POV: Wren
The black bear's claws opened my ribs before I could turn.
I hit the frozen ground hard enough to lose my breath. Snow filled my mouth. Blood warmed my side, then cooled almost at once beneath the black wind of the Moonless Wasteland.
The bear advanced, huge and starving, one ruined eye fixed on me.
Get up.
My Devourer shifted behind my ribs but did not rise. After a month in the deadlands, she had grown bored with hunger and small kills. I had learned to drink the last breath from frost-hounds and shadow foxes. I had learned which roots numbed pain and which ones stopped a heart. I had not learned how to fight a beast three times my weight while half-starved.
The bear lifted one paw.
A spear punched through its eye.
It fell so close its hot breath washed over my face. Two figures came through the storm. The woman was small, wrapped in patched furs, her dark braid stiff with ice. The bearded man beside her carried a second spear.
"Still alive?" the woman asked.
"Unfortunately."
She grinned. "Good. Ben, help me move her before the blood brings worse company."
Their cave was a narrow split in the cliff, hidden behind stacked stones and thorn branches. A weak fire burned inside. To me, it looked like a palace.
The woman introduced herself as Chloe while she wrapped my ribs. Ben cut meat from the bear and laid it over the flames. My stomach cramped at the smell.
"Slow," Chloe warned when he handed me a strip. "Your body has forgotten what a full meal is."
I forced myself to chew. It was tough, smoky, and the best thing I had tasted since exile.
Ben watched me over the fire. "You're Wren."
The cave tightened around us.
"Depends who is asking."
"No one who wants the Council's reward." He turned the meat with his knife. "Word reached the camps. The High Alpha's ward broke the Pack Vault, woke a Devourer, and survived exile. Some say the Blood Moon followed her into the wasteland."
"The Blood Moon is gone."
"For now." Chloe tied off the bandage. "People are looking for you."
"To kill me?"
Ben gave a humorless laugh. "To kneel."
I stared into the fire. Once, I had wanted only one man to choose me. Now strangers wanted a queen, a weapon, or a miracle. I had no interest in becoming any of those things.
"The Council has sent hunters," Ben continued. "Not border patrols. Death squads. They strike exile camps, burn supplies, and leave no witnesses."
"How many?"
"Enough that we move every three nights. Silver arrows. Wolfsbane on the tips. Pack uniforms, but no names."
My fingers found the raw scar where Alaric had cut away my crest. I still woke expecting his rescue. Some foolish part of me imagined Matthew crossing the snow with a cloak and a secret order: Come home. He never stopped loving you.
The arrow came through Chloe's throat.
She toppled into the fire without a sound.
Ben grabbed me as more arrows cut through the cave. "Back passage. Move!"
A shaft buried itself in his thigh. He dragged me behind a rock shelf anyway. Armored wolves flooded the entrance, their chestplates marked with the silver crest of Alaric's personal guard.
My heart stopped.
He sent them.
I saw his hand cutting my shoulder. Heard his dead voice sentence me to the wasteland. Never to be recalled.
"Go," Ben said. He shoved me toward the narrow tunnel. "I'll hold them."
Two swords crossed through his chest before I could answer.
He fell at my feet.
The captain stepped over him and raised a silver bow. "No loose ends."
Something inside me broke.
My scream extinguished the fire.
Darkness poured from the walls. The storm above the cave split open, and crimson light flooded the wasteland for the first time in living memory. A Blood Moon hung over us, vast and impossible.
My hair turned silver from root to tip.
The captain's smile vanished.
The Devourer rose.
Black mist wrapped the hunters before they could fire. It entered their mouths, their eyes, the seams of their armor. They dropped their weapons and screamed as pale ribbons tore free from their chests.
Souls.
I tasted every fear they had buried. Every order they had obeyed. Every exile they had killed because an Elder had called it law.
I let twelve of them vanish into the hunger.
The captain remained, suspended against the cave wall, his boots kicking above the ground.
"Who sent you?"
"Marrok," he choked. "Elder Marrok. He stole the uniforms from the armory. The High Alpha never knew. Please."
Not Alaric.
Relief struck first. Rage followed harder.
Alaric had not ordered my death, but this was still his pack, his Council, and the rotten law he had chosen over me. He had saved me from one execution only to leave every other exile at Marrok's mercy.
"Thank you," I said.
Hope flashed across the captain's face.
I closed my fist.
His soul shattered.
Silence settled over the cave. Chloe lay beside the dead fire. Ben stared at nothing, his hand still stretched toward the tunnel he had tried to make me use.
I knelt between them and swore I would remember their names.
Then footsteps gathered outside.
Dozens of exiles stood beneath the Blood Moon. Behind them came more from the dead forests and frozen ravines. Starved wolves. Scarred wolves. Mothers with pups hidden under their coats. Men whose pack brands had been burned away.
One by one, they lowered themselves to their knees.
"Don't," I said.
No one rose.
An old woman at the front bowed her head. "Give us a law that does not require our deaths."
I looked toward the distant castle, a black shape against the crimson sky.
Alaric had cast me out to keep his throne.
Marrok had turned the wasteland into a grave.
I stood beneath the moon and let the darkness gather around my shoulders like a crown.
"Then we take the law back," I said.
A thousand voices answered with a howl.
