I swallowed.
“So I’ve read,” I said. “What did she do to Nightfang?”
His eyes cooled, amusement dimming to something harder.
“Once,” he said, voice less playful now, “when Nightfang was smaller and hungrier, when my predecessor thought strength meant drawing blood just to see it, he went to her. Asked for more. More power. More fear. More obedience.”
“Your…" Alpha,” I said.
“Of that time,” he corrected. “Long dead now. Thanks to her gift.”
“What did she give him?” I asked.
“A howl that made wolves drown themselves in snow rather than stand against it,” he said. “A rage that didn’t care whose throat was under his teeth. Sound familiar?”
Cold seeped into my bones.
“Like Lucian’s curse,” I said.
He nodded.
“Not the same thread,” he said. “But woven from the same cloth. She promises
