Chapter1

The last sound I heard in my first life was my own bones breaking.

Eleven days in the dungeon beneath Duskfall. Before that, I had been a white wolf.

When Kael asked for my core, I begged him not to take it. He took it anyway, with his own hands. And still I loved him. I kept loving him even when letters in my handwriting turned up, full of our patrol routes, and he locked me down here "until you're ready to tell the truth."

On the eleventh night, the guard shoved a starving Rogue into my cell. From down the corridor drifted the scent of jasmine, Vivienne's perfume, and a soft, delighted laugh.

I screamed his name until my throat tore. "Kae! Kae, please!"

He never came.

At the very end, only one thought was left in me. If I ever get another chance, I will never love you again.

Warmth. The smell of cedar. And his voice, low and impatient.

"…won't last the month, Lyra. You're a white wolf. You'll recover faster than anyone. I'm only asking once, so don't make me—"

I opened my eyes. Sunlight filled the healing center. And deep in my chest, warm and alive, my wolf stirred.

This was the day he first asked.

I looked up at the man who had let me die, and spoke.

---

"Fine. I agree."

Kael Duskmane had come armed with a dozen arguments and at least as many threats. All of them stalled on his tongue. For a moment he only stared at me, caught completely off guard.

"Good. Then it's settled, and I'll see it through." He recovered quickly. "Name your price. Anything, as long as it isn't my mark."

I raised my head and held his eyes. "There's only one thing I want. Once the extraction is done, I leave Duskfall. I stop being your stepsister. No pack, no you, nothing."

His brows drew together, the way they did whenever someone told a bad joke.

"You can't be serious, Lyra Ashvale."

He was waiting for the old me. The one who sobbed and clung to his sleeve and begged him to want her. He had never once pictured me asking to go.

"Outside the pack, in the state you're in, you won't survive three days," he warned, as though he'd already caught me bluffing.

"That's fine," I said.

And it was. Whether I lived or died out there mattered less to me than one simple fact: out there, he couldn't kill me.

My calm only made his frown deepen.

Then the surprise drained out of his face, and something colder and more amused took its place.

"Ah. I see what this is. You think if you threaten to run off, I'll finally give you what you want."

He looked down at me as if from a great height. "Drop the games. You and I will never happen. Vivienne is my mate. There's no one else."

Watching him, I felt nothing but a vast, tired helplessness.

In my last life, I had died in the dungeon beneath this pack, ripped apart by a Rogue while I screamed his name. I still remembered every second of it. I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice and beg for scraps from the man who would hand me over to that end.

"I'm aware," I said evenly.

He opened his mouth again. I didn't wait for whatever came out of it.

"If that's everything, I'll be going."

I turned and left, and I didn't look back.

I had barely reached the corridor when a shriek split the air.

Kael tore past me an instant later, his shoulder slamming into mine hard enough to knock me into the wall. He didn't even notice. His eyes were locked on the woman crumpled on the floor.

"Vivienne!"

He dropped to his knees and lifted her as if she were made of glass, his voice low and frantic as he asked if she was hurt.

"What happened?"

Vivienne Crowe curled against his chest, shaking from head to toe. She peeked up at him, lips parted as if she could hardly bear to say it. Over his shoulder, her eyes slid to me, sharp and gleeful.

"Don't be angry with Lyra, Kael. My legs just… stopped working again. My wolf is so weak I can hardly stand, and I must have stumbled into her. Please. It isn't her fault."

She caught her lip between her teeth and let her voice fade to a whisper.

"She's a white wolf, after all. Pure and noble. And me? I'm what's left over. Withered, discarded, worthless. I've made my peace with my wolf dying. I'd never dream of asking for her core…

"I only wish she wouldn't push me. I can barely walk, and I'm so scared all the time…"

The tears came right on cue, rolling down her cheeks in a flawless performance of a victim.

I had lived this exact moment before. Last time, her little speech had turned the whole pack against me, and I'd never recovered. This time I stood with my arms folded and watched the show without a word.

"Noble?"

Kael's head snapped toward me. His gaze cut like a blade. "She hasn't earned that word."

It went into me like a shard of ice.

"Without me standing in front of her all these years, the Rogues would have torn her to pieces long ago! A wolf core is nothing. She owes me enough that she should give it up even if it kills her!"

Fifteen years. For fifteen years I had loved him with everything I had, and in his eyes I was garbage that should be grateful to be breathing.

It hurt. Of course it hurt. But beneath the hurt was something lighter, something that felt almost like freedom.

I didn't stay to hear the rest. I walked out of the healing center.

The wind outside bit at my cheeks. I took out my phone and dialed Nora Fenwick, the only friend I had left.

The moment she answered, I got to the point.

"Nora, is it true Frosthollow Haven takes in wolves with nowhere to go?"

There was a pause on the line. When Nora spoke again, her voice had gone tight.

"Yeah, it's true. Why? What happened? Was it Kael again?"

"No." I let my back rest against the freezing wall and kept my voice quiet and steady.

"Just suppose. Suppose I got thrown out of my pack, and I didn't have a wolf anymore. Would Frosthollow's Alpha still take in someone as useless as me?"