Chapter one
The Sacrificial Lamb
The smell of copper and wet earth always meant someone was bleeding. In the Timber Claw pack, that smell was as common as rain.
I kept my eyes fixed on the splintered floorboards of Alpha’s longhouse, kneeling so low my forehead nearly touched the wood. My knees ached through my frayed cotton trousers, but I didn’t shift weight. Movement invited attention, and attention in this room was always violent.
"She is a defect, Alpha Hector," a deep, rumbling voice rasped from across the room. It belonged to Elder Thomas, a man whose gray fur was as coarse as his personality. "Sending her is an insult. The Warlord will slice her throat the moment she steps onto Obsidian Crest land, and then he will march his vanguard across our borders anyway."
"It is not an insult if we frame it as a total surrender," Alpha Hector countered, his voice booming with the heavy, oppressive aura of his rank. The sheer weight of his dominant energy pressed down on the room, making my chest tighten.
A normal wolf would have felt their inner beast whining, desperate to submit or fight. I felt nothing but physical compression in my lungs. No inner beast answered the call. I was a Latent. A genetic dead-end. A human skin with a broken wolf soul that would never shift, never heal, and never belong.
"She has no scent, no fangs, no value," Thomas spat, and I heard the heavy thud of his boots stepping closer to me. "She is nineteen winters old and hasn't even grown a proper coat. Look at her. A stiff breeze would snap her collarbone."
I clenched my jaw, keeping my hands flat on the floor. Let them talk, I told myself, my mind methodically tracking the cadence of their breaths, the slight tremor in Thomas’s left foot—a remnant of an old silver-poisoned wound—and the exact layout of the room. They thought I was empty because I couldn't growl. They didn't realize that while they relied on their noses, I used my eyes. I knew every rotten floorboard, every hidden emergency exit, and every debt this pack owed.
"Precisely," Alpha Hector said, a cruel amusement bleeding into his tone. "Alpha Kaelen Vane is a monster. The stories say his ancestral curse has made him entirely feral, a tyrant who rips apart anyone who challenges him. If I send him a strong warrior warrior-bride, he will see it as a threat. If I send him a high-ranking female, he will think we are plotting. But Evangeline?"
Hector walked down the dais, his heavy footsteps vibrating through the wood beneath my palms. He stopped right in front of me, the polished leather of his boots mere inches from my nose.
"She is nothing," Hector whispered. "A servant. A fragile piece of meat. Sending her tells the Warlord that Timber Claw kneels completely. It buys us a week. Maybe two. Long enough for us to fortify the northern trenches and move the real breeding females to safety."
A sacrificial lamb, I thought, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. A literal distraction.
"Raise your head, girl," Hector commanded.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat and slowly lifted my chin, forcing my gaze to rest on the heavy silver medallion hanging around his thick neck. I didn't look him in the eye; challenging an Alpha's gaze was a quick way to get a backhand that would shatter my unshifted jaw.
"You will leave at dawn," Hector said, his dark eyes boring into mine with absolute indifference. "The Obsidian Crest escorts are already waiting at the neutral border marker. You will go with them. You will submit to the Warlord. If he kills you, you die for your pack. If he keeps you, you play the meek little human until we are ready to strike back. Do you understand your duty, Evangeline?"
My throat was dry, tasting of dust. I knew what lay across that border. Alpha Kaelen Vane was known as the Butcher of the North. He was a mountain man who ruled the largest, most brutal territory in the region through raw, terrifying physical dominance. A man whose inner beast was rumored to be so fractured and violent that his own council lived in permanent terror of him.
I was being handed to an executioner to buy a few days of peace for a pack that had treated me like garbage since the day I failed to shift on my twelfth birthday.
But as I looked at Hector, a cold, sharp spark ignited beneath my ribs. They thought I was weak because I couldn't fight with fangs. They didn't know that survival was its own kind of violence. If I stayed here, I would eventually be worked to death or killed in the upcoming war. If I went to the Obsidian Crest... I had a chance. A fraction of a percent, but a chance. I just had to think out of the monster.
"I understand, Alpha," I said, my voice steady, clear, and perfectly compliant.
"Good," Hector scoffed, waving a dismissive hand. "Get out of my sight. Pack your rags. You leave before the sun hits the trees."
I bowed my head one last time, pushed myself up from the cold floor, and turned on my heel. As I walked out of the longhouse into the biting morning air, the wind whipped my thin hair across my face.
I had no strength, no magic, and no allies. But as I looked toward the dark, jagged peaks of the northern mountains where the Warlord ruled, I gripped the hem of my tunic tightly.
I was going into the wolf's den, and I i
Intended to survive it.
