Chapter2

Nora didn't hesitate. Yes, she said. Absolutely yes.

Frosthollow's Alpha, according to her, was nothing like the smug, two-faced Alphas who ran the southern packs.

He didn't ask about bloodlines. He didn't care how strong you were. If a wolf had nowhere left to go, Frosthollow let them in. That was the whole rule.

The breath I'd been holding finally left me, and my shoulders loosened.

So there was a door after all. I wasn't walking into nothing.

I had just hung up and slipped the phone into my pocket when I backed straight into something solid.

Cedar. The smell wrapped around me before I even turned. Kael.

He stood over me with his brows knotted, his patience already gone.

"Who was that? What shelter?"

My stomach lurched. I forced it to settle.

He'd caught fragments, nothing more. If he'd heard the whole thing, he wouldn't be asking.

I dropped my gaze, smoothed every trace of feeling off my face, and reached for a lie.

"Nora. There's a new movie about an animal shelter. She wanted to know if I'd go with her."

The suspicion faded from his eyes, and his mouth twisted. "Waste of time. And stop hanging around Nora. That girl is trouble, and she'll drag you down with her."

He let a beat pass before his voice cooled again.

"The extraction is in three days. Vivienne is staying at the house until then so I can look after her properly."

Something else occurred to him, and his tone dropped another few degrees. "And those ridiculous letters in your room. Get rid of them. Vivienne is never to see them. I won't have her getting the wrong idea."

Ridiculous letters.

So that was all they had ever been to him.

A small, humorless laugh slipped out of me.

The night Mom and Dad were killed in battle, I had cried myself hoarse in Kael's arms. Could I bring them back? How did I get strong enough that nobody could hurt me again? What did I have to do so that he would never stop liking me?

He had wiped the blood and tears off my face with his thumb and said, "Write to the Moon Goddess, Lyra. A thousand letters. When she's read every one, she'll give you three wishes."

And I had believed every word.

Once I started loving him, the letters became the only place I could say it. Every longing I couldn't speak, every small happiness, every fear of losing him went onto paper. I sealed each one and tucked it into a cedar box under my bed, one after another, year after year.

It took fifteen years. The thousandth letter was finished at last.

And the boy who had promised me the wishes had forgotten he ever said it.

"All right. I'll throw them out." My voice came out rough and dry. I agreed to all of it.

He looked pleased with how easily I'd given in.

"Good girl. Glad to see you know your place."

Then he walked away.

When I got home and opened the door to my room, I stopped dead. Vivienne was sitting cross-legged on my bed with the cedar box open in her lap. One by one she was tearing the seals and reading my letters out loud in a slow, singsong voice.

"'Kael told me I looked pretty today. I smiled until bedtime.'"

She flicked the page onto the floor and made a little disapproving sound. "How tragic. All that love, and none of it returned."

My nails dug into my palms. I made myself breathe.

"Not bothering to act sick anymore?"

Being caught didn't faze her in the slightest. She lifted her head slowly and gave the box a little shake in my direction.

Her back was straight. Her hands were steady. Her cheeks were flushed and healthy. Not a tremor anywhere. This was not the fragile creature who had folded to the hallway floor an hour ago.

"Oh, so you figured it out," she said, smiling with all her teeth.

I looked at those perfectly steady hands and almost wanted to laugh at how absurd it all was.

"You've already got Kael, Vivienne. All of him. Why keep pretending your wolf is dying? Why can't you just leave me alone?"