MOONBOUND

Three years, four months, and eleven days. That was how long Wren Halloway had been lying to every wolf in the Blackthorn Pack, and tonight, on the eve of the Blood Moon, she was going to walk into their great hall with a tray of wine and a heart that wouldn't stop trying to climb out of her throat. *Breathe. You're nobody. You're no one. You're an omega with a dull scent and a dull name.* She pressed her thumb against the vial hidden in her apron pocket, the last of her suppressant tonic. Wolfsbane, ash-root, and a bitter spoonful of things she'd stolen from the pack healer's stores. It was enough to smother the thing that pulsed beneath her skin, the thing her mother had died to hide. Two doses had kept her invisible for three years. This vial held half of one. She'd been counting on it lasting. "Wren!" Marta, the head of the kitchens, snapped her fingers from the doorway. "The Alpha's convoy is in the courtyard. Wine, then vanish. Don't look at him, don't speak to him, and for the love of the Moon, don't spill anything." "Yes, ma'am." "I mean it, girl. Kade Draven ripped a man's throat out last winter for pouring his drink too slowly." Wren's stomach turned to ice. She knew the story. She knew all the stories. Kade Draven, Alpha of the Blackthorns, the Butcher of the Northern Ridge, the wolf who had turned a dozen rival packs into cautionary tales. Cold, brutal, untouchable. The wolf whose warriors had burned Silverthorn Hall to the ground eleven years ago. Wren lifted the tray and walked into the fire. --- The great hall was a cathedral of black stone and firelight, and it was packed with wolves. Their scents hit her in waves: leather, sweat, pine smoke, blood from the afternoon's hunt. Her own wolf, the one she'd starved and caged and lied to for years, stirred restlessly in her chest. *Not now,* she told it. *Please. Not now.* She kept her eyes on the floor and moved along the edge of the room, murmuring her way through the crowd, filling cups, keeping her shoulders small. Just an omega. Just a shadow. Then the great doors boomed open, and the room went silent. She didn't look. She *didn't*. But the temperature of the hall dropped, the way it does before a storm, and every wolf around her lowered their head. The power rolling into the room was a physical thing, dense and dark and terrible. It pressed on her lungs. It made her knees want to fold. Alpha power. And beneath it, something else. Something that hooked behind her ribs and *pulled*. She stared harder at the tray. Her hands had started to shake. Red wine trembled in the cups. Boots crossed the stone. Slow. Unhurried. The kind of walk that belonged to a predator who had never once needed to run. *Just keep moving. Just get to the dais. Set down the tray. Go.* She reached the steps. She raised her eyes for one half-second, just to judge the distance, and met a pair of eyes the color of a winter storm. Kade Draven was taller than the stories. Black hair, sharp cheekbones, a scar that cut through his left eyebrow and gave his face a cruelty it hardly needed. He wore no crown, no finery. He didn't need any. Power sat on him like a second skin. And he had stopped walking. Wren's vial slipped from her apron. It didn't fall far. It hit the stone at her feet and shattered with a small, sharp *crack*, the sound of three years of safety breaking. The last of the tonic pooled between her boots, and she felt it go, felt the veil lift off her skin like a breath she'd been holding since she was fourteen. Her scent bloomed. Kade Draven went rigid. She watched it happen. She watched the color leave his face and something raw and wild take its place. His nostrils flared. His pupils blew wide until the storm in his eyes went black. Around them, the pack was still lowering their gazes, oblivious. But the Alpha of the Blackthorns stood frozen at the foot of his own throne, staring at a serving girl like she'd just driven a knife through his chest. "*Mine.*" He didn't say it out loud. He didn't have to. The word tore through the air between them, through her skin, through the bond that snapped into place like a chain drawn taut. Wren's wolf woke up with a scream. *Mate,* it howled. *MATE. Mate, mate, mate.* *No,* Wren thought, clutching the tray so hard the wood creaked. *No. Not him. Anyone but him.* "Everyone out." Kade's voice was low and rough, barely more than a growl. Nobody moved. "*Out.*" The Alpha's command cracked across the hall like a whip. Chairs scraped. Doors slammed. Within ninety seconds, the great hall was empty except for a wolf who looked like he was about to break something and a girl who was about to run. She ran. --- She made it twelve strides. A hand closed around her wrist and spun her into the wall, not hard, but with a speed no human could match. The tray hit the floor. Wine splashed across black stone like spilled blood. Kade Draven's arm came down beside her head, caging her in, and the heat of his body poured over her like a furnace. "Don't," he said quietly. "Please don't run from me." The *please* nearly undid her. Up close, he was worse. The scar. The tension in his jaw. The way his hand trembled, just slightly, where it held her wrist, as if he were terrified he'd hurt her. This was the man who'd burned her home to ash. This was the reason she had no family. And her body was leaning toward him like a flower toward sun. "Let go of me," Wren whispered. "I can't." His eyes searched her face, wild and stunned. "Do you feel it? Tell me you feel it." "I feel *nothing.*" "Liar." The word was soft. Not cruel. He lowered his head until his nose grazed the curve of her throat, and she stopped breathing entirely. He inhaled, long and shuddering, and a sound came out of his chest that was half growl and half something else. Something almost like grief. "Moonlight," he murmured against her skin. "Snow and silver and something older. I've never smelled anything like you. Eleven years I've walked this world wondering if the Goddess had forgotten me." Wren squeezed her eyes shut. *He can't know. He doesn't know. He's just scenting a mate.* But her heart was hammering, and her wolf was purring, actually *purring,* the traitor, and every instinct in her body was begging her to tilt her head and bare her throat to the monster who had killed her people. "You're mistaken," she managed. "I'm no one. I'm an omega from the kitchens. I'm—" "What's your name?" "Wren." "Wren *what?*" "Halloway." His mouth curved, but there was nothing gentle in it. "No." Her blood turned to ice. He drew back just far enough to look at her, and the tenderness she'd glimpsed a moment ago was gone. In its place was the Butcher of the Northern Ridge, the predator, the wolf who took what he wanted and burned the rest. His eyes had gone hard as flint. "Halloways don't smell like this. Omegas don't carry this scent." His thumb pressed against the pulse racing in her wrist. "You've been hiding under my roof for years. Under my *nose.* And I want to know why." "I don't know what you mean." "Don't insult me." His voice dropped to something soft and lethal. "I know what it is you're hiding. I've been searching for it since the night Silverthorn fell." Wren's knees nearly gave out. *He knows. Goddess, he knows.* She had one weapon left. The dagger strapped to her thigh, a thin silver blade her mother had pressed into her hands before the fire. She'd never used it. She'd sworn she would, on the night she finally looked into the eyes of the man who'd destroyed everything. Her fingers crept toward the hem of her skirt. Kade caught her hand. Turned it over. Traced one finger across the inside of her wrist, where a faint silver crescent, invisible to any wolf except one who knew where to look, shimmered beneath her skin, awakened by the bond. The mark of the Silverthorn line. The mark of the lost royal blood. The last living daughter of the Moon Alphas. He looked up. And the expression on his face was not the one she'd braced for. It wasn't triumph. It wasn't rage. It was something far more dangerous. "Hello, Seraphine," he whispered. Her real name. The one no living soul had spoken in eleven years. "I've been hunting you for a very long time." Behind him, in the shadows of the great hall, a door creaked open, and a voice she'd have known anywhere, a voice she'd buried beside a burning house, said softly: "Kade. Step away from my daughter."