The White Wolf's Reckoning

Chapter 2

We ran until my thighs cramped and my lungs burned with the thin mountain air. Lorcan didn’t slow. Didn’t speak. His pack flowed behind us like a silver tide, silent, disciplined, nothing like the raucous Vorn celebration we’d left behind.

Somewhere near dawn’s first grey light, we crossed a stone marker carved with runes I didn’t recognize. The moment Lorcan’s paws touched the earth beyond it, he slowed. The pack fanned out in a protective circle, their muzzles turned outward, watching the tree line.

He stopped beside a stream. Shifted back to skin. Held out his hand.

I took it. Let him pull me upright. My legs wobbled. My dress—what was left of it—hung in shreds. Three claw marks scored my shoulder where the Vorn males had torn the hide. The wounds had already closed, but the blood still wet my skin.

Lorcan’s eyes tracked the marks. “Those should have healed by now.”

“They would have.” I wet my lips. “If I wasn’t starved.”

His expression didn’t change. But something moved in those silver depths. Something that looked a lot like fury, held very carefully still.

“How long?”

“Three years.” My voice came out flat. “The Vorn elders decided I needed to be ‘tempered’ before I could mate their Alpha. They put me on half-rations. Moon-fast three days before each full shift. Said it would teach my wolf to submit.”

Submitting didn’t come naturally to Roselli females. My grandmother had led war parties against the eastern packs. My mother had killed three males who’d tried to claim her before she chose my father. The Roselli bloodline ran hot and wild and utterly ungovernable—until me.

Until I’d fallen in love with a man who asked me to be smaller.

“You let them starve you.” Lorcan’s tone was neutral. Not an accusation. A statement.

“I let them believe I was starving.” I met his eyes. “I learned to hunt at night. When they all slept. Deer. Rabbits. Once, a mountain lion that wandered too close to the longhouse.” A smile tugged at my mouth, cold and sharp. “Vorn territory has fewer predators than it used to.”

Something shifted in his face. The careful mask cracked, just slightly. “You played weak.”

“I played patient.” I looked down at my hands. Claws had retracted, but my knuckles were still white. “My father told me the Roselli women always chose their mates. We don’t get claimed. We do the claiming. I thought I’d chosen Kael. I thought if I just waited long enough, played meek long enough, he’d finally choose me back.”

“He didn’t.”

“He chose my stepsister. Sybella. An omega who’s never shifted, never hunted, never done anything but flutter her lashes and smell like flowers.” I laughed. The sound was ugly. “He chose her because she’s *easy*. Because she doesn’t scare him.”

Lorcan was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Vorn wolves were always cowards.”

“You know them?”

“I know of them.” He knelt beside the stream, cupped water, drank. “Your Kael petitioned the council for territory rights three winters ago. Wanted to expand his pack’s hunting grounds into the northern wastes. The council refused.”

“Why?”

“Because the northern wastes belong to me.”

I studied him. The scars on his face. The way his pack deferred to him without being cued—heads lowering as he passed, ears flicking toward him even in rest. No Alpha was that constantly attended. Not unless they’d earned something beyond formal hierarchy.

Something feral.

“What pack are you?” I asked.

“The pack that doesn’t have a name.” He stood. Water dripped from his chin. “We’re not a bloodline. We’re what’s left of the broken ones. Rogues who couldn’t survive alone. Omegas who wouldn’t survive under their own Alphas. We take in what the packs throw away.”

I stared at him.

He stared back, unblinking. “You’re not the first bride I’ve carried out of a territory that didn’t want her.”

“That’s why the council sent you.”

“The council didn’t send me.” His smile returned, sharper this time. “I came on my own. Your stepmother’s message reached me three days ago. She said one of the Roselli daughters needed extraction, that I’d be paid in territory rights. I assumed she meant Sybella. The delicate one, she called her. Fragile.”

“Sybella isn’t fragile.” The words came out harder than I meant them to. “She’s dangerous. She’s just learned to wear fragility like a weapon.”

“So have you.” He stepped closer. The heat of him hit me—furnace-hot, the kind of warmth that came from a metabolism that never truly rested. “So have I. It’s the first lesson the weak teach themselves.”

I looked at him—truly looked—and saw what I’d missed before. The way his right hand stayed slightly curled, as if shielding an old wound. The way his pack’s formation kept a gap on his left side, compensating for a blind spot. The way his scent carried something bitter beneath the cedar smoke. Old infection. Old injury.

He wasn’t starving. But he wasn’t whole, either.

“What happened to your left side?” I asked.

The silence stretched. The pack’s ears flattened. One of the females whined softly.

“A mate-mark that didn’t take,” Lorcan said finally. “Five winters ago. She tried to claim me without my consent. I fought it. The mark tore.” His hand drifted toward his ribs. “She died. I didn’t. But the scar never sealed properly. My wolf won’t accept another mark. Won’t heal that part of my body. It thinks I’m still fighting her.”

My breath caught. A severed mate-bond was a death sentence for most. The ones who survived were never the same—half-wolves, trapped between claim and freedom, their bodies rejecting any new bond with the same ferocity they’d rejected the old one.

“You can’t take a mate,” I said.

“I can’t.” His eyes held mine. “Which makes me very useful for extractions. No risk of complications.”

“Then why were you looking for a bride?”

“Because the council demands a show of stability. A mated Alpha is a trusted Alpha. They don’t need to know the mating isn’t real.” He shrugged. “I planned to find someone who needed protection. Offer her my pack’s resources. Let her live as she pleased, so long as she wore my mark in public. A transaction. Nothing more.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m carrying the wrong Roselli sister down a mountain, and Vorn wolves are going to come looking for her.” He tilted his head. “So I need to know—are you a transaction, Fianna? Or are you a war?”

Behind us, a howl split the dawn.

Not one of Lorcan’s pack. Deeper. Wilder. A howl I’d know anywhere, because I’d spent three years dreaming of it.

Kael.

He’d finally realized I was gone.

Lorcan watched my face. “Well?”

I turned toward the howl. My wolf surged in my chest. Not with longing. With hunger.

“I’m not a transaction,” I said. “And I’m not a war.”

I bared my teeth. Felt my canines lengthen. Felt the white wolf uncoil beneath my skin, ready to rise.

“I’m a reckoning.”