Chapter 1

my ears. Eight years bound in the shadow cells beneath the mountain, stripped of my place in the pack, forbidden even to shift.

And the wolf who sentenced me there was my own mate.

**

"Prisoner of the eighth cell," the warden said, dragging me back to the present. "You are free now. See that you walk a better path."

A bitter smile touched my lips. As if I had ever walked a crooked one.

The iron-banded doors groaned open, and true sunlight touched my face for the first time in eight years. Waiting beyond the gate stood a dappled mare hitched to a modest cart, one belonging to Lucien's household. For one traitorous moment, my heart lifted. Had he come himself?

But the figure who stepped down was Bob Hawthorne, his second and most trusted enforcer. Whatever hope had flickered guttered out at once.

"Alpha Lucien had pack matters that could not wait, Luna Selene. He asked me to bring you home."

I said nothing, and began walking toward the cart.

"Wait, my lady." Bob reached into a pouch at his belt and cast a handful of ground moonstone dust across my shoulders and hair before I could step back. Some caught in my eyes, stinging sharply, and when I understood what he'd done, I nearly laughed.

"Alpha Lucien said moonstone dust wards off ill fortune. He asked that it be done before you climbed in."

Something inside me cracked quietly in two. "Ill fortune. He believes I carry it with me now."

"My lady, the Alpha didn't mean—"

I let out a hollow laugh, turning my gaze to the empty seat where Lucien should have been. "Has he already forgotten it was his own hand that sent me into the shadow cells?"

I said nothing more. Bob took up the reins in silence, and the road unwound beneath us as memory dragged me back to that stone hall, back to the moment my life had been unmade.

**

My voice had trembled so badly that day, standing before him in the empty chamber after the Council dispersed, when I finally asked the only question that mattered.

"Why?"

Something flickered across his face, guilt perhaps, though it vanished before I could be certain.

"Evelyn was attacked in the border village after our bond ended," he said quietly. "It broke something in her mind that never healed. Long ago, before you and I ever bonded, I swore an oath to her. Six favors, as recompense for what she suffered. When she was accused, she said she could not bear the shadow cells. I could not refuse the oath."

A chill spread through me deeper than any winter. He finally met my eyes. "Selene. I am sorry."

Sorry. The word rang through my mind like a struck bell.

"Hear me," he continued, his voice low and urgent. "However many years this takes, I will wait for you. I swear it on the moon above us. You are my mate. Nothing changes that."

I laughed until it hurt, until tears slid down my face and the bitterness pooling in my chest turned to something close to venom.

Seven years. I had loved Lucien Blackthorn for seven long years before that night. When Evelyn first left him, he had haunted the mead halls, drowning himself in wine he barely tasted, and every night I had been there in the shadows, making certain he found his way home safely. When he forgot to eat for days, I brought food to his chambers myself. I learned every habit, every quiet detail that made him who he was.

I waited, patiently, the way only a wolf certain of her fated bond could wait.

Then one evening beneath a full moon, he looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. "Selene. Be my mate."

I believed my patience had finally been rewarded. After our bonding, he remembered every dish I favored, every festival, every anniversary. He made me believe I was loved.

But it took only a single plea from Evelyn to unmake all of it. I do not want to face the shadow cells. Without hesitation, he chose her, and to spare her, he cast me away entirely.

"Trust me," he had said.

Trust him. The wolf who had just buried me alive before the entire Council with his own hands.

"My mate will always be you, Selene." Those were the last words he ever said to me.

**

"Selene. We've arrived." Bob's voice pulled me back into the present, and ahead of us, through the fading light, the towers of Hexagon Prime finally came into view.