I froze. The words hung in the air like smoke from a spent fire. Withdrawn the blood oath? What in the Moon Goddess's name were they talking about?
I ran to the arbiter's den as fast as my legs could carry me, my paws of grief pounding the rain-slicked stone like desperate heartbeats. But by the time I arrived, breathless and wild-eyed, the file, my mother's blood-oath record, had already been fed to the flames. Ash. That was all that remained of justice. Curls of charred parchment scattered across the dark oak desk like funeral petals.
Everything blurred. I collapsed to my knees on the woven floor-pelt, my fingers clawing at the arbiter's sleeve, my voice fracturing into something raw and unrecognizable. Somewhere deep beneath my ribs, my wolf made a sound I'd never heard her make, a low keening that had no name.
"You promised. You swore before the Moon Goddess you'd help me get justice for my mother!"
The arbiter, a wolf who'd built his rank on serving the great packs, looked away, unable to meet my eyes. He exhaled slowly, the breath heavy with resignation.
"The one who withdrew the complaint was your intended mate. Lucan Bloodfang." He paused, letting the name settle between us like a blade across the throat. "None of us stand in a position to defy the Bloodfang Alpha-heir. The pack's reach runs further than you know. I am truly sorry, Miss Thornwood."
And just like that, with a small tilt of his head to his wolves, two of them escorted me out into the street. Their grips were firm but not cruel. They had done this before.
But I wasn't giving up.
There had to be someone in this godforsaken territory who still had a spine. Someone who hadn't been bought, threatened, or broken by the Bloodfang Pack's iron jaw.
Hands shaking, I sent word through every bound advocate I could reach, wolves who had spoken for council enforcers, who had won the freedom of made killers, who supposedly feared nothing. One by one, they turned me away. The replies came back the same, delivered in hushed, apologetic tones across the sending-stones.
"Sorry, Miss Thornwood. Lucan Bloodfang made it very clear. Any wolf who touches that case will find themselves on the wrong side of the pack by the next moonrise. We can't help you. You understand."
I dropped to the cold stone outside the last den, my knees striking the ground. My palm landed on jagged rock, blood seeping from the cut and mixing with the grime of the alley, yet I barely felt a thing. The physical pain was nothing compared to the hollow ache consuming my chest.
When I was sixteen, my father cast Mom and me out of our den like we were nothing. The same day, Mirella and her mother moved in, his mistress and her baseborn daughter, finally claiming what they'd been circling for years.
I still remember Mirella, just thirteen, smirking from the staircase as we carried our belongings past her. Her eyes glittered with triumph, and in that moment I learned the truth that had been hidden from me my whole childhood. My father, Garrick Thornwood, had kept a second she-wolf for years. We were the trueborn family, but we were also the disposable ones.
Mom and I ended up in the wildlands with nothing but the pelts on our backs and whatever dignity we could scrape together. One freezing night, huddled beneath a broken bridge for warmth, we stumbled into the middle of a snatch. A crew of wolves in black, killers, clearly, were dragging a young wolf toward a waiting carriage. Even in the dark, even half-frozen and starving, I caught the scent and knew the face from the council talk.
Lucan Bloodfang. Alpha-heir of the Bloodfang Pack. Being seized by a rival pack.
Mom didn't hesitate. She threw herself into the fray, fighting like a she-wolf possessed, screaming for me to run and howl for help. By the time the Bloodfang warriors arrived, she'd driven off three armed wolves with nothing but tooth and claw and a broken shard of glass. She nearly died doing it. They cut her over and over, but she wouldn't stop. Wouldn't let them take him.
Afterward, Lucan brought us into the Bloodfang territory, against his parents' furious objections. Vesper Bloodfang looked at us like we were strays he'd dragged in from the gutter, her scent of cold bergamot and frostbitten lily sharpening with contempt. But her son, her precious heir, insisted. He said he owed us a blood oath before the Moon Goddess.
Mom turned down his offer to keep us as dependents. She had too much pride for charity. Instead she served as an Omega in the Bloodfang den, earning her place with honest labor. I crossed into Lucan's academy. Day after day, I watched that sweet, gentle wolf, the one who carried wildflowers to my mother while she healed, who sat by her bedside reading to her, grow into someone I couldn't help falling for.
He loved me back. On my twentieth Moon Blessing Day, before my mother and the whole household of Omega servants, he knelt and took my hand. His voice was steady, his eyes bright with sincerity.
"I swear before the Moon Goddess," he said, "I'll spend the rest of my life protecting you. You'll want for nothing. You'll fear nothing. This I promise."
But all that started changing a year ago.
He went out one night, some gathering at one of the pack's clubs, drinks with allied wolves. When he came back, something was different. His scent of scorched oak carried a sour note I couldn't place. He started speaking of Mirella differently.
"She's not who I thought she was," he said one night, loosening his collar as he paced our chamber. "She's working three keeps to pay for her own schooling. Can you believe that? The daughter of a wolf like Garrick, scraping by like a common stray."
"And listen to this." His eyes lit with something I didn't recognize. "Some ranked wolf tried to proposition her, said he'd set her up as his kept she-wolf, shower her with moonstones. She stood and struck him across the muzzle in front of everyone. What a fierce female."
Then he added, his tone shifting to something almost accusing, "I know the two of you never got along. But maybe it's because you never gave her a real chance. If you spent some time with her, maybe you'd see how lovable she is."
My gut was screaming that something was off. My wolf paced beneath my skin, hackles half-raised, because the sister who'd smirked at my ruin was playing a long game. But I brushed it aside. Told myself I was only being paranoid. That the old wounds were making me see enemies where there were none.
And then, not long after, one of the mated females in our circle told me Lucan had acquired a bracelet. Not just any bracelet, an ancient piece that had once belonged to highborn she-wolves of an old bloodline. A princess of the line had worn it to her crowning. It was worth more than most wolves earned in a lifetime.
So naturally I thought, maybe he bought it for my Moon Blessing Day. A grand gesture, the kind he used to make when we first fell in love.
But on the day itself, Mirella posted to the spirit network. That exact bracelet, worth a fortune, irreplaceable, mine by every right of love and loyalty, was clasped around her slender wrist. In the image, a male hand held hers, fingers laced together with intimate familiarity. I knew those hands. I'd held them a thousand times.
That night I waited until the last candle burned itself out, the wax pooling on the untouched cake. Lucan never came home.
It was the first time he ever forgot my Moon Blessing Day.
After that he always had some excuse for missing our important moons, the anniversaries, the celebrations, the milestones that mark a life shared between two wolves. There was always a council sit-down that ran late, a problem with the pack patrols, an emergency that demanded him.
At the same time Mirella's spirit network kept updating with careful, calculated cruelty. His familiar shape in the background of her images. His unmarked fingers around a cup of wine in dens I'd never been taken to. His body behind fogged glass, the image cropped just enough to keep deniability.
Six moons ago we had sealed our blood oath, the bond-vow that would tie me to the Bloodfang Pack forever. He told me he wanted to give me the perfect Mating Ceremony. A rite worthy of the future Luna.
Now I know there won't be a ceremony at all.
I picked up the sending-stone and called his private line. My voice, when I spoke, was cold as the grave.
"You wanted my bloodline claim in the Bloodfang territory, didn't you? The tribute rights you signed over to me?" I didn't wait for his answer. "I'm signing them back. All of them."
It was a gift he'd given me the day he finally won me over, those rights. A share of the pack's legitimate holdings, the kind of standing that made a she-wolf untouchable. I told him it was too much, that I didn't need his fortune, only his heart. But he held my hand tight and insisted I seal the papers.
That gentle voice still echoes in my mind like a cruel ghost of who he used to be:
"Baby, if you want the stars or the moon, I'll reach up and pull them down for you. What are a few claims next to that?"
I know now, what we had, it was real. Once. But wolves change. Hearts grow cold. And love? Love is never immortal. It can be killed like anything else.
The boy who once held me like I was his whole world, he's long gone. Swallowed by time and ambition and the poison my sister dripped into his ear, night after night.
Just as I ended the call, my sending-stone lit with a message from Lucan.
[Calmed down yet? I've arranged the burial ground and paid the funeral rites. Satisfied now? Stop testing my patience, Selene.]
Another followed almost at once:
[Did you not see my message? Get to my office at the club. Now. Seal the non-prosecution oath for Mirella. This matter needs to disappear.]
Something in me finally broke. The last thread holding together the she-wolf who'd loved him, who'd believed in him, who'd built her whole life around his promises, it snapped. Deep inside me, my wolf went utterly still, the way an animal goes still before it stops trying to survive.
I called him. My voice was shaking with rage, but beneath it was something harder. Something forged in the fire of betrayal.
"Why in the Moon Goddess's name should I seal that oath for her? She killed my mother. She murdered her, Lucan. And if I say no, what then?" I laughed, the sound bitter and broken. "You going to press my bloody finger to the parchment yourself? Hold me down while your warriors force my hand?"
The silence on the other end was deafening.
