Chapter 3

The SUV heater was on full blast, but I couldn't stop shaking.

Silver veins pulsed under my skin, lighting the dark cabin. Every heartbeat hit my newly knitted ribs like a hammer. The power my mother had sealed was fully awake now, and it was tearing me apart from the inside.

Then Fenrir's encrypted dashboard console buzzed. The caller ID flashed: Alpha Lucian.

Fenrir glared at the screen, knuckles white on the wheel. I reached over and tapped speaker.

"Fenrir! Where is she?" Lucian's voice barked through the static, panic in it. "The ferals breached the lower barricades! The eastern fallback gates are jammed. Get Rhea on the line. She's the only one who knows where the manual override levers are hidden!"

I stared at the glowing dashboard. He didn't ask if I was hurt, or how I'd gotten out of the Great Hall alive. He just wanted me to fix what he'd broken.

I leaned toward the mic. "The schematics are in the Luna's manual, Lucian."

"Rhea! Listen to me, you have to—"

"Ask your new Luna to read it to you," I rasped.

I hit end and ripped the console wire out for good measure.

"Good riddance," Fenrir muttered, eyes on the snowy road.

He didn't get to say anything else.

A silver-tipped arrow crossed the invisible border and shattered the windshield. The second it breached the Wintercrest ward, a deep warning pulse rolled through the frozen pines. The arrow buried itself in the dashboard between us, crackling with dark magic.

"Down!" I screamed.

Fenrir slammed the brakes. The SUV skidded off the ice into a snowbank. We scrambled out of the crushed metal into the blizzard just as three cloaked figures dropped from the trees.

Royal Court Trackers.

The leader stepped forward, drawing a pair of serrated blades. He struck the silver emblem on his wrist, and a crimson pulse shot into the storm clouds. A location flare to the Court. Then his cold eyes locked on the silver veins crawling up my neck.

"An anomaly," the Tracker sneered, his voice metallic and dead. "The Court ordered this bloodline erased years ago. Execution authorized."

Fenrir shifted instantly. His brown wolf lunged and locked its jaws around the nearest Tracker's throat. The man went down, bleeding out. But the third Tracker blindsided Fenrir, pinning my scout to the ground under a heavy iron-tipped boot.

The leader charged, blades raised.

I didn't run. I pulled the raw, burning silver heat from my chest into my palms. When he swung, I caught the steel barehanded.

The silver energy blasted out. The blade shattered into a dozen pieces. I drove my knee into his chest and sent him flying back into a tree.

But the backlash was instant. I dropped to my knees, coughing up dark blood. My vision spun. I couldn't control the output.

The Tracker recovered with terrifying speed. He drew a second blade and stood over me, raising it high.

He never got to swing.

A blur of frost and muscle slammed into him. Blood sprayed across the white snow. His throat was gone in a single brutal sweep. The body dropped at my boots.

Standing over the corpse was a man with silver-streaked dark hair. His hands had shifted into massive frost-covered claws, dripping with the Tracker's blood. The Court hunters had come with an execution order; he looked at them like trespassers he'd already decided to bury.

The surviving Tracker staggered back. "Cassian," he hissed, fear cutting through his anger. "This is official Royal Court business."

Cassian flicked the blood from his claws. "Then the Court should know better than to cross into Wintercrest."

"Hand over the abomination," the Tracker snarled.

"No one carries out an execution on the Blood King's land without his word." Cassian's voice stayed cold. "Leave. Or become fertilizer for the pines."

The Tracker lunged in a desperate frenzy. Cassian didn't shift any further. He stepped inside the man's guard and closed one clawed hand around his throat.

But the Tracker had a hidden silver dagger aimed straight at Cassian's blind spot.

"Fenrir!" I rasped.

Fenrir, bleeding but relentless, bit down hard on the Tracker's ankle and dragged him off balance. I forced myself up, pushed the last of the silver fire into my fist, and punched the Tracker in the jaw.

Bone cracked. The man slumped into the snow, out cold.

I fell back against the wrecked SUV, gasping. The silver veins on my arms burned, out of control.

Cassian dropped the Tracker and turned to me.

He stepped closer, his frame blocking the biting wind.

His gaze followed the silver light under my skin, but he didn't recoil.

"Your power is tearing you apart because you're forcing it back down," Cassian said, his voice low and rough. "Stop fighting your wolf. Learn to command her."

He reached out. His knuckles brushed my collarbone, and an unexpected jolt of heat shot through my shaking body.

Then he went still.

The air around him spiked. He'd seen the heavy silver pendant hanging from my torn collar. A carved snowflake with a single ruby drop.

"Where did you get that?" he demanded.

"My mother," I whispered, barely keeping my eyes open. "The Blood King's daughter."

Cassian's jaw tightened. "The Princess died twenty years ago," he said flatly. "But the King will decide if you're a ghost or a liar. Get up. You're coming with me."

His large hand wrapped around my uninjured arm and steadied me. The grip was unyielding and, somehow, protective.

Cassian signaled into the trees, and a dozen armed border scouts stepped out of the shadows. They loaded Fenrir and me into the back of an armored snow-rover.

An hour later, the blizzard parted, revealing the towering ice gates of the Wintercrest fortress.

We'd barely stepped past the heavy iron threshold of the main courtyard when a Wintercrest scout sprinted down the stairs, his face pale.

"Commander!" The scout bowed sharply to Cassian. "Emergency transmission from the Royal Court."

Cassian stopped. "Speak."

"They know about the girl at the border." The scout swallowed hard, his eyes darting to me. "They just issued an official ultimatum."

The heavy iron gates slammed shut behind us, locking us inside the frozen fortress.

"Hand her over by dawn..." the scout breathed. "...Or they march on Wintercrest."

The words settled over the frozen courtyard like frost.

The Court Trackers had been waiting at the border. Not hunting. Waiting. They had known the exact stretch of road Fenrir would drive, down to the minute.

Only my old pack could reach that private frequency. Only one wolf would ever sell it.

Lucian had not just watched me fall into that gorge. He was still coming for me, and this time he had put a whole kingdom on the trail.