Chapter 4

The day of the Bonding ceremony. The air hung heavy with the bitterness of laurel and the scent of cedar.

Thousands of wolves had gathered at the Court, their eyes feverish. A silver staircase poured down from the high dais like a waterfall. This was the grandest Bonding in twenty years—and the final step in Kael's rise to Wolf King.

On the dais, twelve Elders stood silent as statues. In an instant I caught the dark pattern on one of their cuffs—a crescent bound in thorns. His eyes were lowered like the most devout of idols, but I knew: he was waiting for me to humiliate myself, or better yet, to vanish for good.

Nine o'clock exactly. The bell tolled. Every gaze turned to the foot of the staircase.

No one was there.

A low stir ran through the council seats. Kael's brow furrowed—not in anger, but in confusion. The particular confusion of a man who has never once been defied. He opened his comm and dialed. The long dial tone was piercing in the deathly silence.

"My King, the ceremony can't be delayed any further." Cold sweat beaded at one Elder's temple.

"Continue." Kael's face didn't change; only the line of his jaw tightened.

Five more minutes passed. Below the staircase, the murmurs spread like a rising tide. "Where's Evelyn?" "Has she lost her mind? She'd throw a fit on a day like this?"

Kael dialed again, and this time he left himself no way back—he patched the call straight through the plaza's loudspeakers. The whole square fell dead silent; thousands of breaths seemed to stop at once.

"Evelyn." His voice was low, elegant, wrapped in its usual command. "Enough of this. Come back to your place."

A pause of a few seconds, dragging on like a century.

"I won't be coming." My voice carried out clearly—no tremor, no hesitation.

Kael's face changed at last, the composure of a man who thought he'd already won torn clean away. "Have you lost your mind? Do you know what you're saying?"

I let out a soft laugh, and that laugh, riding the current of the line, chilled the ear of every soul in the square.

"I know exactly. I wish you both… all the best."

The call cut off. The dial tone echoed over the plaza. Not a sound anywhere. Kael stood at the very peak of his power, scepter in hand, and looked for all the world like a man utterly alone.

And yet, in the moment the Elders were about to force the ceremony to begin, the one with the thorned crescent on his cuff suddenly lifted his head. He looked past the plaza, to the black and heavy sky in the north, and for the first time something I couldn't read flickered through his clouded eyes—not anger.

Fear.

He murmured a single sentence to the man beside him. Later, I learned what it was:

"She isn't dead. This is bad. Let the Hunters loose."