Chapter 1
Briony's POV
Two years ago, I woke up in the pack infirmary with zero memories. Alpha Kendrick and Luna Elspeth—the people I thought were my parents—announced to the pack that I was a rogue imposter who had stolen their true daughter’s identity.
My punishment? A $1,000,000 debt for my upbringing. And a permanent lesson.
Elspeth pried my jaw open and forced liquid wolfsbane down my throat. The poison rooted in my veins, kept dormant only by a monthly antidote. Miss one dose, and it would eat me alive.
Trapped and indebted, I kept my head down. I worked the grueling patrols and took every blame for Sylvia, their "real" daughter.
Until I overheard them at the old boathouse.
"What if she remembers?" Sylvia trembled.
Kendrick scoffed. "So what? Without the antidote, the wolfsbane will tear her apart."
Something in my mind snapped. Sealed memories flooded back like shattered glass.
I wasn't the imposter. I was their true daughter, the born Seer. They just thought I was too wild to control, so they replaced me with Sylvia.
But a Seer’s birthright isn't theirs to give away.
——
I stood on the edge of Hearth Pack territory in a body that was one bad step from coming apart.
Warm yellow string lights hung along both sides of the trail to Ashridge. Pickups and SUVs lined the road for a quarter mile, and the bonfires had turned half the night sky orange. The whole pack had turned out for tonight's Veil Rite.
Sylvia stood at the center of it all, draped in the moon-silver mantle passed down through generations of Seers. Kendrick and Elspeth flanked her, wearing smiles I had never once seen on their faces.
That cloak. Those two people. They should have been mine.
And here I was, hunched in the shadows at the tree line like a stray dog someone had kicked out the door.
Day eleven without the antidote.
Kendrick’s ultimatum had been clear: return from Hollow Pass with the Veilbloom, or forfeit this month's dose. Now, the wolfsbane was searing through my spine, splintering my grip on reality. Shadows danced by the bonfires, blurring the line between hallucination and threat.
I’d crawled through a Feral-infested wasteland to harvest that rare white flower—the catalyst for a new Seer’s first vision—all for Sylvia’s big night. It nearly cost me every bone in my body.
A monstrous Feral had pinned me to the ice, my ribs snapping one by one under its weight. But right as its fangs grazed my throat, the shattered glass in my mind finally pieced itself together.
The truth: Sylvia and I were switched as infants during the war. When Kendrick and Elspeth finally found me, they couldn't bear to lose the imposter they'd already raised. So they kept us both—and stole my life.
As Seer heir, I got the pack's best healers, its oldest spirit-books, its quietest rooms. Sylvia couldn't stand it. On the night of my vigil, the last night before I was meant to awaken, she drove a hexed thorn into my body.
The memory ripped through my chest like claws. I coughed blood onto the snow and went down on my knees.
The border guards caught the scent and turned, faces twisting.
"She's still alive?" A young warrior took a step back. "Nobody comes out of Hollow Pass."
"Who cares how she got out? Get rid of her. It's the Veil Rite tonight—don't let the Blight foul the place."
Fists and boots came down together, every blow carrying a werewolf's strength. Rian Graves stood at the back. He didn't join in.
He didn't stop them, either.
Blood ran into my eyes. Through a haze of red, I watched Elspeth lower the moonstone crown onto Sylvia's head.
Elder Nerys Croft's voice drifted over, smug. "See the ring on her hand? Thirty moonstones in a warding setting. The Alpha spent half the winter hunting for it before he finally traded for it at the witches' market up north. All so she'd make it through the seven Veils."
A cold thought surfaced: So you can buy your way through the Veil Rite.
When I first started hearing the spirits whisper, when I went night after night without sleep, all I'd asked for was a little pouch of calming herbs. They'd called me greedy. Spoiled.
I was their own daughter.
The pain drifted farther away. I was sinking. Just before everything went black, the commotion finally reached the bonfires, and Kendrick came striding across the snow to see who had the nerve to make a scene on his daughter's big night.
Something ridiculous flickered in me. Hope.
Would he drive them off? Would he stand up for me—just once—the way he always did for Sylvia?
All he had for me was disgust.
"What are you doing back?" He didn't even glance at my injuries. "Do you know what tonight is? I'm warning you. If one thing goes wrong tonight, I'll make you sorry you ever crawled out of Hollow Pass."
The flicker died. I laughed, and coughed up more blood.
"I came to bring Sylvia a gift."
Every movement ground broken bone against broken bone. I pulled a bundle from inside my jacket, wrapped in layers of torn lining, and opened it. The Veilbloom lay inside, its petals still rimed with frost from the pass. I held it out with shaking hands.
Kendrick stepped on it and ground it into the slush with his boot heel.
"Playing the victim now?" he sneered. "A Hollow Pass Feral can snap a grizzly's neck in one bite. And you want me to believe you brought back Veilbloom? What's the catch?"
