Vera huddled alone in a stone cell, her voice raw and aching from screaming for the Vilkan guards to release the other women. No one listened. No one even heard her. She’d been isolated from the others, and the separation had percolated her fear into something suffocating and blistering.

The Vilkas had learned their lesson. All the women had been separated once the shifters realized the humans weren’t as mild as they’d thought.

She shivered in her still-damp clothing. To distract herself, she glanced around her tiny cell, which could have been the exact same one she’d been placed in upon arriving on Kladuu.

The dim lighting strained her eyes until she had to clench them closed, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her forehead against her damp pants. She faced the door and told herself she was only going to rest her eyes for a moment.

She jerked awake some time later, momentarily disoriented in the dark silence of the cell. To keep herself from trembling, she rose from the hard floor and paced. News or food or movement on the other side of the barred door never came. Eventually, when the hunger pains in her stomach became unbearable, she curled up on the ground and slept some more.

Winding through her nightmares was the memory of Rayner’s heartbroken face as she’d been arrested. He’d looked at her with so much fear and regret. She’d needed more time to explain her actions, to convince him she wasn’t going to leave.

But could he really believe her? He knew she hated her role as a servant. He knew she needed her freedom. She didn’t even believe herself when she thought she could stay here.

Not that it mattered now. She’d been caught. Exile would be her fate.

She woke to heavy clanging outside her door. Wood scraped heavily across the rock, and a sliver of light spilled into the cell.

Vera scrambled to her feet, dizzily swaying. “Rayner?”

“It’s me, miss,” a young voice said. A boy, barely ten, scampered into her cell, his baggy servant clothes dragging on the floor. As he moved, he gripped the ground with his grimy toes as if he was used to being constantly knocked over. The cell door banged shut behind him. Vera recognized him as the boy she’d helped with his laundry, the one whose benefactor hit him.

The scent of baked bread hit Vera right in the chest. She rushed over to meet him. “This is for me?”

“Yes, miss.” The boy offered her the basket of bread and nuts.

Vera didn’t want to overthink why the servants had even thought to bring her food, especially when they hated her so much. She scooped it into her arms, sinking to the ground, her teeth already ripping off a piece of bread. Barely chewing, she swallowed. “Thank you,” she whispered, meeting the boy’s eyes. “Thank you so much.”

The boy shot a glance over his shoulder toward the waiting guard. In a voice so quiet Vera barely caught it, he said, “Thank you, miss. You’ve done a wonderful thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your escape. You gave us hope.”

From outside, the door’s lock banged again. “How long does it take to drop off food?” the guard yelled.

“But I was caught,” Vera said quickly to the boy as the door scraped its way open.

“What was it like? Being outside?” The words tumbled off the boy’s tongue too quick, too loud. “What did the sky look like? And the Draqons! The other boys say their scales are magic. Were—”

The guard shouldered into the cell with a growl and swooped the tiny boy up under his arm. He kicked over the basket of food, sending bread and nuts scattering.

“Careful!” Vera shouted. She rushed after the guard, reaching for the boy’s hand. “Don’t hurt him!”

The guard pivoted and slammed a fist into Vera’s belly.

The wind whooshed out of her so fast she fell to the ground, gasping and choking.

Her cell door slammed shut.

* * *

It had taken nearly two full days for Rayner to get time with Kaveh. Two days. Two days of Vera sitting in a cell, cold and hungry, with those idiot guards smacking her around. It had taken every ounce of Rayner’s control, Gerrit’s strong-arming, and the contingent of guards who followed his every step to keep from shoving his way right through the donjon and demanding to see the Alpha.

Even Gerrit hadn’t seen much of his father. It didn’t bode well. They both knew what it could mean, but they never spoke the thought aloud.

Kaveh was in the last stages of his moon madness.

Meeting with Kaveh, seeing the old Alpha on his wide seat in the throne room of the donjon, had only confirmed Rayner and Gerrit’s fears. The Alpha could barely form a sentence. The madness was taking him. It wouldn’t be long now.

But he’d been clear on two points. Rayner was no longer Beta of Clan Vilka. He wasn’t anything. No title. No authority. He was a disgraced clan member with nothing to his name.

If Kaveh had thought to cripple Rayner with the announcement, he’d thought wrong. Rayner stood tall, having expected it, and waited for Kaveh’s response to his plea for leniency toward Vera and the three other women.

There would be none of that either.

Her trial would be held tomorrow at noon, her fate to be decided by Kaveh and his new Beta, Ansel. Rayner would not be privy to any other information about the human prisoner.

Vera’s treatment went beyond trying to escape. She would receive a worse punishment than exile. Rayner guessed it would be a death sentence. A public line in the sand, an example made of her. Because her escape attempt had triggered something inside the mountain. Something all the Vilkas felt.

Even deep in his madness, Kaveh felt it too. The ripple of unrest, like a brisk winter wind blowing across the mountain range. It was the winds of change, and they’d started gusting after Vera’s escape attempt.

It had been decades since a servant had tried to escape, much less nearly succeeded. Decades of subservience and obedience. Rayner had mistaken it for peace, but it wasn’t. It was repression. Oppression. Everything he’d hated seeing his mother live under.

He’d fooled himself.

But the servants had seen, and they were changing.

Rayner finally saw now too, and in the time it had taken Kaveh to meet with him, Rayner had been planning.

Gerrit met Rayner outside the throne room. He straightened off the wall where he’d been leaning and waiting, staring down the new Beta with a blank stare. “How did it go?” he asked as soon as the door had closed behind Rayner.

“As we thought,” Rayner said to the young heir. He turned to Ansel. “If you need any help in the transition—”

“I won’t,” Ansel said with a smirk. He’d always resented Rayner, a younger, smarter version of himself, for taking the position he’d thought he was entitled to.

“Fine, but you need to keep an eye on Savas.”

Ansel snorted. “Why? He’s Omega. I heard they won’t even take his bets in the oihook fights.”

Rayner felt that stiff breeze of change at the back of his neck. His skin prickled in warning. “You don’t know where he is?”

The derision in Ansel’s eyes faded. For all his resentment of Rayner, he couldn’t deny the previous Beta had been effective. “I should have him followed? What for?”

“He won’t settle into his rank easily. He’s not going to just take that lying down,” Gerrit answered before Rayner could. The young man glanced at Rayner for confirmation. Through his fear and rage, Rayner felt a spike of pride. He nodded at the future Alpha. Gerrit turned back to Ansel and said, “The Omega Selection was a great offense. His loyalists will be rallying around him right now. You need guards on Savas and his closest men at all times.”

Ansel glanced back toward the throne room. For a second, Rayner thought they’d actually convinced him. “You’re overreacting,” he told Rayner, even though Gerrit had spoken. To speak down to the young heir would have been a crime. “Savas has sunk into the depths of the mountain where he came from. Take it from me, we won’t ever see that old bastard again.”

“That,” Rayner said quietly as he turned to walk away with Gerrit, “will be your first and last mistake as Beta.”

“Why will it be my last?” Ansel called out before Rayner and Gerrit had gotten too far down the hall.

Without glancing back, Rayner said, “Because it will get you killed.”