Chapter 1
LYRA'S POV
Everyone in the Crystal Moon Pack knew the name Ashwood.
They said it the way people talk about a storm they respect. My father had held the northern border for twenty years. He had stared down rogues, rival packs and one very unlucky bear, and every time he came home with new scars and nothing to say about them.
The pups worshipped him. The elders lowered their voices when he walked in.
And me? I was just the warrior's daughter.
Eighteen years of being someone's daughter. Someone's little sister. Never just Lyra.
Tonight, that was going to change.
The Moonrise ceremony happened once a year, on the night the full moon cleared the ridge. Every she-wolf who hadn't shifted yet had to stand in the clearing and wait for her wolf to answer. Most of the girls had turned eighteen months ago and been fidgeting about it ever since. My birthday had landed three days before the moon, and I had counted every single one of them.
Now I stood barefoot in the cold grass with eleven other girls, wrapped in the plain white robe the ceremony demanded, and my heart was going so loud I was sure the whole pack could hear it.
"Breathe," Jenna whispered from the edge of the circle.
My big sister had been giving me advice all evening.
"It hurts for a minute," she said, "and then it's the best thing you'll ever feel. I promise."
I nodded. I didn't trust my voice.
She stood with the elders, her arm looped through Dorian Blackwood's, her chin tipped up in the moonlight like she was the one being honored. Everyone assumed she'd be Luna one day. Dorian was the next alpha, tall and sharp-jawed, with a way of watching a room that made people straighten their backs.
Jenna had been his for two years, and she wore him like other girls wore jewelry.
I had never once been jealous. I told myself that now, just to keep my mind off the way my skin felt too small.
The drums started low.
One by one, the girls dropped their robes and let the moon take them. The clearing filled with the wet crack of changing bones, with gasps that turned into growls. I felt my turn coming like a wave pulling back from the shore.
Then it broke.
My spine bent. My teeth ached. The world went sharp and silver, every smell a story. Pine sap. Woodsmoke. The iron taste of blood where I'd bitten my tongue. I heard myself cry out, and then the cry wasn't human anymore, and something wild rose up inside me and spoke in my own voice.
There you are, said my wolf.
When the pain let go, I was on four legs, shaking, my fur the color of moonlight on water.
A ripple of whispers went through the crowd. Someone hissed a single word I didn't catch.
I was too high on the feeling to care. I had never felt so alive. I lifted my head to find my father in the crowd. I wanted to see his face.
A scent hit me instead.
Cedar and smoke and rain on hot stone.
It rolled over me and settled low in my belly, and my wolf slammed against my ribs so hard I almost fell.
Mate, she breathed. Mate. Mate. Mate.
My eyes tracked the scent through the circle of watchers, past my father, past the elders, to the one man who hadn't moved.
Dorian Blackwood stood frozen with his hand halfway out of his pocket.
His gaze was locked on me, dark and wide, and I saw the exact moment he felt it too. His breath caught. His throat worked. Heat licked up the back of my neck as his eyes traveled the length of me, slow and hungry, like he'd forgotten everyone else in the world.
I shifted back without meaning to. Instinct. My body wanted to meet him as myself.
The elder women rushed in with the ceremonial cloak, but not before the cold air raked across my bare skin and Dorian's eyes dropped, just for a second, and darkened.
The cloak settled over my shoulders. I could still feel exactly where he had looked.
"Lyra?" my mother called, from somewhere very far away.
I couldn't answer. My whole body was pulling toward him. My wolf paced and ached, and my pulse hammered in places I had no business noticing in front of the entire pack.
Dorian took one step toward me. Then another.
And Jenna's hand slid off his arm.
I saw my sister's face, and I wished I hadn't. She had been smiling, proud and pleased, watching her little sister take her first shift. She was still smiling now. It had just stopped, like a clock with its gears pulled out.
Because she had seen it too.
The way he looked at me. The way no one had ever looked at her.
The moon goddess had just given me the greatest gift of my life. Standing there in the cold, cloak clutched to my chest, skin still burning, I understood that it was going to cost me everything.
