Chapter 2

The order was simple.

Feed the chained wolf. Keep it alive. Do not let it take another hand.

No one told me what to do if it started obeying mine.

I should have thrown the meat and run, the way the guard said. But the great wolf did not lunge for the bucket. It only watched me, breathing like every breath cost it something.

That was when I saw the rest of the silver. Not just chains — spikes, driven under the skin along its spine, deep enough that the flesh had gone black around them. Whoever chained it had not meant to hold it. They had meant to make it suffer.

"Easy," I whispered. The wolf went still.

No bloodline flashed. No moonlight crowned me. No goddess sang. I had simply spent eight years learning how a frightened animal breathes before it strikes — and how to breathe back, slower, until it believed me.

One spike had worked halfway out, catching on the chain every time it moved. I wound the ruined hem of my dress around my hand and closed my fingers on the hot silver.

"Look at me," I told it. "Breathe through it."

It burned. The smell of my own skin filled the cell. The wolf shook, a growl building — but it looked at me, and it held.

"Don't make me regret this," I muttered. "I've had enough bad choices for one night."

The spike came free. The wolf shuddered — and then it began to change.

Black fur drew back into skin. Claws curled into fingers. The chains slackened around a shape that was no longer a beast.

A man lay on the stone. Half-naked, silver burns smoking across his ribs. Too big for the cell. Too still.

And below his collarbone, half-hidden under blood and old scar, a mark I did not recognize but somehow could not look away from.

Footsteps on the stairs. Nessa, the healer, a guard behind her with a lantern raised.

She saw the man. The broken chains. Me, standing over him, untouched.

"It has killed four people," she said slowly. "And it turned human in your hands."

The guard's hand went to the horn at his belt — the one that called the warriors down with silver spears.

"Why didn't it eat you?" Nessa asked.

The truth would kill him. A rogue strong enough to shrug off silver, hidden under the Alpha's hall — they would spear him before dawn.

So I lied. "Because he's mine," I said. The guard's hand went still.

"He's claimed." My voice did not shake. That surprised me. "By me."

The room went silent. Two hours ago the whole pack had watched Cassian reject me under the Blood Moon. Now I stood over the monster beneath his hall, calling it mine.

Even unconscious, the man's hand moved — toward my burned fingers, blind and certain, like it already knew them.

Nessa saw it. Her eyes narrowed.

Then Cassian's voice came down the stairs, and my blood went cold.

The dungeon door slammed open. He stood in the torchlight, Maris tucked safe behind his arm. His eyes were already gold.

"Say that again," he said softly. "Tell me why my rejected mate smells like another male."