the Luna crown.

“A Luna must be born for the pack,” he said. “Not dragged up from its cages.”

He set it into Maris’s hair.

She cried beautifully.

People bowed.

No one looked at me.

My foster father dropped a key beside my knee.

The lower-dungeon key.

“Take off that dress and go where you’re useful,” he said.

“The prisoner hasn’t been fed.”

Behind her tears, Maris smiled.

Small.

Certain.

The guard at the last gate went pale when he saw me.

“Three guards and the last girl we sent down,” he whispered, kicking a bucket of raw meat to my feet.

“That’s what it ate. Throw it and run. Goddess save you.”

The inner door opened with a scream of rust.

The thing chained to the far wall was nothing like the beasts I had fed for eight years.

Bigger than a warhorse, black fur matted with blood, silver driven so deep the metal smoked.

The silver alone should have killed it.

It had simply learned to stand inside the pain.

Then it raised its head, and its eyes found me.

Red.

Ancient.

Burning.

Not the panic of a cornered animal.

Something older.

Something that had never once looked up at anyone.

Every lesson the cages taught me said the same thing.

Lower your eyes.

Back away.

Run.

Instead, the great wolf dragged itself forward through its smoking chains.

It lowered its bloody head.

And set it in my shaking hands.