CHAPTER ONE

Ero Wake stretched out next to his campfire, listened to the voices of the dryads, and watched the dark shadowed disc of the new moon rise into the sky.

The dryads spoke in sighs of leaves whispering together, the faint low groan of branches twining as they grew into each other and around each other, and tangled roots to roots and trunks to trunks and limbs to limbs with the curves of their beloveds.

Sometimes, as their leaf-calls blended into the crackle and bite and pop of the flames, their voices almost sounded human. Almost like words in tongues long forgotten, bled away into the soil. Maybe, deep down, the dryads remembered who they had once been. Perhaps, over the eons that the dryads had existed, they had managed to keep the words they had once known, stamped into the concentric woody rings their flesh had become.

But they lacked the human tongues to speak, and so Ero could only wonder at what they said in breaths and shudders and creaking twig-groans as he listened to them murmur and let their hush distract him from the buzzing, itching pull under his skin.

Most nights, the call of the moon drowned that pull out—the lunar siren-song tugging on him as if its gravity made tides of his blood, begging him to change, to hunt, to run, to rut, to mate, to raise his voice in howling tribute to the sky. That magnetism waxed and waned as the moon waxed and waned, until some nights it was all he could do to stay inside his skin.

But when the moon was a luminous spot of black against darker black, flanked by quiet stars, then moonsong dimmed enough for something else to find its way through. Something darker, deeper, a living thing like thorned and twisting feelers trying to crawl under his skin. Trying to snare him, trying to change him, trying to pull him north into the great blackness that whispered to them all.

Tonight, all of the Impure would be feeling it—across every mountain and every plain, over every sea and every forest, throughout every den and every ruin. That living voice was pure shadow. And if Ero had to give it a name…

He would call it the voice of despair.

Someone would give in, before dawn. Some lost soul, unable to endure another new moon with that unclean and insidious thing whispering formless dreads between their ears. They would stumble out into the night, walk north and north and north until their shoes turned to tatters and their feet became ragged bloody shreds of flesh. Ero had seen it happen more than once, and every last time the Touched would fight and claw and scream themselves into sheer madness if they were chained, bound, barred from their goal. If they weren’t let free, they would be dead by morning, pulling their own bodies to pieces.

A mercy, likely.

When worse than death waited for them in the north.

For a moment, Ero let himself wonder what it would be like if he gave in. If he stopped resisting until his body ached with the strain; if he let himself just…go.

Then he rolled over, drew his worn and tattered layers of furs and blankets around himself, and willed himself to sleep. He was halfway there, just past the sign that said he had crossed a place called Tennessee. He should have been on the road again hours ago, with the setting of the sun, but in the span of centuries…it was hard to care about a few lost hours, even if the seasons continued with the urgency of small and frantic things living small and frantic lives day after day, uncaring of the endless creatures watching over them with no sense of time, of life, of death, of meaning. The hours that meant nothing to him brought every small thing around him closer and closer to death, while he was so distant from that ghostly spectre that he had nearly forgotten its face.

He would take to the road again by midnight.

While for now, he shut out the call of the dead and let himself drift away.

 

T

Wren Striker lay silent, listening to the song from the north, when the stranger came.

He had lain this way on many nights, as the moon rose and fell, as it swelled and shrank, and with it the song grew louder and quieter, stronger and weaker, but never silent. Some of the Striker pack claimed they couldn’t hear it at all, as pure and innocent as humans in their ignorance.

But for Wren, it was never silent.

And not for the first time, he considered slipping out from beneath the heavy arm draped over him and walking out of the lair into the dark and into the dirt, bare feet on the broken road and carrying him toward that song that would never end. It was quietest near the dawn, and he closed his eyes, straining toward the fading whisper of sound, struggling to hear it past the deep, heavy breaths against his back.

What he heard, instead, were the calls of alarm, cries of challenge, from the sentries posted at the gate.

The body at his back moved. He held his breath, held still, kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want his alpha to know he was awake. If Connaught Striker knew, he would want to drag Wren out to face the intruder. Fighting always left Connaught hot and gasping, panting, needing to take his aggression out on Wren’s body—and he liked Wren to watch. Liked him to see his alpha flexing his prowess, as if one way or another Connaught would make Wren love him even if he had to defeat a thousand wolves to do it.

That’s not love, Wren thought, as Connaught’s arm lifted off him and the alpha’s body heat pulled away. That’s just power.

He thought he would get away unscathed, when he heard Connaught getting out of the thick pile of furs where they slept. Theirs was the only private room in the keep, afforded to the alpha and his omega, but there was noise outside in the hall, milling feet that said the alpha’s seconds were only waiting to be allowed inside. Connaught grunted, followed by the sounds of his leathers sliding over his skin.

“Get up,” he growled. “I want you clothed before anyone sees you.”

Wren bit back his protest—there was no point, anyway, when Connaught would smell it on him, the resentment and reluctance and ache and weariness—and obediently rose, gathering his hair up against his neck to loop it around and around and around itself until it made a heavy knot at the base of his skull, before he wrapped himself in his robes of layered pale homespun fabric, draping himself from head to toe.

He garbed himself, too, in his pride. If not pride as the alpha’s mate…

Then pride, at least, enough to keep him from looking weak in front of those who would call him ungrateful for not thanking his lot with every day and every night.

Connaught gave him a once-over, his dark brown eyes glinting, deep-set beneath a brooding brow and a thatch of chestnut brown hair. With a terse nod, the alpha jerked the drawstring of his patched-together leather trousers tight over his thick frame, his burly chest left bare, the barrel of his hardened abdomen almost leading like the buttress of a battleship as he crossed the lamp-lit stone room to its banded oak door, slipped the bolt, and beckoned his seconds inside with a toss of his head.

The men who stepped into their chambers were of the same cut as Connaught—grizzled, scarred, rough, put together from stone pieces to make great lumbering golems of strength and bristling aggression, pheromones rising off them in choking clouds of battle-readiness. Not one omega among them, or even a stripling beta; in packs such as Connaught’s, omegas were kept under lock and key.

And betas never survived.

Not among these men who gave themselves fully over to the animal inside them just to be able to live in this broken and forsaken wilderness, where survival of the fittest had been replaced by survival of the cruelest.

Connaught stood head and shoulders above them all, looking down at them with his jaw set tight and his arms folded over his chest. “Report,” he growled.

The captain of the guard—Stewart—saluted briefly. “One interloper on the fringes of our territory,” he said. “Wolf. He must be able to smell our markers, but he’s not stopping.”

“Passing through, or coming for us?” Connaught asked.

“Not sure yet.”

Connaught considered, rubbing at his beard, his eyes narrowing. In the dim torchlight filtering in from the hall, his eyes glinted, reflective and shining hot and yellow. “Bring him in,” he said.

A chorus of salutes, of grunts, and the contingent of five wolves muscled their way out into the hall, jostling for position in a constant subtle interplay of power dynamics that Wren, quite honestly, found exhausting. But he forced it down, keeping his thoughts to himself, as Connaught caught his eye. That flinty yellow gaze penetrated into him, a promise in that stare:

That this time, when Connaught took him, Wren would want him.

Want him, willingly submit, instead of grudgingly giving his body out in helpless obedience.

He said nothing, as he lifted his chin and strode past Connaught without a second glance, into the hall.

Even if he knew he would be punished for his unspoken defiance later, as if Connaught could claw the scent of rebellion from his blood if only he dug deep enough.

And Connaught’s growl was a warning at his back, as his alpha pulled the door closed and followed in his wake.

Wren fell back as Connaught shouldered around him, taking his proper place one step behind and two steps to the right of his domineering mate and pack leader. They strode through the stone halls of the keep, the rough granite cool beneath Wren’s bare feet, and out into a night turned dark by the new moon, only the stars casting their glimmering glow over the blue-shadowed fortress, the high walls, the forest all around, the leaves just beginning to yellow with the onset of autumn. No torches, outside. In the dark, a wolf’s eyes were better than any light, and from the high parapet walls leading along the upper walkways of the compound’s walls, Wren could easily pick out the phalanx of four wolves darting through the trees and toward the north, half-shifted and loping on all fours with their tails lashing and sweeping at the earth.

The night smelled loamy and cool, and he could scent the turning of the leaves coming soon, the chill on the air brisk enough to make him wrap his robes tighter around himself as he followed Connaught to the section of the upper wall topping the portcullis and the gate. Connaught took up a center position, standing tall and firm and challenging with his hands folded behind his back, while Wren just leaned against the parapet wall behind him.

And hoped this would be over soon.

They didn’t have to wait long, but it felt like an eternity as the three dozen wolves of the pack crowded into the front courtyard, practically panting for the scent of blood. Wren glanced over his shoulder; a few drawn, worried faces peered out of the windows of the keep, the lesser omegas huddled behind the stone walls, timid and small. Wren wondered what was wrong with him, that he found this neither frightening nor exciting.

Just…just…

Tedious.

This posturing, this posing, this endless monotony following the same routine day after day without thought, acting only on instinct, as if this was the way things always had been and always would be.

And this stranger…this stranger from beyond the walls.

Would he be just like Connaught, only scented of different places, different roads, of the wilds beyond Neg Keep?

He was scented of something, Wren realized as the faint sounds of footsteps rose from the north—four now turned into five, the guard returning with the stranger. He knew the scents of every wolf in the keep, but this one…this one was different, and not simply that of a stranger. He smelled of somewhere brisk and crisp and cool, like…salt? Something Wren couldn’t identify, something he’d never smelled before in his life, but that he recognized somewhere down in the pit of his stomach, somewhere ancient and primal. He smelled like salt, like earth, like wind, like a kind of leather Wren had never scented before, not rabbit or boar or fox or deer…and like warm, clean fur instead of dingy matted pelts greased with animal fat, blood, and grime.

A spark of curiosity roused, and Wren pushed away from the rear parapet to drift forward to Connaught’s side, ignoring his alpha’s disapproving sidelong glance to rest his hands to the cool stone and watch the break in the trees that marked the path out into the world. A flash of movement—and then the stranger stepped out of the forest, flanked on all four corners by wolves of the pack. Next to the man, they were toys; small and fragile, these hefty lycanthropes reduced to pups by a bulk so formidable the man was a fortress all on his own.

He was large enough to rival even Connaught, if not larger—a solid slab of muscle, his body weathered and worn to a rough tan, swathed in wrapped black leathers that clung to his frame in tattered-edged strips that defined a broad, hard-chiseled chest, thickly muscled thighs, corded arms; a large, faded gray cloth had been wrapped around his shoulders to form a shadowing hood, a strip masking the lower half of his face until only his eyes showed above. Pale blue, they glowed against the night with a wolf’s luminous light, the color of the shadows made when snow formed caverns as winter drifted through. They were subtly angled, set deep below thick black brows that drew into a thoughtful furrow, but Wren couldn’t make out anything else of his face behind the mask.

What arrested Wren’s attention, though, wasn’t his intimidating bulk—or even those coolly unreadable eyes, his gaze utterly neutral and withdrawn, strange. It was the way he moved; he moved with a fluidity that belied his sheer size and his weight, calm and controlled and utterly graceful. Wren could almost see his wolf under his skin…and that, in itself, was strange. Most wolves who gave themselves so fully to their animal sides were jerky and tense and uncomfortable in their human skin—while the few Wren had seen who tried to hold on to their human side were awkward and stiff in their lupine forms. This man…this man moved as though he had married the two until there was no difference between them, all feral power and self-control and quietly composed strength.

Wren had seen strangers, time and time again. Seen them pass through the lands of Neg Keep only to be chased away, even killed. Every last one of them had been haggard and tired, their movements twitchy and ragged, as if they were constantly fighting with themselves; many of the wolves of the keep were the same. Wren had always been taught to choose one or the other, and omegas like himself were always encouraged to focus on their human traits—on the softness, the beauty, the meekness, the fragility that would appeal to their alphas.

He’d never seen a stranger like this one, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of him.

Neither, it seemed, was Connaught; even if Connaught stood resolute, his scent was thick and stinging with confusion, with wariness, his shoulders tense.

And he seemed to puff himself up larger, swelling his muscles, as the guard escorted the stranger to stand before the lowered portcullis. The stranger lifted his head, looking up at Connaught, and then raised one broad hand in a neutral gesture of acknowledgment and greeting. He carried a leather pack on his back, stuffed to the brim, and both a pistol and a sword hung from his narrow hips, a low-slung belt dragged down to one side by their weight.

Wren didn’t think it was a coincidence that he’d raised his dominant hand, keeping them away from his weapons.

Connaught looked down at the stranger with narrowed eyes, holding his gaze; the stranger looked back at him in silence, pale blue eyes unreadable, and the longer the silence stretched the heavier Connaught’s scent grew with anger, aggression. There was no sign of deference from the stranger, no submission offered to an alpha on his own territory, and Wren felt the first cold pinch of fear on the back of his neck, in the center of his chest.

Show throat, he thought, and wondered why he cared. Show throat, and Connaught will only run you off without hurting you.

Show throat…so he won’t kill you.

It was Connaught who broke the silence first—a growl in his voice, demanding and annoyed, but frustration laced beneath, that he’d had to back down enough to speak. “Why are you in our territory?”

The stranger cocked his head to one side, then the other, movements slow and deliberated, before he spoke a single word. “Trade.”

His voice was low and strange—baritone, but made of smooth things like a shivering touch over the skin, soft fur on naked flesh and something warm, rich. Wren bit his lip; it was a kind voice, he thought, and this wasn’t a place for kind people.

“No one trades with wolves,” Connaught threw back.

The stranger’s eyes creased at the corners, amused. “Other wolves do.”

“Not if they have honest intentions,” Connaught sneered. “Why are you alone? Where is your pack?”

“I have no pack.”

Connaught’s jaw hardened, the glint in his eyes almost triumphant. “So you were cast out.”

The stranger’s head tilted once more, that air of quietly patient amusement radiating off him. “I didn’t say that.”

“You aren’t saying much of anything,” Connaught growled, and the stranger shrugged his massive shoulders in a creaking of leather.

“You haven’t asked anything that needs much of an answer,” he replied coolly.

Wren’s eyes widened. Either the stranger didn’t realize the danger he was in…or he didn’t care. He was indulging Connaught, Wren realized, and wondered what the stranger knew that they didn’t, that there wasn’t the slightest hint of fear, wariness, or even concern in his scent.

Even if Connaught’s expression never changed from its forbidding scowl, though…his scent bristled with aggression, barely held on a leash; his hackles were up, prickling invisibly all around him, charging the air around him with potential violence.

“I’d watch that mouth,” he bit off, soft with warning.

The stranger only looked at Connaught, but something had shifted in those calm, neutral eyes—something hardening, a subtle sense of…of…

Weariness, Wren realized.

Where another wolf might almost be excited by this…the stranger almost seemed tired.

A feeling Wren understood far too well.

“You’re no alpha of mine,” the stranger said—quiet but clear, firm. “I’ll give you courtesy. Not deference.”

Connaught’s shoulders stiffened. He sneered. “I could have you killed for venturing uninvited into my territory.”

“No, you couldn’t,” the stranger replied. Simple, certain, no posturing or bravado or snarling. He only stated the words as if they were irrefutable fact. “I’d advise you not to try. If you don’t want to trade, I’ll be on my way.”

He turned away—but stopped as the four wolves guarding him shifted to form a wall of flesh and fur, these blendings of man with beast standing on their hind legs, bulging muscles straining against leather armor, hands clenched into taloned fists and muzzles drawn back to bare gleaming, curving points of teeth. The stranger heaved a slow sigh, then turned his head over his shoulder, looking back and up at Connaught with one coolly glinting eye.

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“You’re trespassing,” Connaught said, then gripped the edge of the parapet and vaulted over, sailing down like a plummeting cannonball. His thickly compacted weight struck the earth in front of the portcullis heavily enough that his boots sank into the dirt, leaving deep prints; his body folded into a crouch, absorbing the impact, before rolling upward as he stood with his chest thrust out, looking at the stranger coldly. “And your story reeks. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a danger to my pack.”

Slowly, the stranger turned back. He stepped closer to Connaught—and closer still, and even just reading the tense lines of Connaught’s naked back, muscle drawn stark, Wren could tell without even scenting him how much he hated having to look up at the behemoth of a man.

“You don’t want this,” the stranger said, barely a whisper. “Let it go. Walk away.”

Wren knew even before Connaught opened his mouth that that wouldn’t happen. Connaught was a creature of raw pride, and the slightest prick of it required blood. Blood, combat, dominance…and his skin was already rippling, prickling, the hairs along the backs of his knuckles thickening, his muscles tightening against his skin. The only thing that would stop him now was a greater threat to the pack than the one right in front of him—or the poison of silver, stabbed into his veins by blade or bullet to weaken him.

“If you don’t want to fight,” Connaught hissed, stepping out of his boots even as his legs began to crack and elongate, warping inside his leather pants in a crunching of realigning bone, “you can die.”

He shifted in a tearing and rending of flesh, then—body bulging outward into a thing of more densely-packed muscle, fur sprouting in lush tufts of dark brown to swarm over his skin, his legs re-aligning into haunches, fingernails lengthening into curving black claws, his face twisting into a tapered, graceful muzzle ending in a blackened nose. His spine rippled, lengthened, the furry brush of his tail sprouting above the waist of low-slung leather pants. Not a full transformation, from man to wolf—but his half-form, stronger and faster, a powerhouse of thickly corded sinew and salivating jaws. It tore over him in seconds, his head tossing back on a roar of both pain and challenge, rising hoarse and barking from the back of his throat.

As the change settled over him, he dropped down onto his haunches for a moment, panting, tongue lolling, while the stranger watched—unmoved, unmoving. Connaught looked up at him from under fur-bristling brows, yellow eyes glinting hot, as one hand fell to press to the earth, claws digging in as he braced himself.

“Prepare yourself,” he snarled, the words turned thick and growling in the back of his throat, slithering around the pointed curves of his canine teeth.

The stranger’s lashes lowered as he let his pack fall from his back to the dirt. “I won’t need to,” he replied.

Then he unhooked his belt, sending his sword and holstered gun crashing down, before kicking them aside. The wolves standing guard scattered back and away, forming a ringing circle, the flesh and fur walls of an arena of combat. Wren hardly noticed as nearly the entire pack swarmed up onto the wall with him, crowding for a vantage point, many howling in the backs of their throats with excitement, the air charged with battle-hunger and bloodlust. Out of the jostling throng, only Wren was still, resting his hands on the parapet edge and leaning forward, watching intently.

This wasn’t right. The stranger wasn’t even shifting to challenge Connaught.

Did he want to die?

Connaught’s muzzle peeled back in a snarl, teeth clenched. “Are you mocking me?”

“No,” the stranger said, and took a single step back, angling to shift his weight onto his back leg, his hands relaxed at his sides. “If you want to fight, then come.”

For a trembling moment, Wren thought Connaught would refuse. No man in his human form could hope to stand up to even a half-shifted wolf, and killing a defenseless opponent this way would make Connaught look weak, rather than strong. Without honor. It would affect his standing with the pack, make them more hesitant to obey him, make them disrespect his orders more and more until his position eroded and he would no longer be able to hold alpha.

Don’t do it, Wren urged silently, leaning into the parapet so hard the rough stone hurt his chest. Show mercy. Show leadership. Show temperance…and walk away.

Connaught didn’t walk away.

His thighs bunched, bulging thick enough to almost split the seams patching the various hides of his pants together.

And with a guttural, challenging snarl, he threw himself at the stranger.

Whooping cheers rose from the wall—but Wren only bit his lip, holding in a soft cry of protest as snapping jaws went right for the stranger’s throat. Connaught was too fast, too strong, too hell-bent on blood, his entire weight smashing into the stranger. The stranger wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving, and Wren wanted to scream for this to stop, scream for him to save himself, beg Connaught to—

To fall flat on his face, as the stranger sidestepped at the last moment and Connaught shot past him, stumbling forward and nearly planting in the dirt. He caught himself on all fours, skidding, whipping around, closing on the stranger again, claws raking out…but the stranger batted his arms aside with almost lazy ease, barely seeming to move as he twisted out of Connaught’s path again, pivoting around him with a grace that seemed to mock Connaught’s sharp, slashing movements. Again and again Connaught tried to clash with him, close with him, but the stranger was too quick, all that bulk and solid muscle moving about lightly, seeming to know where Connaught would be before Connaught even moved.

The wolves along the wall jeered, howling for blood, and as Connaught went surging past the stranger one more time, the alpha dropped back into a panting crouch, eyeing the stranger darkly, gaze glinting furiously.

“Stop playing,” he growled. “Fight like a wolf.”

“Is that all you think you are?” the stranger retorted, quiet and almost sad. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’m trying not to…but if you continue to pursue this, I won’t have any choice.”

“You?” Connaught scoffed. “Hurt me?” He turned his muzzle to one side and spat on ground churned up by the furrows of his hind claws. “Packless weakling. Do you know how long I’ve held this territory?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Why did the stranger seem…sad? “You won’t walk away from this whole. Don’t leave your pack without a leader.”

“There’s a reason I’m the leader in the first place,” Connaught flung back. “Now stop fucking around and fight!”

The stranger didn’t get a chance to respond. Not when Connaught dove in for the attack once more, throwing his entire body, all his strength into it with every muscle bunching and straining. He struck the stranger squarely in the chest, bearing him down to the ground with jaws snapping and claws slashing, the two of them crashing hard enough to shake the earth. Connaught raked his claws down toward the stranger’s neck in a ripping swipe that would tear out his entire throat.

Only to stop short as the stranger’s hand snapped around his wrist, halting it just a breath away from claws touching the leather over the stranger’s neck.

Wren caught a breath, pressing his fingers to his mouth, watching wide-eyed. They held for a frozen second, the stranger expressionless and calm, Connaught wide-eyed and stiff…before the stranger clenched his fist, twisted, and the sound of crunching bone paired with Connaught’s pained, raging howl, his back arching in agony as he threw his head back.

A collective gasp rippled through the crowd; several snarled, straining toward the parapet, hackles raising and fur starting to bristle through skin, but pack rule was pack rule and they couldn’t interfere in an alpha’s challenge. Heart pounding sickly, Wren stared, as the stranger released Connaught’s wrist, his hand dangling from the end of it at the wrong angles, bone protruding against hide and fur. But Connaught was already starting to pull back together, flesh knitting, bones realigning, and he flung himself back from the stranger, rolling away and to a defensive crouch, mouth hanging open, tongue flicking against the air. The stranger tumbled upward, dirt flaking off him as he shifted to one knee, tilting his head left, then right, cracking his neck.

“This ends now,” he said, almost under his breath.

Connaught tore toward the stranger once more, a guttural howl echoing over the night.

And the stranger met him head-on, an unstoppable wall of force that crashed into Connaught and nearly plowed him over.

Wren had never seen anything like it. Between one breath and the next, lightning-fast movements struck again and again, moving almost too fast for even a wolf to see, let alone follow, dodge, retaliate. The flat of the stranger’s palm crashed into Connaught’s throat, knocking the air out of him roughly. An elbow snapped into the underside of his jaw, and blood spurted, scented hot on the air, as his teeth snapped down on his tongue. Another elbow dropped to the top of his head, crashing him down into the dirt, a knee grinding down into the back of his neck.

And snapping it, the vertebrae crunching loudly, nauseatingly, and Wren cried out against his palm, muffling it with his hand, his heart plunging down to his stomach. The others around him weren’t so restrained, crying out their fury in snarls and howls, many teetering between shifting, tense, the scents of fear and rage stinging Wren’s nose almost as much as the tears in the backs of his eyes. He gulped in several chest-constricting breaths. He wasn’t grieving for Connaught. There was no love lost between himself and his alpha, and it would take more than a broken neck to kill Connaught; nothing short of silver in the bloodstream or beheading or burning his entire body to ash could do that.

But this stranger, this brute, this large and frightening thing…had just torn their alpha apart in seconds flat without bothering to change, and wasn’t even breathing hard as he knelt over him with that knee pinned to his broken neck, keeping Connaught’s choking, struggling form trapped even as Connaught’s fur began to melt back into skin, his muzzle shortening.

That made the stranger their new alpha.

And if he could be so cruel, even if Connaught had challenged him first…

Wren feared what he would do, as the leader of the pack. Connaught could be merciless, but understood at least that he could only go so far before he drove his entire pack away.

Wren wasn’t sure this stranger had that much restraint.

Connaught dragged his arms against the dirt, his fingertips digging in even as his talons receded. The stranger pressed his hand to the back of his head, grinding his face into the dirt; humiliation on top of defeat. Connaught wouldn’t be able to live with either; it would be kinder to kill him.

But “Yield,” the stranger said. “This doesn’t need to go any further than this.”

Connaught could only snarl in the back of his throat, but he went still, breathing harshly. The stranger watched him for long moments, then eased back slowly, rising to his feet. He didn’t have a single scratch or bruise on him; just the smudges of dirt against his leathers. Silent, he stood over Connaught’s weakly twitching body, a proclamation of victory without a single word.

And one by one, the wolves along the wall—and the four standing guard—fell silent.

It was the four guards who knelt first; their half-forms melted away to leave only men, who sank down to one knee and bowed their heads in submission. Then the rest of the pack; one by one they made their way down from the walls, first in trickles, then in a stream as the portcullis gate raised.

Until the entire pack stood outside the walls, save Wren and the omegas hiding inside.

All of them bowing to one knee, and accepting this nameless man as their new alpha, their scents and auras trembling with fear and uncertainty.

Pale blue eyes cut over them, silent for several more breaths, before the stranger flicked his hand. “Stand,” he said. “All of you. I’m not your alpha.”

The pack all glanced at each other in confusion, heads still bowed, unsettled and uneasy murmurs sweeping through the crowd. Wren rubbed at his aching chest; he didn’t understand. What was happening here?

The strange wolf swept them with another look. “I don’t want your pack. Keep your alpha. Keep your ways. I only want four things.”

Silence. No one knew what to do with this—this strange man who had destroyed Connaught in seconds, who claimed to have no pack, who didn’t want theirs and yet with Connaught broken, they would have no alpha; no one to maintain the order, no one to provide structure and keep them together. But it was Stewart who had the presence of mind to speak first, lifting his graying head to look up at the stranger warily.

“Speak your desire,” he said.

“Safe passage through your lands, as I asked before. Solar cell packs. Clean drinking water.” Then those pale, strange blue eyes, luminous as a full moon, rose up to the parapet walls…and locked on Wren like an arrow striking, piercing and stopping his heart. “And him.”