Chapter 3

I was halfway through a dead sleep when thunder cracked overhead, and I flinched awake, curling instinctively into myself.

I have been afraid of thunder since I was a cub.

When I was small, my blood-brother shielded me. After I mated with Dravik, he was the one I pressed against.

But tonight—

The door swung open.

Dravik came in fast, still wearing the clothes he'd had on all day, his face caught in something that looked like alarm. He saw me folded against the headboard and crossed the room in a few strides, sitting down at the edge of the sleeping-pelt.

"Don't be afraid. I'm here."

He pulled me against his chest.

My face rested over his heartbeat — quick and steady all at once. I breathed him in and wanted to ask him to stay.

But before the words formed, he released me.

"You're alright."

A pause. "Thalwen needs me. I should check on her."

The golden light struck hard.

"Did you truly believe he came for you?"

"He came because he has not yet fully put away the habit of you. That is not the same as love."

"Do not mistake duty for devotion, Mira. You have made that error for three years and it has cost you everything."

"Watch him leave."

The door shut.

Thunder rolled on.

I sat up slowly and looked at the lightning crawling across the sky beyond the shutters.

The Mother Goddess's words settled into my bones: cast out. Burial grounds. The frozen wilderness, east of the wall.

I gripped my sleeping-pelt.

Suddenly, intensely, I wanted to do one thing.

First light the next morning, I sent for someone from the trail-runners' guild.

Not to carry goods.

To carry me.

My whole life I had been kept inside walls — first the Pack-Lord's Den, then Warlord's House. When my legs worked, there was nowhere to go anyway. Now that they didn't work, there was even less reason to go — so everyone assumed.

But I wanted to see what was past these walls. I wanted to move through the wide world, even if I rolled through it on a roll-seat. Even if I died somewhere out there on an open road — it was still better than rotting in a place where no one wanted me.

The trail-runner had barely left when Dravik appeared.

He saw the travel-contract on the table and his brow drew together.

"What is this for?"

I picked it up and tucked it away, face calm. "Nothing important. I wanted to send something back to my birth-pack."

Dravik looked at me once, didn't press, and walked out.

As he always did.

I swallowed the bitterness and went on packing my things.

That evening I sent word again to my blood-brother. I wanted one more feast-day with him before I left — just one, to say farewell, even if he didn't know it was farewell.

His refusal came back before the candle had burned down a finger's width.

"The Pack-Lord must honor the hunt-packs tomorrow. A birth-feast is held every year — this year, let it go."

From the moment the den-servant began speaking, I had already been talking myself around to acceptance.

It's a waste of resources anyway. If he doesn't want to, so be it.

Then the pack-decree arrived the next morning.

The Pack-Lord's howler read it out in the central yard with a voice that carried through every corner of Warlord's House: Thalwen the Bone-Mender had shown extraordinary valor in the border campaigns. By the Pack-Lord's hand she was named as Honored Blood-Sister and granted a feast of celebration on the occasion of her birth-season.

I received the pack-decree on my knees, my roll-seat pushed back so I could kneel on the stone. When I raised my head, Thalwen was standing in the doorway in flowing rose-red cloth, her face like a flower turned toward the sun.

Dravik stood at her side, his expression — for the first time in three years — soft.

The golden light blazed.

"You are surprised. You should not be."

"Your blood-brother's hand wrote that decree freely. He did not hesitate. This is the measure of where you now stand with everyone who once called you theirs."

"No legs to carry you. No blood-brother who will see you. No mate who chooses you. No cub who turns toward you. The hollow shell of a First-Claimed, emptied out by her own doing."

"And she whom I have chosen stands in the light you threw away."

I held the pack-decree so tightly the edges cut into my fingers.

So the busy schedule had been a lie. The contempt was the truth.

Sorren walked out from inside and bowed to Thalwen with genuine courtesy. "Congratulations, Honored Thalwen."

From first to last, he did not look at me.

I wheeled myself back to my quarters and sat in the silence.

The den-servants were moving things — not mine. Thalwen's. She was being received into the Pack-Lord's Den, and Dravik was going with her to present her.

Warlord's House was empty.

Just me. Just the crutch leaning against the corner. Just my own shadow.

I looked down at my legs, which felt nothing, and I laughed.

Good.

Quiet.

I pushed slowly back toward my room and held the little carved hare in my palm.

My blood-brother had stopped wanting me.

My cub had stopped wanting me.

My beast-husband had stopped wanting me.

That was fine.

I still had myself.