Seraphina stared at me.
A pack wolf's voice came shouting from beyond the door.
"Supreme Alpha! Gabriel has gone into bloodline rejection. He keeps coughing blood. The healers say he won't last!"
Seraphina seized my wrist, her grip so fierce it nearly ground the bones together.
"Come with me."
The great hall of the Alpha's Peak.
Gabriel lay on a stone dais draped in pale furs, blood smeared across his lips. That sickly-sweet scent of dried foxglove and weak chamomile hung thick around him, but underneath it, something had turned. The sourness was sharper now, almost acrid, like a body fighting itself from the inside out.
A cluster of pack healers knelt on the floor before him.
"Reporting to the Supreme Alpha: Gabriel's bloodline channels have ruptured. He requires heart blood from a wolf who shares the same cultivation path as a catalyst."
In all the Greyfang Pack, only two of us walked the Path of the Unfeeling. Seraphina and me.
Seraphina flipped her hand and produced a dagger.
It was the one I'd given her three years ago for her Moon Blessing Day. The ward-rune I'd carved was still etched into the blade.
She held it out to me.
"Save him."
I looked at the edge of the blade.
I was leaving soon anyway. It didn't matter if this body was ruined.
"Fine."
I loosened my collar and bared my chest.
Old scars crisscrossed the skin there, layered one on top of another. Every last one from shielding her during Blood Moon hunts and territorial purges.
Seraphina's gaze fell on those scars. The hand holding the dagger went still.
Gabriel let out a groan from the dais.
Her hand drove forward.
The dagger punched through skin and muscle, sinking into my chest above the heart.
The pain was blinding.
I clenched my teeth and made no sound.
Seraphina twisted her wrist, drawing out three drops of blood the color of molten gold and crimson. Heart blood. The kind only a wolf who walked the Path of the Unfeeling could produce, each drop saturated with lunar essence.
The moment the heart blood left my body, my legs gave out. I collapsed to the floor.
My vision went black.
Through the haze, I felt Seraphina's hand reach over and press against my chest.
She didn't stanch the bleeding. Instead, she pinched her fingers together, plucked a scrap of blood-soaked fabric from my robe, and slipped it into her sleeve.
That voice surfaced again through the bond-bleed:
So much blood...
Still warm.
This is his heart blood. Hide it away. For my eyes only.
The hall's entrance was packed with pack wolves.
They watched me lying on the ground. Not one stepped forward.
"Everyone could see the senior wolf resented Gabriel. I just never thought he'd push him this far."
"Having a little blood drawn is getting off easy."
"Exactly. He deserved it."
I lay on the cold stone, staring at the translucent panel hovering before my eyes.
Countdown: 1 day.
I closed my eyes.
Almost there.
Countdown: three hours remaining.
The Greyfang Pack territory was alive with noise today.
Crimson banners hung from every gate, and war-drums echoed through the mountain peaks.
It was Gabriel's Bloodline Ascension Rite.
Never mind that my heart blood was the only reason his bloodline had stabilized. Nothing could stop him from being the star everyone orbited.
They dragged me out of the dungeon.
Plain white prisoner's wrappings, still stiff with dried blood.
Silver-laced shackles on my wrists and ankles. The metal burned where it touched bare skin, a low, constant searing I'd long stopped flinching from.
The silver scraped against the long white stone staircase as they hauled me upward, the sound shrill enough to set teeth on edge.
Seraphina sat enthroned at the very top, upon a seat of carved pale stone.
Beside her stood Gabriel, resplendent in ceremonial furs, color blooming in his cheeks.
What a perfect pair they made.
I was dragged onto the high platform.
Two enforcement wolves pressed down on my shoulders, forcing me to kneel.
I didn't kneel.
Even though the Glacial Dominance damage had eaten into my kneecaps until every nerve screamed, I kept my spine straight.
Seraphina looked down at me from above.
Her voice, amplified by her Alpha aura, carried to every corner of the pack territory. The air itself seemed to press downward with it, heavy and cold, carrying that scent of white frost and crushed moonflower and something metallic beneath.
"You harbored jealousy toward a packmate. Your wolf was corrupt."
"Gabriel has now completed his Bloodline Ascension, yet he still lacks a supreme Moonblood Spine to anchor his foundation."
"As his senior, this shall be your final act of atonement."
Carving out the spine.
So this was the grand finale all along.
My Moonblood Spine was innate, the kind every wolf in existence coveted. A supreme-grade trait, one in a thousand years.
It was also what Seraphina had once been proudest of. Her greatest asset.
Now she was going to cut it out of me with her own hands and put it inside another wolf.
Below the platform, the assembled pack chanted in unison.
"We beseech the senior wolf to offer his spine in atonement!"
The roar crashed over me like a tide, deafening.
I looked at Seraphina.
