Chapter 2

Three days after Liliana's return, I moved out of the Alpha's quarters.

There wasn't much to pack. Almost everything in the house was Adrian's. I owned a few pieces of clothing.

On the west side of the castle grounds stood an old cottage, long abandoned. Gray-green moss crawled up the stone walls.

It suited me. Quiet.

I set my things down, sat on the mossy stone bench in the courtyard, and stared at nothing for a while.

That was the day Cassian came to find me.

He walked into the courtyard carrying a dark bundle in his arms.

"Found it at the edge of the territory. Badly injured." He set the bundle on the ground.

I looked down. A black wolf.

Jet-black all over, fur matted with dried blood and mud. Wounds of every size covered its body—some scabbed over, some still oozing.

The worst was the hind leg.

Its right hind leg was gone at the root. Jagged bone protruded from the stump, white and raw, the surrounding flesh curled back. My stomach turned.

"I was going to leave it with the healer," Cassian said, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, "but its scent is off somehow. The healer refused to keep it."

I crouched and gathered the black wolf carefully into my hands. It shifted in my palms—a feeble, struggling twitch.

"Can I have it?" I asked Cassian.

He looked down at me.

The relationship between us could charitably be described as hostile.

Everyone in the Silvercrown tribe knew that the Alpha's chief aide despised me. From the first day I'd been brought into the tribe, he'd never shown me a kind face. A meek Omega wearing Liliana's face, occupying the Luna's seat—I was a thorn in his side.

True to form, he opened his mouth, dripping with his usual contempt: "What do you want with this broken, ugly thing?"

Broken.

I lowered my head and unconsciously touched my severed finger. The pad of my thumb traced the blunt stump of bone—rough and familiar.

I smiled slightly.

"It's no different from me."

Cassian's expression faltered. His gaze drifted involuntarily to my missing finger. He sighed. "The wolf's barely alive. Whether it survives is on you."

Then he left.

The courtyard was quiet again—just me and the fading warmth in my arms.

I carried it inside and found the meager supplies I had. The cottage was pitifully bare—expired medicine, yellowed gauze.

I laid it on the stone bed and lifted its severed hind leg to treat the wound. It struggled weakly, front paws scratching the stone as if trying to escape.

"Hold still." I kept my voice as gentle as I could. "This will sting a little."

It stopped moving. Black eyes fixed on me, perfectly quiet.

I applied the medicine and wrapped the gauze—clumsy work. I'd treated Adrian's wounds before, back in the Abyss, but I'd had my healing power then. A palm pressed to the injury and it would mend at visible speed.

Now, facing this small creature's missing leg, all I had were a pair of incomplete hands and a bottle of expired ointment.

Night deepened. Wind howled through a hole in the roof, cold and sharp. I wrapped it in a blanket and held it against my chest, back against the stone wall.

Its body temperature was frighteningly low.

I looked down at it—a three-legged, barely breathing black wolf.

A broken thing.

Just like me.