LILLIAN
My head is splitting.
The pain gets there before anything else does — a deep, pulsing throb behind my eyes that makes it hard to think.
Fragments come back out of order.
Melva, shifted, charging across the camp.
Another wolf slamming into her from the side.
A hand closing over my mouth and nose, cloth soaked in something sharp and chemical.
Then nothing.
I jolt upright.
Wood creaks under me.
The world sways in a steady, rolling rhythm I know immediately — a carriage, moving fast.
My wrists are bound in front of me, rope biting into skin already raw.
My ankles are tied too, crossed at the joint so I can’t kick out.
“Melva—”
She’s beside me on the bench, chains wrapped around her wrists and throat, the kind of iron that presses a wolf’s shift down and keeps it there.
A dried line of blood runs from her hairline to her jaw.
Her eyes snap open the second I say her name.
“Are you hurt?” She’s already struggling upright, chains clinking, twisting to look at me instead of herself.
“Lillian, look at me — are you hurt anywhere?”
“I’m fine.
Melva, your head—”
“It’s nothing.
I heal fast.” She says it like she’s already dismissed it, like her own blood doesn’t matter enough to finish the sentence.
“Leo went down first.
Something came over him — black mist, thick as smoke, and he just collapsed.
I knew what it was the second I saw it.
A sorcerer.” Her jaw tightens.
“I shifted, I tried to get to you, and something hit me from behind before I made it three steps.”
“How is that possible?” My voice comes out thinner than I want it to.
“This close to Blood Surge territory?”
“I don’t know.” Melva shakes her head, and winces at the movement.
“Rogues, maybe.
I’ve never seen anything like that mist in my life.”
Rogues wielding dark magic strong enough to drop a trained warrior in seconds — I’ve heard the rumors, the stories passed around like ghost stories, rogues gathering at pack borders where no one can track them.
My pulse picks up.
A sorcerer isn’t a rumor anymore.
A sorcerer is sitting somewhere close enough to have done this.
Melva watches my face.
“Lillian.” Careful now, quieter.
“Could this be your father?”
I don’t answer right away.
My jaw is already tight before I decide to speak, and I know she sees it.
“It’s him,” I say.
“This has his hands all over it.
Rogues, a sorcerer, a mist attack that looks random — it’s exactly the kind of thing he’d hire out so it never traces back to him.”
“If it’s really Frederick,” Melva says, “why would he let you be bound like this?
Chained, tied — his own daughter?”
“Because that’s the point.” The words come out flat, cold, like I’m explaining something I memorized a long time ago.
“If I show up untouched, Azriel asks questions.
If I show up bound and dragged through the woods, it looks like exactly what it’s supposed to look like — a rogue abduction.
My father doesn’t get anywhere near the blame.”
The carriage jolts to a stop.
Melva goes rigid beside me.
I hold my breath.
The door opens.
A man steps up into the frame — rough-looking, unshaven, a scar cutting through one eyebrow — and he doesn’t say a word of explanation.
He just holds out a folded parchment.
“Read it,” he says.
“Tell me when you’re done.”
I take it with bound hands.
The moment I see the handwriting, my stomach drops — I’d know it anywhere, that same clipped, controlled script from every order he ever signed, every list of chores nailed to the servant’s door.
*Lillian —*
*I should have gotten you out sooner.
I couldn’t risk moving before now without drawing suspicion.
I will retrieve you soon.
Understand that killing the Alpha King is no longer an option — he has marked you, and your life is bound to his now.
Instead, you will gather what you can about him.
What he plans.
What he fears.
I will come for you when it is safe.*
*— F.*
I read it twice.
Then I fold it back along its original creases.
“I’m done,” I say.
The man takes it from my hands, strikes a match against the carriage wall, and holds the corner to the flame.
He lets it burn down almost to his fingers before he drops it and grinds the ashes into the floorboard with his boot.
Then he climbs back down without another word, and the carriage lurches forward again.
Melva stares after him.
“Is he coming for us?
Frederick?”
“That depends on the Alpha King now.” I say it lightly, but inside I’m already turning the shape of it over.
If Azriel finds us first, my father’s gamble pays off exactly as he designed it — no trail, no suspicion, and I’m delivered right back into the one place my father actually wants me: close to Azriel, listening.
Melva shifts against her chains, wincing.
“Going back to Frederick isn’t safe either way.
I’d take our chances with the Alpha King over him any day.” She looks at me.
“You’re his mate, Lillian.
Werewolves don’t treat that lightly.
He won’t let this go.”
I don’t argue with her.
She’s not wrong.
A fated bond is close to sacred in our world — it would drag Azriel toward me whether he wanted it or not, some instinct older than choice.
So why hasn’t he found us yet?
I think of the mind link, the bond humming somewhere under my skin, and wonder if we’ve traveled too far for it to reach him.
Then I remember — he never taught me how to use it.
I don’t even know if I’m doing it wrong, or not doing it at all.
I look out through the narrow slit in the carriage wall, watching the dark trees blur past.
The bond only runs one direction, when it matters most.
His mark ties his life to mine — but not the reverse.
If I die, he doesn’t.
He grieves, maybe, and then the world hands him another mate eventually, and life goes on for him the way it always has.
If he wanted me gone, he’s had a hundred chances by now.
He hasn’t taken a single one.
I turn that over slowly, uselessly, until the hours start to blur and my eyelids grow heavy despite everything.
It must be close to midnight.
My body doesn’t care about danger anymore — it just wants to stop.
I’m yawning when the carriage is thrown sideways.
Snarls erupt outside, then screaming, then the scrape of claws against wood.
Melva jerks upright, chains rattling.
The door slams open so hard it cracks against the frame.
“Lillian—” A voice I know down to my bones.
“Are you alright?”