The Wild Lands smelled like death and pine needles.
I'd been walking for three days straight, sleeping in trees when exhaustion forced me to stop, drinking from streams that tasted like iron. My feet were raw inside my stolen boots, and my dress—what was left of it—hung in strips around my legs.
The White Wolf kept me moving. Kept me warm when the nights turned freezing. Kept the predators away with the weight of her presence alone.
The Rogue encampment appeared without warning.
One moment I was pushing through dense underbrush, the next I was standing at the edge of a clearing that shouldn't exist. Wooden structures rose from the forest floor—not crude shelters, but actual buildings. A fortress carved from the wilderness itself.
I took one step forward.
Wolves materialized from the shadows. Dozens of them. Their eyes glowed in the darkness, feral and hungry, and their growls vibrated through the ground beneath my feet.
I should have been terrified.
I wasn't.
"I'm here to see the Shadow King," I said.
The wolves circled closer. One of them—a massive gray beast with scars crisscrossing his muzzle—snapped his teeth inches from my throat.
I didn't flinch.
*Let me out,* the White Wolf snarled inside me. *Let me show them—*
Not yet.
The air changed. Pressure built in my skull, heavy and suffocating, like standing too close to a lightning strike. The electric lamps strung between the buildings flickered once, twice, then exploded in showers of sparks.
He walked out of the darkness like he was part of it.
Talon Meyer was bigger than I'd expected. Taller than Callan, broader through the shoulders, moving with the fluid grace of something that had spent years hunting and being hunted. His hair was black with silver streaks that caught the moonlight, and his eyes—
His eyes were the color of molten gold.
He crossed the clearing in three strides and pressed a blade to my throat.
"Give me one reason," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "why I shouldn't kill you where you stand, Luna."
The title was an insult in his mouth.
I met his eyes and didn't look away. "Because I can give you what you want."
"And what's that?"
"The Silver Moon Pack. Burning."
Something flickered across his face. Interest, maybe. Or hunger.
He lowered the blade but didn't step back. "You're Callan Hart's mate."
"Was." I pulled down the collar of my dress, showing him the incomplete mark on my neck. The one that had never fully healed because Callan had never finished it. "Not anymore."
Talon's eyes narrowed. Then his gaze dropped lower, to the bruises on my arms. The blood still crusted under my fingernails. The hollow look in my face that came from three days without real sleep.
"What did they do to you?" he asked quietly.
I told him.
Not everything. Not the parts that would make me cry, because I was done crying. But I told him about Kaizen. About the baby I'd lost. About Mackenzie's lies and Abram's manipulation and Callan's cold indifference as I bled on the infirmary floor.
When I finished, Talon was silent for a long moment.
Then he sheathed his blade.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
"An alliance." I pulled the folded papers from inside my dress—the ones I'd stolen from Callan's office before I left. Financial records. Security schedules. Guard rotations. "I have everything you need to infiltrate the pack. Weaknesses in their defenses. Proof of Abram's embezzlement. Names of wolves who are loyal to him instead of Callan."
I held them out.
"In exchange, I want to watch them burn."
Talon took the papers, his fingers brushing mine. The contact sent a jolt through me—not the mate bond, that rotten golden thread still connecting me to Callan. Something else. Something new and terrifying.
He felt it too. I saw it in the way his eyes widened slightly, the way his hand lingered a moment too long.
"A blood oath," he said finally. "If we do this, we do it properly. No backing out. No mercy."
"Good." I pulled the silver dagger from my belt. "I don't want mercy."
He drew his own blade—black metal that seemed to drink the moonlight—and held out his palm.
I cut mine first. The pain was sharp and clean, and I welcomed it. Then Talon cut his, and we pressed our hands together.
His blood was hot against mine.
"I swear," he said, his voice carrying the weight of an Alpha command even though he had no pack, "to help you destroy the Silver Moon Pack and everyone who hurt you."
"I swear," I said, and the White Wolf rose inside me, lending her power to my words, "to give you the vengeance you were denied. To help you reclaim what was stolen."
The oath settled over us like chains. Like wings.
When we pulled our hands apart, the cuts had already begun to heal, leaving matching scars across our palms.
Talon looked at me for a long moment. Then he smiled, and it was the most dangerous thing I'd ever seen.
"Welcome to the Wild Lands, Aria Mills," he said. "Let's teach them what happens when they break a Luna."
