Chapter 2

Ethan seemed convinced I would give in.

The day I left the hospital, I heard that he'd wasted no time. In the name of the Blackwood Pack, he had guaranteed a loan for the Rivers family from the Council bank, a sum big enough to buy half of Crescent Valley, to fill the hole Chloe's father had left behind.

And that wasn't enough.

To get the Rivers family back on its feet in the North, he'd helped himself to the Blackwood Pack's treasury without asking anyone, and he'd mortgaged the richest hunting grounds on the pack's southern border.

No one in the Blackwood Pack dared stop him.

He was the Alpha's only son, the next leader of the pack.

As he saw it, the moment he got his hands on the Holloway vaults on the wedding day, every hole would be filled overnight.

It never once occurred to him: what if he didn't get them?

That month, he took Chloe traveling.

To the southern coast to watch the sun rise over the sea. To the western mountains to run with the deer herds. They'd be gone three or five days at a time.

A month later, they came back.

Ethan asked to see me.

Chloe sat pressed against him, practically draped over his arm.

When Ethan saw me, he smiled and, as if he were doing me a favor, took something out of his pocket and pushed it across the table.

"Celeste. This year's charm."

It was a moonstone wrapped in silver wire, strung on a leather cord.

I looked at it and froze. For a moment, I was somewhere else.

The Holloways and the Blackwoods had been close for generations.

The year I was born, our families had our engagement sealed at the temple of the Moon Goddess.

But there had always been more between us than an engagement.

When I was fifteen, I followed Ethan up Silver Peak, tracking a deer.

On the way down, I slipped and fell off a cliff.

Three broken ribs. I lost a lot of blood.

I was the Holloways' famous "late bloomer."

Other werewolves shifted for the first time at thirteen or fourteen. My wolf had never woken. My wounds healed as slowly as any human's.

That day, Ethan gave me twelve hundred milliliters of his own blood.

So much that he couldn't shift for a whole month, and he was in bed for two weeks before he could stand.

After that, every year before my birthday, he climbed alone to the temple of the Moon Goddess on the summit of Silver Peak to ask for a moonstone charm for me.

The temple priestess said the stone would glow a faint blue under the full moon and keep whoever wore it safe for a year.

Eight years. He never missed one.

"Go on, take it."

When I didn't move, Ethan smiled and nudged me, as if he were waiting for me to throw myself into his arms with tears in my eyes like every other year.

Chloe hooked her arm through his and leaned in even closer.

She lifted a hand and pointed to the charm hanging at her own throat, her voice sweet, as if she were showing off.

"Take it. Ethan climbed the mountain for three hours with me on his back to get these from the temple. Don't be shy. He got one for me too."

"I'm just so out of shape. I only made it ten-something minutes before I couldn't go any farther. Up and down, Ethan carried me almost the whole way."

Ethan's face changed slightly, and he glanced at me without thinking.

Then, as if nothing were wrong, he picked up a piece of roast venison with his fork and held it to Chloe's lips.

"You talk too much."

The gesture was so natural, as if he'd done it a thousand times.

I watched it coldly. Then I reached out and pushed the charm back across the table.

"I don't want it."

The temple of the Moon Goddess had a rule: each pilgrim could ask for only one charm at a time.

The stone in front of me was cloudy and gray.

A knockoff from the market at the foot of the mountain.

The air went dead still.

Chloe bit her lip, and just like that her eyes were red.

"Celeste is always unhappy when she sees me... Maybe I should just go, so I'm not in the way."

She got up to leave.

"Don't go!"

Ethan's face darkened at once, and he caught her wrist before she could take a step.

Then he turned and glared at me.

Right in front of me, he picked up the charm and threw it in the trash can beside the table.

"Don't want it? Then it's trash. You're spoiled rotten."

"I was actually thinking about letting your brother out. Now I don't see the point. If you keep acting this ungrateful, he can stay in the dungeon a while longer."

He took Chloe by the hand and walked out without looking back.

In that instant, all the blood in my body rushed to my head.

I wanted to run after him, grab him by the collar, and scream it in his face:

My brother is dead.

He's been dead for over a month. He died in your Blackwood dungeon, the same place you want him to "stay a while longer."

But the moment I stood up, everything went black.

The ceiling spun above me, and my ears were roaring. I reached for the edge of the table, and my fingers closed on nothing.

I heard the restaurant owner's wife cry out. I heard a glass shatter on the floor.

Then I couldn't hear anything at all.

When I woke up again, I was lying in a hospital bed.

It was already dark outside.

The old doctor in town had watched me grow up. He sat down beside my bed holding a test report, his expression complicated.

He held the report out to me.

"You're pregnant."

"Two months along."