Before I saw her, I could smell her.
The smell was too familiar, and it hit me like a slap. Sweetened pine and wolf musk. Spiced berries. A cloying undercurrent of something sharp, like jealousy masked in perfume.
I stiffened in Kael’s bed.
I knew that scent.
Ayla.
Once, she’d been my closest friend. My secret-keeper. The only other girl who understood what it meant to grow up in a highblood family, caged by expectations and silenced by duty.
We were going to escape together.
Now she was here—inside Kael’s camp.
My heart thumping with something other than fear, I gently sat up and clutched the furs to my chest.
The den door opened.
She entered like she belonged.
With tight black leather looped along her sides, her hips swung. Her braids gleamed with polished bone beads, and h
