Mara Vale ran barefoot through the winter forest with her wedding veil tangled around one wrist and Alpha Rowan's blood drying beneath her fingernails. Behind her, the bells of Blackthorn Keep rang for a mating ceremony that had never been completed. The pack would assume she had attacked their Alpha. They would not ask why a silver knife had been hidden beneath the ceremonial pillow.
Snow cut her feet, but terror kept her moving. Ten minutes before the vows, Mara had overheard Rowan promise the council that her death would transfer the last of her father's territory to him. She had waited until he pressed his mouth to her throat, then driven her elbow into his wound and fled through the chapel window.
The border river appeared between the trees, black water moving beneath plates of ice. On the opposite bank stood the warning stones of Nightfall territory. Their Alpha, Kieran Ash, had killed three Blackthorn wolves the previous spring. Rowan called him a monster without law or mercy.
Hounds bayed behind Mara. She stepped onto the ice.
Halfway across, a crack opened beneath her heel. The river swallowed her so quickly she had no time to scream. Cold crushed the air from her lungs. A hand closed around the back of her dress and dragged her through the broken surface.
Mara woke beside a fire with a stranger's coat around her shoulders. The man crouched across from her, broad and silent, his eyes reflecting silver. A scar crossed his mouth. Nightfall wolves watched from between the trees.
“You crossed my border carrying an Alpha's blood,” he said. “Give me one reason not to return you.”
Mara lifted her chin, though her teeth shook. “Because Rowan plans to poison every well in your eastern villages at moonrise.”
The stranger's expression did not change. “How do you know?”
She pulled the stolen vial from her bodice. The liquid inside glowed green. The wolves around them recoiled from the scent of wolfsbane.
The man came closer and touched the unfinished mating mark at Mara's throat. Heat exploded beneath his fingers. Every wolf in the clearing dropped to one knee.
Mara stared at him. She had crossed the river seeking refuge from Nightfall's Alpha.
She had been rescued by him.
Kieran's gaze sharpened as a second mark—older, hidden beneath the false bond Rowan had carved—began to glow over Mara's heart. “You are not Blackthorn's Luna,” he said. “You were always mine.”