Chapter 1

I died on my knees.

My mate signed the order.

My bastard sister held the blade.

Then the Moon Goddess handed me back three years of my life.

And tonight, in front of a thousand wolves, Aldric Thorne burned the only royal favor he would ever be given—to claim her.

The Moon Hall went silent enough to hear the candles hiss.

"I invoke my mother's blood-boon," Aldric said, kneeling before the throne with his spine straight and his eyes shining. "I ask for Rosalind Ashvale as my Luna."

Rosalind. My father's ward. My mother's shame. A girl with no rank, no name, no claim to anything but the roof my family gave her out of pity.

Elder Corvyn, the pack seer, opened his mouth to protest. I caught his eye and shook my head once. Let him.

That blood-boon had been granted to Aldric as a pup, after his mother threw herself between him and a rogue's teeth and died for it. One favor. Anything he wanted, once, from the Alpha King.

In my last life, he spent it on the throne.

He spent it on the throne, and I helped him take it, and eleven months after I was crowned his Luna he had me dragged into the courtyard and executed for a crime his mistress invented over breakfast.

Now he was spending it on her. Early. Cheap. Like a boy throwing gold into a river to hear the splash.

I could have wept with joy.

The Luna Queen's voice cut through the hall. "Lady Elara. You have been promised to my son since you were six years old. What do you say to this?"

Every head turned to me.

I lowered into a curtsy so smooth it could have been carved. "His Alpha does my sister great honor," I said. "House Ashvale is grateful."

Something flickered across Aldric's face. Not guilt. Irritation—that I hadn't screamed.

"Your Majesty," he said quickly, "I do not ask this out of ambition for my brother's crown. Rosalind and I are of one heart. She is a bastard-born girl with no claim to the prophecy, no house, no army. There is nothing in this for me but her."

"And yet," the Luna Queen said slowly, "every wolf in Moonhaven has watched Elara Ashvale walk at your side since she could walk at all. For you to stand here now and say—"

"I saw her as a little sister." He said it fast. Too fast. "I'm sorry the court read more into it than there was."

A little sister.

Twelve winters. Every hunt, every war council, every night I sat awake decoding enemy movements from the visions that split my skull open, and handed him victories wrapped in ribbon.

A little sister.

I kept my head down so no one would see me smile.

Because here is what Aldric Thorne had forgotten: he never won anything. I won it, and let him carry it home.

His elder brother, Caelen, stood at the foot of the dais with his arms crossed—the Crown Alpha, the heir, the man I had personally helped destroy in a life no one else remembered. He hadn't spoken once. He was watching me the way a hunter watches a treeline.

The Alpha King granted the boon. The hall erupted. Rosalind was brought forward in borrowed silk, weeping prettily, and someone had drawn a crescent moon on her forehead in kohl.

A crescent. The Moon-Marked sign. The seer's prophecy—a she-wolf will be born with the moon on her brow, and she will see what has not yet come, and the pack that binds her will rule.

She'd drawn it on. In eyeliner.

And a thousand wolves knelt to it.

I touched my own forehead, where three layers of pale cream hid the mark I was born with, and I let them all kneel.

I made it four steps out of the hall before a hand closed on my elbow.

Aldric. Close enough that I could smell cedar and cold night air, the way I used to fall asleep to.

He leaned down to my ear, and his voice was almost gentle.

"I know you came back too, Elara."