Chapter 2

My mother's composure shattered.

"Are you mad?" She was shaking. "That gold is for Marcus's future — his bonding ceremony, his standing in the pack. You'll get nothing. Nothing."

The word 'Marcus' landed in my stomach like a stone.

All these years — had any of them truly thought of me as one of their own?

Without my grandparents hauling salvage at the edge of pack territory to feed me, I would have disappeared into some forgotten corner long ago.

Roland shouldered past her, smiling the way a wolf smiles when it has already decided what it's going to do.

"Bold little pup." His gaze moved over me the way you'd measure livestock at a market. "Since you won't be reasonable, I'll stop being polite."

He grabbed me by the throat.

The grip was absolute — I couldn't breathe, couldn't twist free.

He dragged me like carrion toward the dirt track outside the gate, my knees dragging and cracking against the stones.

I clawed at his hand, raking lines across his skin.

"You little—" He released my throat to deliver a blow across my face instead.

My ears rang. Half my face went numb. I hit the ground and tasted copper.

Pack members appeared at the commotion, gathering along the road.

Roland transformed instantly. One moment he was a man who had just struck a child; the next he was a pillar of wounded community leadership, pointing down at me with open palms.

"Look at this! A hero's daughter, and she's turned against her own family!"

"She's willing to throw away her father's honor for money. For a personal claim against me!"

"I sheltered her for three years, gave her everything, and now she wants to extort sixty thousand gold from my household!"

The crowd congealed around me.

I pulled myself upright and looked at the faces — people I had called uncle, aunt, neighbor.

"Fallen far, hasn't she? Her father would be ashamed."

"Girl doesn't know her place. No wonder nobody wants her."

"Roland took her in and she has the nerve—"

Each word landed like a lash.

I looked around for one voice. Just one.

There wasn't any.

These same wolves had howled their grief at my father's burial. Now they ground me into the mud to stay in Roland's favor, and didn't lose a step doing it.

Clara stood to the side, face covered, making the sounds of a woman in distress.

"I don't know what to do with her anymore," she said to no one in particular. "She was always difficult. I've tried so hard."

She played the aggrieved parent so effortlessly that something inside me simply stopped aching and went cold.

Roland saw that the crowd was his, and grabbed my wrist to force my hand to the parchment.

"You'll mark this. Here, now. One way or another."

His grip was a vice; my wrist bones ground against each other.

"Let go!"

I fought, but a seventeen-year-old girl has no leverage against a fully ranked Elite male. He was going to take this from me. My father's last gift. The only thing he'd left me.

No.

I bit down on Roland's hand with everything I had.

He howled and released me. I scrambled back — and then his second blow came, harder than the first, and I went down and stayed down.

His men joined in.

I curled small and took it.

Then, through split vision, I looked up and met Roland's eyes.

Blood was running from my lip, but my voice came out level.

"You'll regret this."

Quiet. Simple. Everyone on that road heard it.

Roland laughed. His men laughed. The crowd shuffled and smirked.

"You'll regret it?" He crouched down to my level, amused. "A fatherless runt is going to make me regret something?"

"You'll never stand up again, girl. Not in this pack. Not anywhere."