The forest was cold during the first months, its breathing heavy and thick with snow and silence. Cassie made slow journeys through thick thorns, her hand always placed on her belly as if it were encircling the life within. Six months—it had seemed an eternity and the glint of an eye.
She hadn't lingered anywhere for long. She'd fled the palace and wandered between long-abandoned shacks and jungled edges of Greyer land, sites long forgotten by all wolves for centuries. None of them were safe, though—not with the twins' scent still burning into her mind, and not with Daisy being the only one who knew her secret.
Cassie didn't trust easily anymore. Not since Kael. Not since what he'd done.
She stopped under a weathered stone arch, once an entrance to an old ceremonial ground, and let her
