Chapter 1

The dress laces up the back, and I do it myself because I have done it myself for ten years.

My fingers know the pattern without looking. Pull, cross, pull again. Outside my window the camp is already loud, warriors sharpening blades for the Hunt, cooks arguing over the size of the feast fires. Tonight the Blood Moon rises for the first time in a decade, and every wolf in this pack has been waiting for it since they were pups.

I have been waiting for it too, though not the way they think.

I finish the laces and look at myself in the cracked mirror propped against the wall. Brown hair braided the way Fabrice likes it. Green eyes that used to laugh easier than they do now. I practice my smile in the glass until it looks real enough to survive a room full of people who are watching for cracks.

It looks real enough. It always does.

By the time I reach the hall, the benches are already full. Warriors elbow each other over cups of dark ale, laughing too loud the way men laugh when they are hiding nerves under noise. I take my seat at the high table, beside the empty chair that belongs to my mate, and I fold my hands the way a luna folds her hands, and I wait.

Fabrice arrives like he arrives everywhere. Like the room was built around the space he is about to fill.

He is beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful, all clean lines and no mercy in the shine of it. Ten years ago I thought that danger was something he would only ever point outward, at rogues, at rivals, never at me. Ten years teaches you different things than you expect.

He does not look at me first.

He looks at her.

Sana walks in a step behind him, close enough that no one in this hall can pretend not to notice, wearing a warrior's vest cut low enough that it is not really a warrior's vest at all. Fabrice's hand finds the small of her back like it belongs there. Like it has always belonged there. A few of the older wolves glance at me and then look away fast, the way you look away from something breaking so you do not have to watch the exact moment it shatters.

I keep my hands folded. I keep the smile on.

"Sit," Fabrice says to the hall, and everyone sits, and he says it to me too, though he does not use my name. He never uses my name in front of people anymore. Names are for wolves you respect.

I sit.

Sana takes the seat that used to be my sister's, before my sister married out of the pack and stopped coming to feasts, before I understood that empty chairs at this table fill up with whoever Fabrice decides deserves them.

"A toast," Fabrice says, lifting his cup, "to the Blood Moon, and to the Hunt, and to reminding this pack what real strength looks like."

The hall roars. Cups slam the tables. I lift mine too, because that is what a good luna does, and I drink, and the ale tastes like nothing at all.

Fabrice's eyes finally land on me. There is something underneath them tonight, something sharper than the usual boredom he wears when he looks my way. I know that look. It means he wants an audience for whatever comes next.

"Ten years," he says, loud enough for the whole hall, "and still no pups."

The hall goes quieter than it should. Even the drunkest warriors feel the temperature drop.

"A luna who cannot give her alpha children," Fabrice says, turning his cup slowly in his hand, "is a luna who has failed the one duty that matters most." He says it gently. That is the worst part. He says cruel things gently, like he is doing me a kindness by saying them out loud instead of letting me wonder.

I could tell him the truth. That the healer who examined me three winters ago found nothing wrong with my body at all. That maybe the failure sits somewhere else entirely, in a bond that went cold long before my womb did. I could say it. I have said it before, in smaller rooms, to smaller audiences, and watched it change nothing.

So instead I say what I always say.

"I am sorry, Alpha."

The words come out smooth. Practiced. Ten years of practice.

Fabrice smiles like I passed a test. Beside him, Sana does not bother hiding her satisfaction. She lifts her own cup an inch, a private little toast aimed only at me, and takes a slow sip.

"Sana has offered to stand beside me at the Hunt fires tonight," Fabrice says, and now his voice carries the shape of an order dressed up as an announcement. "As is proper, given her contributions to this pack."

I understand what he is telling the room. Everyone in this hall understands it. Contributions is not a word about hunting skill.

I keep my spine straight. I keep my hands folded. Somewhere under my ribs, something I have no name for shifts, restless, like an animal waking up in a cage it did not know it was standing in.

"Of course," I say. "Whatever honors the pack."

Fabrice's smile widens, satisfied, and he turns back to his warriors, already moving on to talk of formations and rogue sightings near the eastern ridge, as if the last thirty seconds did not just happen, as if I am furniture that spoke once and can now be safely ignored again.

I sit very still and let the noise of the hall wash over me. I have gotten good at this. Disappearing in plain sight while everyone watches.

Then Fabrice turns back, and this time there is no gentleness left in his face at all.

"One more thing," he says, and the hall quiets again, sensing blood in the water the way wolves always do. "Before the Hunt begins, you will kneel before Sana. Publicly. Thank her for what she does for this pack, since you cannot do it yourself."

The whole hall turns to look at me.

I open my mouth to refuse him.