Marked by the alpha king I was meant to destroy

een Darius's territory and what remained of the scattered, packless wolves who'd survived one massacre o

r looking to make a name for himself by dragging some unclaimed wolf back to the fortress for "questioning." Three families in the past two months alone. Mira had watched two of them get marc

dn't be anywhere left for her and Greta to disappe

ooking the tree line the morning after the fire. Not the legend. Not the fe

n of it she could actually act on right now. She wasn't strong enough yet to walk into Darius's court and put a blade in the Alpha King's heart. She'd tried to imagine it a hundr

ere pushing the border, whether there was a pattern to it, whether Greta's cottage sat inside next

erself, a perfectl

art within

ed from anyone wearing Darius's colors. Mira went still, flattening into the brush, blade already loose in her hand, and watched a man st

d not to let a wound get the better of him. Not court finery - plain, dark, unmarked clothes, the kind a man wor

was, by every reasonable measure, exactly the kind of man she was supposed to avoid - wounded,

her hands already working before

e wound. His voice was low, rough with pain, and something in it made

a fox den," Mira said, peeling his hand away from his ribs witho

s, ragged at the edges like it had come from claws rather than a blade, but nothing that had hit anything vital. She worke

e of them in the shadow of the hood, dark and sharp despite the pain - tracked her hands

gs die in front of me," Mira said. "Doesn't

ugh out of him - cut short by a win

ter she wrapped the bandage, like his body was choosing to trust her before his mind caught up. The low, steady sound he made - not quite a hum, more like a breath held on purpose - every time her fingers brushed a part

scars weren't hers to ask ab

ke he was testing the words b

illed for half

" A pause. "You don't see

hole in his side," she shot back, tying off the bandag

n her heels, and finally - because there was not

, an unsettling shade of gold-brown that seemed to catch what little light filtered through the canopy and hold onto it. He was watching her with an in

memory she couldn't quite place. A shape she'd see

uickly, putting distance between them before the recognition f

dressing she'd just given him. Like it wasn't a hope. Like it was a fact he already kn

of wolf heal

ropped somewhere

gnized the set of those shoulders from the ridge the night before, already understood exactly why the

n his golden eyes, like he was committing something to memory. Cataloging her. And t

night before, across half a mile of firelight a

blood in her b

he same terrible certainty he'd used about his own healing - and underneath it, something she hadn't exp

ready understood that running the blade through him here, now, wounded and unguarded as he was, would have been the easiest kill of her e

on frightened

he said, voice ste

ring the wound, but upright, already steadier than a man

e," he said. "I d

d. "I don't want

face the way he'd catalogue a threat, a weapon, something dangerous enough to be worth trac

pha King the one thing s