Chapter 1

With one month left until my due date, I thought I had finally begun to crawl out of that nightmare.

The territory looked exactly as it always had. Only Rowan's room remained locked. Whenever I passed that door, my feet never lingered—my pace would quicken without thinking, as if slowing even for a second meant something unseen inside would reach out and drag me back.

I rested a hand on my belly and felt the small life within turn over.

In a few more weeks, this little wolf would come into the world.

I had believed it would be a new beginning.

Until I found that dust-covered report in Caius's study.

Mother: Ella Raven.

Male subject tested: Caius Raven.

The date was three months ago—when I was five months pregnant.

And yet I had no memory of undergoing any such examination.

What terrified me most was the final line of the conclusion:

"The tested male is excluded as the biological father of the fetus."

Then whose child was I carrying?

Caius. What is the meaning of this?

Three years ago, on an ordinary evening, Rowan was kicking a ball in the territory's rear courtyard.

That stretch of grass was wide—the place he had run and played in since he was small. There were two shallow depressions worn into the turf where he always planted his feet. I stood at the second-floor window and called him in for dinner.

He looked back, waved, and grinned.

The next second, a dull impact split the air. Rowan dropped to the grass in front of my eyes.

I ran down.

He was crumpled on the ground, his chest torn open. A silver bullet wound—for a wolf, such wounds are nearly impossible to heal. Blood poured from the injury, staining the grass a deep, dark brown.

He was ten years old.

He hadn't yet experienced his first shift. He hadn't even fully awakened; the Moon Goddess hadn't had the chance to complete her blessing before someone used a silver bullet to wipe it all away.

I held him, kneeling on the grass, his blood soaking through my skirt, seeping into my skin—cold. I kept calling his name. His eyes were open, but the focus drained from them steadily.

At sunset, Caius came racing back from the border and pulled me up off the ground.

"Ella. Look at me." He cradled Rowan in his arms. "Calm yourself. I've already sent people to investigate."

I stared at his face.

His jaw was set, his eyes sharp—the expression of an Alpha managing a crisis. Rational. Controlled. Not a crack in the surface, not a single weakness for the pack to see.

I understood. An Alpha cannot break down in front of his people.

But he was also Rowan's father.

So why—why was there not one trace of real grief anywhere on that face?

That night, he spent two hours in his study on the communication lines—reaching his tracking contacts across the territory through the mind-link, reorganizing the territory's defense and patrol grid. Deep into the night, he came back to the bedroom and lay down beside me.

"Don't worry," he said. "Whoever did this will pay."

He said it with complete and total calm.

But three years passed, and the killer was never found.

Rowan became a name neither of us could say aloud—a wound too raw to touch.

About a year ago, one evening, I sat across the dinner table and watched Caius cut into his steak.

Outside the window, a full moon was rising. Moonlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling glass and cast the planes of his profile in sharp relief. On his neck, my mark was clearly visible—a mirror to the crescent scar on my own neck, facing it across the distance.

Fated mates. The Moon Goddess's design.

Something in me broke through.

I cannot go on like this.

"Caius," I said. "I want to have another child."

His knife stopped.

He looked up at me, and for just a moment there was surprise in his eyes—a flash of being caught off guard. But in the next second, it was gone, smoothed over. His expression became warm and soft again, the way an Alpha looks at his Luna when everything is as it should be.

"Whatever you want," he said. "Darling."

He had held that report for three months already. He had known this child wasn't his. He had watched me count every week of this pregnancy with hope and gratitude. He knew everything. He said nothing.

Why?

I needed to confront him.

I grabbed my jacket and drove to the council hall at the border. It was where Caius conducted pack business, surrounded by people he trusted, off-limits to outsiders.

At the far end of the corridor, the council chamber Caius always used—the door was ajar.

There were voices inside.

"Sera's travel arrangements are confirmed," Caius's voice, with a barely concealed undercurrent of anticipation. "She arrives the day after tomorrow."

Someone acknowledged it. "Should we move faster on the situation with Finn, then?"

"We have to," Caius said. "Before Sera gets back, I want Finn formally admitted into the inner circle. Handle the advancement ceremony—doesn't need to be grand, but everyone who matters had better be there."

Another voice cut in, probing. "Alpha... forgive me for saying it, but the Luna—she hasn't noticed anything, all these years?"

A brief silence.

Then Caius let out a slow breath.

"Finn was too reckless back then." His voice dropped a register. "He was only eighteen. He didn't have the finesse. Rowan was just a ten-year-old pup—there were other ways to handle it. But..."

A pause.

"I owe Sera too much. I can't be too hard on him for this."

Finn.

The one Caius described as "a distant relation's child," the young man who'd been quietly brought into the territory a couple of years ago and groomed as an Alpha candidate—

He had killed my Rowan.

My hands pressed flat against the corridor wall. The other hand clamped over my mouth.

"Even if Ella suspects something, what can she do?" Caius went on, his tone carrying a languid, settled certainty. "As long as my mark is on her neck, she can't leave this territory. She has nothing without me."

Someone sighed. "When you put it that way... the Luna really is pitiable."

Laughter rose.

Caius laughed too.

"The only real spark between us was that one night when we first met," he said, his voice going light and careless. "Standing on the terrace, feeling the wind—a little conversation. That was all it ever was. Letting you all have some fun with her is practically doing her a favor."

The laughter grew louder.

A favor.

The corridor was very quiet, except for the sound of my own heartbeat.

I turned and walked back, step by step, to where I'd left the car. I got in and closed the door.

In that sealed, silent space, I drew a long breath and heard the tremor in it.

Then I opened the communicator and dialed a number I hadn't called voluntarily in fifteen years.

Three rings.

"Papa," I said.

"...Is that you." A few seconds of silence. Then Griffin Frostthorn's voice came through the line—"Ella."

Low. Steady. Like a mountain.

"Papa, I need your help." I choked on the words.

A very quiet exhale from the other end. "Tell me."

"I've been living inside a lie." I closed my eyes. "I need you to look into two people for me. And... I need to know the truth about three years ago. About Rowan's death."

Griffin was quiet for a moment.

"Within two days, I'll get you everything," he said. "But is that all you want?"

I raised my hand and touched the crescent scar at my neck.

Fifteen years of this mark. Fifteen years of this cage.

"Papa," I said. "I want to come home. I want to be Ella Frostthorn again."

Just before the line went dead, I heard him say—

"I've been waiting for you to come back. For a long time."

There was still so much truth left for me to uncover. But one thing had become absolutely clear.

A mark on the neck can be a cage. It can also be a weapon.

It all depends on whose hands are holding it.

I would never be Ella Raven again.