The journey to the border was a study in grim efficiency. We moved through the snow-choked forest not as a pack, but as a military column. The Bloodmoon warriors around me were clad in black leather and hardened steel, their movements economical, their faces impassive. There was no chatter, only the crunch of boots on snow and the jingle of harnesses. I wore no healer's robes. Instead, Caleb had given me a high-collared tunic of dark grey wool, cinched with a black leather belt from which hung no pouches of herbs, but a single, unadorned dagger. Over it, I wore a heavy cloak lined with black wolf fur, the silver clasp at my throat a stylized crescent moon—the sigil of the Bloodmoon Alpha’s chosen council.
I was not his Luna. I was his delegate. His weapon.
The emptiness inside me, the co
