“You think you can walk into Alpha Gideon’s Keep and claim blood?” the carriage master barked. “Stormveil doesn’t open for broken girls with wild stories.”
I ignored him.
I lifted Ayla into my arms and walked to the gates.
Kneeling in the snow, I felt the past rise like steam in my throat.
Because I wasn’t born a stray.
I was born Selene of Stormveil. Daughter of Alpha Gideon, heir to the Northern Clans. My mother—Luna of the Highborn Howl—died with a blade in her hands and fire in her heart.
I had once been a princess.
Until Damien.
I met him during a treaty hunt in the Ravenlands. I was restless. Reckless. I slipped away from my guards and found him half-dead in the riverbed, bones jutting from skin, eyes full of stormlight.
He spoke of shame and lost honor. I offered him healing. And my heart.
I marked him beneath a star-cloaked sky.
My father warned me.
“That wolf walks with ghosts. He will drag you down with him.”
I didn’t listen.
I gave him everything. My lineage. My light. Myself.
And in return, he unraveled me.
He fed on my strength. Twisted it. Hollowed me out until I was nothing but a title he no longer needed.
Then Elara came. His brother's widow.Pretty, perfect Elara. With her bright-eyed bastards and her hungry smile.
She wore the Luna’s mark like she was born for it.
When I returned, I was invisible.
Erased.
So I kneel here, five years older. Colder. My knees cracking in the ice. My hands raw.
And I whisper the words I never thought I would say again.
“Father… forgive me.”
Chapter Two
Damien forgot us—so deeply that when we died, he didn’t mourn. He didn’t rage. He celebrated.
He told Elara, “No need for the severance anymore. She's taken care of.”
But death couldn’t hold me. And this time, I was taking Ayla and rewriting our fate.
The wind screamed across Frostfang Ridge as I knelt before the stone gates of Stormfang Keep—my father’s territory. I held Ayla’s frozen hand in mine, my back straight despite the snow slicing at my skin.
Guards whispered behind their steel-forged spears. One of them—a young wolf with pity in his amber eyes—vanished into the hold.
When he returned, his voice was tight. “Alpha Gideon will see you.”
The heavy doors creaked open, and the cold that poured out had nothing to do with the snow.