Chapter 1

The day my brother, Aiden Silvermane, threw me into the Black Forest to be fed to the wolves was my eighteenth birthday.

He stepped on my face, crushing my awakening crystal beneath his boot. "A wolfless freak. You should've died already."

My father turned his back, and my mother fainted from crying. Not a single person in the pack spoke up for me.

Three years later, a deadly wolf plague swept through Silvermoon Citadel.

My brother, the Alpha, knelt outside my healer's hut in the Black Forest with his guards behind him, bowing his head in submission.

He begged me to come back and save our mother.

I looked him over, taking in his sorry state, and let out a quiet laugh. "What took you so long?"

*****

The snow was coming down in thick sheets.

Aiden knelt on the flagstones outside my hut, his forehead bloodied. Blood slid down his nose, dripping onto the snow, blooming like crimson flowers.

Behind him stood twelve Silvermoon Pack guards, all with their heads lowered.

Three years ago, these same men had forced me from the Citadel all the way to the edge of the Black Forest.

I leaned against the doorframe, and the scar on my palm started to ache again.

I spent three years there. That first winter, I got so thin I could hang a copper coin from my collarbone. I really tried it.

There was no mirror in the cave, but I could feel my ribs, counting them one by one.

I stopped at the sixth because the seventh felt off, like it had been broken before.

For the first three months, I lived on tree bark. Birch bark was edible; pine bark wasn't. I would throw up if I tried it.

No one ever taught me that; I learned that the hard way.

On every full moon, a bundle appeared at the mouth of my cave. Jerky, herbs and water. No note.

I gave it a sniff. There was a scent, but I couldn't place it at the time.

It was only after I had stayed here for a long time that I realized it was the smell of pine wood.

When the first year was almost over, a gray wolf came crashing into my cave.

Its hind leg had been snapped by a beast trap, bone jutting out.

Back then, I couldn't even heal myself, but I tried anyway.

I grabbed the herbs that appeared every full moon, crushed them up, packed them onto its wound, and tore strips from my clothes to bind it tight.

When the wolf finally woke up, it just looked at me for a long time. Then it leaned in and licked the scar across my palm.

My palm tingled for a moment, only for a brief instant. But that feeling had stuck with me ever since.

After that, I started healing wolves.

The Black Forest had no shortage of wounded creatures. I treated them one at a time.

By the time I'd healed my hundredth wolf, my palm started to glow.

As more and more abandoned half-bloods fled into the Black Forest, I kept treating them. By the time I reached my one hundred and thirty-seventh patient, I could handle most injuries and illnesses.

But that scar on my palm was still there three years on.

Cloudy days made it throb; on clear days, the pain was still there, just easier to ignore.

"Aria." Aiden looked up, his eyes red. "Mother's barely hanging on. The wolf plague has already spread to the royal chambers. If you don't help, she won't make it—"

"What happens to the Silvermoon Pack is none of my concern." I replied coldly.

His lips trembled. He crawled forward on his knees and grabbed my wrist. His hand landed right on the scar.

Pain shot from my palm all the way to my elbow like a thousand needles. But I didn't pull away.

I looked down at his hand. Long fingers, neatly trimmed nails, and a thin layer of calluses between his thumb and index finger.

Three years ago, that same hand had clamped down on the back of my neck during the Awakening Ceremony, pressing my face into the stone slab.

"A wolfless freak," he had said back then. "You're nothing but a waste of food."

Three years later, that same hand gripped my wrist. But this time, he wasn't pinning me down; he was pleading.

I pulled my hand free and turned my palm upward, deliberately exposing the scar to him.

"Aiden. Three years ago, you used this hand to throw me into here. Now the same hand comes back to beg."

He lowered his head, swallowing hard. His Adam's apple moved.

I was about to close the door when I heard hoofbeats.

Then a voice cut in, cold and hard like steel. "If she doesn't want to go, don't force her."

Samuel Blackstone sat on a pure black warhorse, looking down at Aiden, who knelt on the ground.

The moment Aiden realized who it was, his face went ghostly pale.

"Alpha Samuel..." Aiden stammered. "What are you doing here?"

Samuel didn't answer. He dismounted and stepped to my side, putting himself between Aiden and me.

Then he looked down at me, like he wanted to say something, but ultimately said nothing.

His hand lifted, hovered in the air for two seconds, then dropped back to his side.

I'd never seen him do that before.

Ten years ago, when I was eight, I got lost during the Northern wolf clans' peace summit and ended up crying behind a garden hedge.

A boy two years older than me found me. He knelt, took my hand, and gently ran his thumb over the back of it.

"Don't cry. I'll take you back," he said.

That was the first time I met Samuel.

Ten years later, he was the youngest Alpha in the North, the ruler of the Blackstone Pack. I was a wolfless outcast left in the Black Forest.

But he came.