Chapter 1

Rhea’s POV

A bucket of mine water struck my face before the work bell. I rolled across the stone, but the chain around my ankle dragged me to a stop. The prisoners laughed while I wiped the dirt from my eyes.

“Get up, kennel rat,” the scarred woman ordered. She kicked the bucket towards me and added, “Lady Monica paid for another lesson.”

Another prisoner pulled me onto my knees by my hair. “Three years underground, and you still lift your head like Redfang’s First Daughter,” she said. “Your fathers found their real princess. Did you honestly think they would keep the adopted one forever?”

“If Monica felt secure in her title, she would not keep paying you to break me,” I replied. I refused to beg because begging only made their games last longer.

Black Hollow presented itself as a strict reform academy. The buildings above ground had classrooms, clean dormitories, and training yards that wealthy packs were allowed to inspect. The real prison lay beneath the silver mine, where no visiting family was taken.

I had entered at sixteen. I was nineteen now.

The scarred woman showed me a coin stamped with the Redfang crest. “Your dear sister sends silver every month,” she said. “Every payment buys you another correction.”

Monica was the blood daughter Redfang had lost and the sister I had been ordered to welcome. Once she returned, the title of First Daughter became hers. I became the adopted girl who had unknowingly occupied her place. Even after I was sent underground, Monica continued punishing me for it.

The papers my fathers signed placed me in the surface programme, where I was supposed to attend control lessons and perform supervised work. Monica’s silver placed me on the special correction list instead. I did not learn that until much later. During those three years, I only knew that none of my fathers came to see whether Black Hollow’s reports were true.

Dagan, Calder, Soren, and Merek found me beside a burned wagon when I was a baby and raised me as their daughter. Dagan commanded the northern armies. Calder supplied weapons to every allied pack. Soren controlled the border forces, and Merek was Redfang’s chief healer. Together, my four fathers could open any gate in the northern territories. Yet not one of them crossed Black Hollow’s gate for me.

Dagan taught me to fight. Calder made my first training blade. Soren carried me across the northern mountains, and Merek guided my first shift into Kiro, the black she-wolf inside me.

Everything changed when a salt caravan brought Monica to our gates. She carried a moonbone whistle carved for the daughter their mate, Vesta, had lost during the River Wars. The blood altar recognised four Redfang marks in Monica’s blood.

My fathers held a feast and gave her everything they had once promised me. Three weeks later, someone mixed rage-root into the herbs used for Monica’s awakening. The drug forced her white wolf into a violent shift, and several cubs were injured.

Rage-root was found in my basket. My scent covered the den because Monica had asked me to decorate it. “Rhea said I stole her family,” Monica cried against Dagan. “She said I should have remained lost.”

“I never said that,” I protested. “She placed the powder in my basket.”

Dagan did not order an investigation. Before sunrise, all four fathers signed the order sending me to Black Hollow.

“It is a reform academy, not a dungeon,” Soren told me when I begged for a hearing. “You will attend lessons, work under supervision, and return when you learn to control your jealousy.”

They believed they were sending me away to be disciplined, not tortured. That did not make them innocent. For three years, they accepted every report without visiting once.

The work bell rang, pulling me from the memory. The other prisoners hurried into the tunnels, leaving me beside the waste trench.

My wounds no longer healed. Kiro had become a weak voice inside my mind, and the moon-silver seals around our mark stopped me from shifting.

I removed a piece of null-iron hidden beneath my clothes. It could sever the link between my human half and Kiro. The act would crush my beast core, but it might free her from carrying my pain into another life.

“Forgive me,” I whispered to her. “Perhaps we will both find peace next time.”

Before I could drive it into the mark, a guard crushed my wrist beneath his boot. “Your release order arrived,” he said. “Black Hollow will not accept blame for your death.”

The guards dragged me through the tunnels and pushed me outside. Sunlight hurt after three years underground. When I could see again, Dagan Redfang stood on the mountain path in dark armour. The father I had once loved most had come to block my way.