Alaya POV: "My Lady, the kitchens sent the midday broth." Breonna kept her voice so low it barely carried—and even then the last word shook. "Please eat, lady, "she whispered. "If you starve, the Duke will not care. You will die in this cold, and no one will even think to open the door.” ​ She was my only loyal maid, an Omega bound to my mother's former household, risking daily floggings just to bring me scraps. "This is not food, Breonna," I said, setting the bowl down with a sharp clatter. "This broth is laced with Corpse-Gorge blood parasites from the Western Wastes." Breonna choked on her breath, slamming both hands over her mouth to swallow a scream. I reached into my knotted hair and pulled out a crude, sharpened silver pin.Without hesitation, I plunged the metal point into the oily depths of the soup. When I drew it out, a thread-thin, dark crimson worm wriggled violently against the pale metal. Breonna's breath tore loose. “It is her, is it not?" she gasped, her fingers knotting in her apron. "That woman. She means to kill you.” ​ "She means to ruin me first," I said. Dian Simmons. The mistress who had usurped my mother's place in my father's bed — who wanted me gone without the inconvenience of a trial. The parasite was a patient, obscene thing. It seeded an insatiable hunger, rotted the host's inner channels, and bloated the flesh until the woman wearing it became an unrecognizable freak for the court to laugh at. She wanted me to eat myself into an unrecognizable freak before the court. I grabbed an empty ceramic vial from the corner shelf, used the pin to flick the squirming worm inside, and slammed the wooden cork tight. Breonna scrambled up, her teeth clicking together. "We must go to Duke Arno! We must show him this poison!" "Show him?" I met her terrified gaze, letting my voice drop to an icy whisper. "He gave Dian the run of the castle while my mother rots in an exile keep. Without absolute proof, he will only whip you for slandering his favorite whore." I carried the bowl to the dark corner of the cell and dumped the tainted broth down a gaping rat hole. Soft silk rustled in the corridor outside.Heavier footsteps followed, deliberate and arrogant. I nudged Breonna toward the shadows, dropped to the edge of the cot, and slumped my shoulders into a trembling heap. The heavy door was kicked open. A wave of heavy rose oil swept through the stench of the cell. Dian Simmons glided inside, her green velvet gown trailing across the grime. Behind her stood Isabela Bradford, her daughter, preening before a handheld bronze mirror. Dian glanced at the empty bowl on the table, her painted lips curving into a smirk as she raised a silk handkerchief to her nose. "Look at that. Our sickly little pup managed to lick the bowl clean." Isabela lowered her mirror, eyeing my hunched frame with open disgust. "Mother, she looks more wretched every day. It smells like a dog kennel in here." I kept my head down, letting my unwashed hair fall across my face as I rasped out a pathetic whine. "Is there... is there more? I am still so hungry." Dian let out a sharp, mocking laugh and tapped Isabela's arm with her jade-tipped finger. "Feed her as much as she wants from now on. Soon enough, she will be nothing more than a bloated sow fit for the slaughterhouse." Isabela sneered, snapping her mirror shut. "Let us leave, Mother. Looking at her ruins my appetite for tonight's banquet." They turned on their heels, their laughter echoing down the stone corridor as the guards slammed the iron door shut and turned the lock. I slowly straightened my spine. The pathetic tremor vanished from my limbs. I rolled the small ceramic vial between my fingers, feeling the worm thrash against the baked clay. And I smiled—I knew exactly what that worm was. Because I had already died once. And in that life, accused by Dian Simmons and Isabela Bradford, a stolen vial was pushed beneath my mattress. I became a poisoner and a traitor to my own blood. There was no open trial. My family strangled me quietly in this dark corner. But luck was with me—the Moon Goddess did not let me dead. My soul fell through a tear in the world and landed somewhere no wolf had ever dreamed of—a stellar empire of steel towers and cold starlight. I studied at their feet. I learned to name a poison by its scent, to read a dying body like a page, to brew a cure out of a corpse. When I closed my eyes in that world for the last time, I thought my journey was over. Then I woke up here. Same stone. Same stench. Same ruined shoulder, still puckered and raw beneath my fingers. And the whole of that other life sitting quietly behind my eyes. So no. I will not die in this cell, and I will not let them bloat me into a court jester's joke. I will get my mother out of that exile keep if I have to burn the Duchy down around it. I will take back what is mine, one stolen thing at a time. And I will wash my name clean in front of every lord who ever called me defect. Starting with the bowl they sent me today. I walked to the narrow, rusted window bars and peered down into the snow-covered courtyard. The two guards stationed near the outer gate were slumping against the timber fence, passing a flask of cheap spirit between them. Darkness had completely swallowed the Bradford Duchy. I turned back to Breonna, holding out the ceramic vial. "Take this through the lower drainage grate beneath the kennels," I ordered in a low whisper. "Deliver it to the black market peddler behind the tannery."

Alaya POV: Breonna took the vial with shaking hands, her knuckles pale. "The black market? My Lady, the rogues there will slit my throat for a pair of boots." "They will not," I said, gripping her frail shoulder until she looked into my eyes. "Tell the broker it is a live Corpse-Gorge parasite harvested fresh from the Western Wastes. Trade it for Bone-Cleansing Root and Silverleaf herb. And a twist of Heart-Igniting Seed in black paper. Pay him with these." I pressed three dull silver coins into her palm. The last remnants of my mother's dowry, hidden under a rotting floorboard for ten years. "And one more errand," I said, before she could rise. "Behind the tannery there is an ice-house. The cutters keep frozen roots packed in straw. Buy me one blue root — frost-heart if they have it; if they laugh at you, buy whatever root is blue and frozen and ugly." Then I put a scrap of parchment into her other hand. It was my own cramped transcription, made from memory in the dark, of a page I had not seen since I was a child. "Soak this in the lake trough until the ink bleeds, then freeze it in the snow. When you bring it back, it must look older than you are." Breonna stared at me, her breath misting. She pressed the vial against her ribs, nodded hard, and dropped to her hands and knees to slip through the loose stone slab near the corner floor. Once the stone scraped back into place, I knelt by my cot and pressed my palm flat against the empty hollow beneath the floorboards. Ten years of my mother's dowry had bought me one night's worth of weapons. There was nothing left under there now but splinters and cold. The Bradfords had spent ten years calling me a waste. Not one of them ever asked what the waste was hiding. The White Wolf blood never died out in me; it only went to sleep. The kind of blood this pack sees once in a thousand years, buried under a body they had already thrown away. And it was awake now. My channels were not dead. They were choked with years of low-grade poisons fed to me under Dian's supervision. An hour later, the floor slab shifted. Breonna crawled back into the cell, panting heavily, her skirt soaked in frozen slush. She set three rough brown paper packets on the splintered table, a twist of black paper, and a blue root wrapped in frozen straw. "I got them, my lady. The trader... he was astonished. He gave double the portion and asked who bred the brood. The root cost me the last of the coins, and the ice-house man laughed at me the whole time." "You told him nothing," I said, already tearing open the coarse paper. "Not a word." "Keep watch by the door. Listen for the guards' boots." Breonna retreated to the threshold, pressing her ear to the timber. I dumped the crushed Bone-Cleansing Root and dried Silverleaf into the crude ceramic bowl. I lifted my thumb to my teeth and bit down hard until the copper taste of my blood filled my mouth. I squeezed four drops into the herbs. The ancestral white wolf bloodline within me, though dormant, possessed enough latent purity to ignite the dormant properties of the plants. The crushed leaves hissed, melting into a thick, pitch-black liquid that smelled like scorched pitch and bitter gall. I brought the bowl to my lips and drank it in three heavy swallows. The moment the sludge hit my stomach, a sensation like molten lead exploded behind my ribs. My knees gave out, slamming hard into the flagstones. I clamped my jaws together to stop the scream tearing up my throat. My fingernails scraped against the stone, snapping two nails down to the quick as blood welled beneath the beds. The agony tore through my muscles, snapping and realigning the blocked channels like shattered bones being forced back into their sockets. Black sweat poured from my pores, soaking my coarse tunic until it clung to my shivering frame. My vision swam with red spots, but I forced my eyes to stay open, staring at the scarred stones beneath my face. My mother was wasting away in the Ironfang fortress because of Dian's lies. I could not die in the dirt. Slowly, the tearing heat receded, replaced by an electric surge of cold, pure air rushing into my lungs. I pushed myself up, breathing in deep, steady rhythms. Deep inside my core, a dormant presence shifted — a silent, massive white wolf lifting its head from slumber. A sharp cough sounded outside the door. Breonna was giving the signal. I scooped a handful of soot from the cold hearth, smeared it across my cheeks and forehead, and wrapped the oversized prison tunic tightly around my body before dropping back onto the cot. Torchlight flickered through the door grate. A guard banged his spear butt against the iron banding. "Keep it down in there, wolfless trash!" I stayed silent. The footsteps faded into the distance. For four more nights I drank the brew, and by day I crammed my cheeks with stale bread and shuffled in slow circles whenever Dian's spies peered through the grate—a starving, half-witted beast, exactly as advertised. On the fifth morning I woke before the light, and the air tasted different. I walked to the tarnished bronze mirror and wiped away the crust of dust with my damp sleeve. The waxen, bloated face was gone. The skin reflected in the dim candlelight was smooth as winter frost, the jawline razor-sharp, framing high cheekbones and striking, silver-flecked gray eyes. Even clad in rags, the bone structure carried the unmistakable nobility of the true Lycan lineage. Tonight was the grand celebration—the centenary feast for my grandmother, Dowager Cindi Bradford. Music drifted from the great keep, carrying the scent of roasted venison across the courtyard. The outer watch had thinned out to join the drinking in the lower hall. I tied my silver hair into a tight knot and pushed open the loose iron bars of the outer window.

Alaya POV: I vaulted over the sill, my boots landing soundlessly in the deep snowdrift below. The cold air hit my face, crisp and sharp, but my cleansed blood burned warm against the winter wind. I stayed in the deep shadows cast by the fortress buttresses, slipping past three guards leaning against a wooden keg, their laughter slurred with mead. Ahead rose the southern curtain wall, coated in thick rime. Beyond that ice-locked stone barrier lay Moonlit Lake. I dug my fingers into the frozen mortar between the stones, finding purchase with ease. My muscles pulled me upward without a sound. Just as my hands reached the parapet, a crushing weight slammed into my chest. It was the suffocating, predatory aura of an apex Alpha. My breath locked in my throat. My boots slipped half an inch on the ice, but I caught myself, pressing flat against the cold stone. A tall figure stepped out of the shadow of the watchtower above me. Moonlight caught the polished silver edge of a half-mask covering the upper half of his face, accentuating a chiseled, brutal jawline. He was draped in a massive dire-wolf pelt, his dark eyes fixing onto me with lazy amusement. It was Kingsley Sloan. The Royal Shadow Commander, head of the King's Inquisitorial Tribunal, answering only to the Alpha King himself. He was the realm's executioner, a man who hunted rogue packs for sport. "Well, now," his voice rumbled, low and rasping like blades grinding against stone. "The forgotten pup of House Bradford, scaling the battlements like a gutter thief." I forced my racing pulse to steady, refusing to drop my chin. "Step aside, Commander. This has nothing to do with the Crown." "This is the King's wall, little fox," he said. "And you are standing on it. That makes it mine." I reached for the next handhold, meaning to haul myself over the parapet. He moved one boot, and the gap I wanted was gone. Kingsley leaned down, his gloved fingers moving fast as a striking viper. He caught my jaw in a vice-like grip, tilting my face toward the moon. The leather of his glove was icy, reeking of dried blood and bitter winter cedar. Apex Alpha pressure rolled off him in waves. I still did not lower my eyes. Then he bent, and the cold rim of the half-mask dragged down the side of my throat as he took my scent. "A sharp tongue for a wolfless girl," he went on, his thumb brushing roughly across my cheekbone, smudging the soot away to expose the pale, porcelain skin beneath. "And hiding a face like this behind dirt. What game are you playing, little fox?" My right hand closed around the sharpened silver pin hidden inside my sleeve, and I drove the point up into the soft hollow beneath his jaw. "Release me, or I scream and alert the entire garrison."​ His lips tilted into a dangerous smirk, his dark eyes glinting behind the silver mask. "Scream, then. Let us see who reaches this wall first—your father's lazy guards, or my shadow hounds." He did not pull back from my steel. He leaned into it, until the point pricked skin. "And when mine come, they will not be gentle. They will drag you back to that cell by the hair, and your mother will rot in her keep until she forgets your name." ​ I held the pin steady. "Then you will never learn what I am about to do."​ Something flickered behind the mask—the first honest thing I had seen in his eyes. He held my gaze for three agonizing heartbeats, his grip firm enough to leave red marks on my skin. Then he let go and took a step back, folding his arms across his broad chest. "Go on, then," he said, his tone casual, almost bored. "Let me see what kind of fire you intend to light tonight." His glove caught my wrist as I turned back to the parapet—not hard, only long enough for me to feel the shape of his hand through the leather. "If you are still breathing tomorrow," he said, "I will come and find you. I am very good at finding things that do not wish to be found." I pulled free. "Then I will make certain you have to work for it, Commander." I did not waste a second. I hauled myself over the icy crenelation, dropped down the outer slope of the ditch, and vanished into the snowfields beyond the castle perimeter. Behind me, the wall stood silent; the commander was gone, as if he had been a ghost carved from the night. I pulled my cloak tight, running through the frozen birch woods toward the dark expanse of Moonlit Lake. In the distance, the lanterns of the keep burned bright against the black sky, festive bagpipes wailing into the night. In less than twenty minutes, the patrol led by my eldest brother—Bernard Bradford, Captain of the Ducal Guard—would ride along this shore. I broke through the tree line and found Breonna shivering behind a granite boulder. Her teeth were chattering violently. "My Lady! The lake... the water will freeze your heart! You will freeze to death!" I stripped off the heavy woolen cloak, dropping it onto the snow. I stood in only a thin, drenched-white linen slip, the howling wind immediately cutting into my bare arms. "Remember your part," I said, my voice steady despite the frost coating my eyelashes. "When the horses break through the trees, scream until your lungs bleed." Breonna choked on a sob and nodded hard. I turned toward the lake. Through the dark, my enhanced vision located the patch where the current ran fast, keeping the ice dangerously thin. A faint clatter of iron hooves echoed from the birch woods, accompanied by the low, warning snort of warhorses. I filled my chest with the freezing air, ran three paces across the frozen crust, and threw myself directly onto the black, fractured ice.