Marked by the alpha king I was meant to destroy

hich was the only reason Mira could stand to k

our knuckles, dried dark under your nails, turned the water pink in slow, unhurried ribbons even after yo

nything, should h

't. Not

hodically, the way predators did when they suspected they'd found something valuable. He hadn't said what he thought she was. He hadn't needed to. She'd seen th

thought, flexing her fingers un

e between another quiet night and the end of

k sat dark and deliberate against her skin like something had reached into her at birth and signed its name. A crescent wrapped in thorns

Moon Wolf is born. That wolf is

the answer to a question no one

tage, the shaking in her hands

ore - her hips had gone bad two winters back, and turning cost more than it was worth most days.

off her boots. "The body's the rogue's p

ir

straight to the border patrol with what

nstead she held out one gnarled, trembling hand, palm up, and waited - the way she had every night since Mira wa

ng them the way she'd been taught, the way she did every night without fail even when her own hands

running a thumb over the swollen joints. "

l be hunting ro

th. I contai

ken everyone who could have claimed that word honestly. But Greta had found a bleeding, orphaned six-year-old in the woods with a mark no chil

tonight," Greta sa

ds stilled

been reading your face since yo

f answering right away. How did she explain a feeling that didn't have a shape yet? A

tead, which was true, and easier. "Alpha's men. Burn

nd

came smoother than sh

ed him nothing, watching him end a challenger's life in the time it took her to draw one unsteady breath - and then watching him sto

him anyway, some traitorous, wordless part of her that had gone still and aware in a way

ew Alpha King Darius. Knew him the way you knew a storm was

n her pack didn'

o the ground. She didn't remember much of it. Smoke, mostly. Someone screaming her name before the sound got swallowed by something louder. Greta always said it was a mercy that Mira did

ght have remembered

quire Mira to remember why she hated him. It only required her to hate hi

ng before he disc

on simple. Simple was su

g that thing

t th

somewhere I ca

ice - easy, sharp-edged, designed to end a conversation rather th

anything now. She just held the old woman's hands a little tighter, until Greta finally sighed and let the subject go, the way she always eve

palm flat against her own collarbone again, over the mark, over the place where

g. The three seconds it had taken him to end a man's life. The

that she hadn't expect

ver and over in the dark like a stone she couldn't quite skip across still water. Alpha King Darius. Destro

hat meant, because nothing in her training had ever accounted for the possibility that the moment she fina

t the dark. Beautiful men die the same as ugly ones. It does

ost bel

g to understand, was be