The lock shattered under my hands.

I didn't know I had that kind of strength. Didn't know the White Wolf could lend me her power even before I'd fully shifted. But the metal bent like paper, and then I was running—down the hallway, down the stairs, my bare feet slapping against stone.

The dungeon entrance was guarded by a single Delta. He saw me coming and reached for his radio, but I was faster. My hand closed around his wrist, and I felt bones grind together under my grip. He dropped to his knees with a choked sound.

"The key," I said.

He gave it to me.

The dungeon smelled like mold and old fear. The stairs went down forever, each step colder than the last, and by the time I reached the bottom my breath was coming out in white clouds.

Kaizen's cell was at the end of the corridor.

I knew before I opened the door. Knew from the silence. Knew from the way the air felt too still, too empty.

He was lying on the stone floor, his body curled on its side like he'd been trying to get warm. His lips were blue. His eyes were open.

I dropped to my knees beside him and pulled him into my lap. His skin was ice-cold, his chest utterly still.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no—"

I pressed my hands to his chest, tried to push healing energy into him the way I'd been taught, but there was nothing there. No spark. No life. Just cold flesh and empty eyes staring at nothing.

"Kaizen, please—"

His hand twitched.

I grabbed it, pressed it between both of mine. "I'm here. I'm here, I've got you—"

His lips moved. The sound that came out was barely a whisper, more breath than voice.

"Burn it," he said.

I leaned closer, my forehead pressed against his. "What?"

"Burn it all... down."

His hand went limp in mine.

I sat there for a long time, holding my brother's body in the dark. I didn't cry. Couldn't cry. There was something hard and cold forming in my chest where my heart used to be, something that felt like the White Wolf's teeth.

The mate bond with Callan was still there, that golden thread connecting us. But it felt different now. Rotten. Necrotic. Like a wound that had festered too long.

I laid Kaizen down gently, crossed his hands over his chest. Then I stood.

There was a torch burning in a bracket on the wall. I took it down and held the flame to the hem of my dress until it caught. Watched the fire crawl up the fabric. Then I dropped it on the floor and walked out, leaving my brother's body in the cell.

Let them find him. Let them see what they'd done.

I had work to do.

---

I left the pack territory before dawn, carrying nothing but a small vial of Kaizen's ashes that I'd scraped from the dungeon floor and a silver dagger I'd stolen from the armory. The guards at the border were changing shifts. No one saw me slip through.

The Neutral Zone was a three-hour walk through the forest. By the time I reached the edge of pack lands, my feet were bleeding and my dress was in tatters, but I didn't stop. Couldn't stop.

The White Wolf paced inside me, restless and hungry.

*Soon,* I told her. *Soon.*

The tavern was exactly where Elara had told me it would be, years ago when I'd healed her pup and she'd whispered secrets in gratitude. A squat building made of gray stone, sitting at the crossroads where three territories met and none had jurisdiction.

I pushed open the door.

The interior was dark and smelled like stale beer and wet dog. A dozen pairs of eyes turned toward me—Rogues, mostly, and a few Omegas who'd been cast out. The kind of wolves who had nothing left to lose.

I walked to the bar.

The woman behind it was ancient, her face a map of scars and wrinkles. She looked at me for a long moment, then her eyes widened.

"Little healer," Elara said softly. "What did they do to you?"

"I need to find him," I said. My voice sounded strange. Flat. "The Shadow King."

She went very still. "That's not a name you speak lightly."

"I know what he is." I leaned forward, my hands flat on the bar. "I know he's the late Alpha's bastard. I know he has Lycan blood. I know he was exiled for being too powerful." I met her eyes. "And I know he wants revenge just as badly as I do."

Elara studied me. Then she reached under the bar and pulled out a scrap of paper, scribbled an address.

"He's in the Wild Lands," she said. "Three days north. But child—" She caught my wrist as I reached for the paper. "The Shadow King doesn't help people out of kindness. If you go to him, you'll owe him. And his debts are paid in blood."

I took the paper.

"Good," I said. "So are mine."

The Wild Lands smelled like death and pine needles.

I'd been walking for three days straight, sleeping in trees when exhaustion forced me to stop, drinking from streams that tasted like iron. My feet were raw inside my stolen boots, and my dress—what was left of it—hung in strips around my legs.

The White Wolf kept me moving. Kept me warm when the nights turned freezing. Kept the predators away with the weight of her presence alone.

The Rogue encampment appeared without warning.

One moment I was pushing through dense underbrush, the next I was standing at the edge of a clearing that shouldn't exist. Wooden structures rose from the forest floor—not crude shelters, but actual buildings. A fortress carved from the wilderness itself.

I took one step forward.

Wolves materialized from the shadows. Dozens of them. Their eyes glowed in the darkness, feral and hungry, and their growls vibrated through the ground beneath my feet.

I should have been terrified.

I wasn't.

"I'm here to see the Shadow King," I said.

The wolves circled closer. One of them—a massive gray beast with scars crisscrossing his muzzle—snapped his teeth inches from my throat.

I didn't flinch.

*Let me out,* the White Wolf snarled inside me. *Let me show them—*

Not yet.

The air changed. Pressure built in my skull, heavy and suffocating, like standing too close to a lightning strike. The electric lamps strung between the buildings flickered once, twice, then exploded in showers of sparks.

He walked out of the darkness like he was part of it.

Talon Meyer was bigger than I'd expected. Taller than Callan, broader through the shoulders, moving with the fluid grace of something that had spent years hunting and being hunted. His hair was black with silver streaks that caught the moonlight, and his eyes—

His eyes were the color of molten gold.

He crossed the clearing in three strides and pressed a blade to my throat.

"Give me one reason," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "why I shouldn't kill you where you stand, Luna."

The title was an insult in his mouth.

I met his eyes and didn't look away. "Because I can give you what you want."

"And what's that?"

"The Silver Moon Pack. Burning."

Something flickered across his face. Interest, maybe. Or hunger.

He lowered the blade but didn't step back. "You're Callan Hart's mate."

"Was." I pulled down the collar of my dress, showing him the incomplete mark on my neck. The one that had never fully healed because Callan had never finished it. "Not anymore."

Talon's eyes narrowed. Then his gaze dropped lower, to the bruises on my arms. The blood still crusted under my fingernails. The hollow look in my face that came from three days without real sleep.

"What did they do to you?" he asked quietly.

I told him.

Not everything. Not the parts that would make me cry, because I was done crying. But I told him about Kaizen. About the baby I'd lost. About Mackenzie's lies and Abram's manipulation and Callan's cold indifference as I bled on the infirmary floor.

When I finished, Talon was silent for a long moment.

Then he sheathed his blade.

"What do you want from me?" he asked.

"An alliance." I pulled the folded papers from inside my dress—the ones I'd stolen from Callan's office before I left. Financial records. Security schedules. Guard rotations. "I have everything you need to infiltrate the pack. Weaknesses in their defenses. Proof of Abram's embezzlement. Names of wolves who are loyal to him instead of Callan."

I held them out.

"In exchange, I want to watch them burn."

Talon took the papers, his fingers brushing mine. The contact sent a jolt through me—not the mate bond, that rotten golden thread still connecting me to Callan. Something else. Something new and terrifying.

He felt it too. I saw it in the way his eyes widened slightly, the way his hand lingered a moment too long.

"A blood oath," he said finally. "If we do this, we do it properly. No backing out. No mercy."

"Good." I pulled the silver dagger from my belt. "I don't want mercy."

He drew his own blade—black metal that seemed to drink the moonlight—and held out his palm.

I cut mine first. The pain was sharp and clean, and I welcomed it. Then Talon cut his, and we pressed our hands together.

His blood was hot against mine.

"I swear," he said, his voice carrying the weight of an Alpha command even though he had no pack, "to help you destroy the Silver Moon Pack and everyone who hurt you."

"I swear," I said, and the White Wolf rose inside me, lending her power to my words, "to give you the vengeance you were denied. To help you reclaim what was stolen."

The oath settled over us like chains. Like wings.

When we pulled our hands apart, the cuts had already begun to heal, leaving matching scars across our palms.

Talon looked at me for a long moment. Then he smiled, and it was the most dangerous thing I'd ever seen.

"Welcome to the Wild Lands, Aria Mills," he said. "Let's teach them what happens when they break a Luna."