Chapter 2 The Dead Woman in the Mist

My mother was dead.

I knew that.

I had known it since I was seven years old, since the night Hollowmere dragged her away in chains and told me never to speak her name again. I had known it every time someone spat traitor’s daughter at my feet. I had known it every winter I slept beneath threadbare blankets and wondered if she had died quickly or if Alpha Magnus had made her suffer.

Dead women did not walk out of forests.

Dead women did not whisper your name beneath a blood moon.

Dead women did not look exactly the same as they had in your nightmares.

But there she was.

Standing between the trees.

Mira Thorne.

My mother.

The world tilted.

I would have fallen if Kaiden’s arm had not been locked around my waist.

The bond between us still burned like a living thing, hot and terrifying, but I barely felt it now. All I could see was her. The long dark hair. The sharp cheekbones. The silver pendant missing from her throat. The same eyes I saw every time I looked into broken glass.

My eyes.

Only hers were wrong.

They did not shine with warmth.

They glowed faintly in the mist.

“Vanya,” she said again.

My heart fractured.

“No,” I whispered.

Kaiden’s body went rigid against mine. His grip tightened, not possessive this time, but protective. Every wolf around us dropped lower, their hackles raised, teeth bared toward the woman I had mourned for thirteen years.

“Do not move,” Kaiden ordered.

I did not know whether he was speaking to me, his wolves, or the impossible creature wearing my mother’s face.

The woman stepped forward.

Moonlight touched her skin.

She was pale. Too pale. The kind of pale that did not belong to the living. Her white dress hung in torn ribbons around her legs, stained dark at the hem as if she had walked through blood and river water. A black mark curled up the side of her throat, pulsing faintly beneath her skin like ink trapped under glass.

I stared at that mark.

My mother had not had that.

Not in life.

“You have grown,” she murmured.

The softness in her voice nearly destroyed me.

I wanted to run to her.

I hated myself for it.

I wanted to throw myself into her arms and sob like the little girl Hollowmere had never allowed me to be. I wanted to ask where she had been. Why she had left me. Why she had let me believe I was alone.

But Kaiden’s hand pressed firmly against my stomach, holding me back.

“No closer,” he said.

His voice was not loud.

It did not need to be.

The entire forest seemed to listen.

My mother’s gaze shifted to him.

For the first time, something like emotion crossed her face.

Recognition.

Then fear.

“Alpha Draven.”

Kaiden’s eyes narrowed. “Mira Thorne died thirteen years ago.”

“So they said.”

A chill moved across my skin.

“So they said?”

My voice sounded thin, broken.

Her eyes returned to me, and for one second, I saw the mother from my dreams. The woman who used to sing softly while brushing my hair. The woman who taught me that power was not always loud and monsters were not always ugly.

Then the black mark on her throat pulsed again.

She flinched.

Kaiden noticed.

“What are you?” he demanded.

My mother’s mouth tightened. “Not your enemy.”

One of Kaiden’s wolves shifted beside us, bones cracking, fur pulling back into skin until a tall, broad man stood naked in the mist. He did not seem to care. His gaze remained locked on my mother, lethal and suspicious.

“Alpha,” he warned. “That is not a living wolf.”

My stomach twisted.

Not living.

I tried to pull away from Kaiden, but his arm became iron.

“Let go of me,” I said.

“No.”

“She’s my mother.”

“She is a corpse walking through my territory beneath a Blood Moon after your pack sent you here with a message written in blood.” His voice lowered. “You are not going near her.”

I hated the command in his tone.

I hated more that some frightened, exhausted part of me was grateful for it.

My mother lifted her hands slowly. “I cannot stay long.”

My breath caught. “Where have you been?”

Pain flashed across her face.

“I was kept where no wolf should be kept.”

“By who?”

Her gaze flicked toward the forest behind her.

The mist thickened.

The wolves growled again.

“Magnus lied,” she said quickly. “About everything. About me. About Nightveil. About your blood.”

Kaiden went very still.

My pulse pounded in my ears.

“My blood?”

My mother took another step.

Kaiden growled.

She stopped.

“You are not defective, Vanya,” she said. “Your wolf was bound before she could rise.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

Bound.

My wolf snarled beneath my skin, sudden and furious.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, that’s not possible.”

“It is.”

“If someone bound my wolf, I would have known.”

My mother looked at me with devastating sadness. “You were a child.”

My throat tightened.

A child.

I had been a child when Magnus took my mother.

A child when the pack turned cold.

A child when Elder Orick started forcing bitter herbs down my throat every full moon, claiming they would strengthen my blood and cleanse my mother’s shame.

My stomach lurched.

The herbs.

The monthly tonics.

The sickness after every dose.

Kaiden felt me go rigid.

“What?” he asked.

I could barely breathe. “They gave me medicine.”

His face sharpened.

“Who?”

“Elder Orick,” I whispered. “Every full moon since I was seven.”

The naked warrior cursed under his breath.

Kaiden’s eyes turned murderous.

My mother nodded once, like every terrible piece had slid into place exactly as she expected. “Wolfsbane ash. Silverroot. Moonbane. Small doses. Enough to cage her. Not enough to kill you.”

The ground seemed to disappear beneath me.

All those years.

All those years of being called weak.

All those years of believing there was something wrong with me.

They had done it on purpose.

A sound came out of me that did not feel human.

Kaiden’s arm tightened. His thumb pressed against my ribs, steadying me, but I shoved against him anyway because I needed space. I needed air. I needed to tear something apart with teeth I had never been allowed to grow.

“Why?” I demanded.

My mother’s gaze burned into mine.

“Because when your wolf wakes, every Alpha within a hundred miles will feel it.”

Silence fell.

Even Kaiden stopped breathing.

I looked up at him.

His face had gone unreadable, but the bond between us pulsed hard. His wolf was listening. Waiting. Watching me from behind his silver eyes.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

My mother’s expression twisted with urgency. “It means you cannot trust Hollowmere. You cannot trust their elders. And you cannot trust every wolf who kneels to Nightveil either.”

Kaiden’s jaw flexed.

“Explain.”

She looked at him. “Someone in your pack asked for my daughter.”

The bloodstained fabric in Kaiden’s hand suddenly felt like a curse between us.

Send the Thorne girl.

I looked from him to my mother. “Who?”

“I do not know his face.”

“His?” Kaiden asked.

My mother nodded. “A male wolf. Old blood. Powerful enough to cross sealed ground. He wears Nightveil scent, but not Nightveil loyalty.”

The warrior beside Kaiden stiffened.

Kaiden’s voice dropped to something deadly. “Riven.”

The name meant nothing to me, but judging by the way the wolves reacted, it meant something to them.

“Who is Riven?” I asked.

Kaiden did not answer immediately.

The naked warrior did.

“Alpha’s uncle.”

My gaze snapped to Kaiden.

His uncle?

The first twist of fear slid through me.

“Your uncle asked Hollowmere to send me here?”

Kaiden’s expression remained hard, but his eyes had darkened. “If he did, he is already dead.”

A tremor passed through the forest.

My mother flinched again, clutching at the black mark on her throat.

“Vanya,” she said, voice strained now. “Listen to me carefully.”

I wanted to. Goddess, I wanted to.

But my mind was splintering.

My mother was alive. Or not alive. My wolf had been poisoned. Kaiden was my mate. Someone in his pack had demanded I be sent across the border. My entire life was not merely cruelty. It was strategy.

I had been hidden.

Caged.

Delivered.

“Do not let him mark you yet,” my mother said.

Kaiden’s growl ripped through the trees.

Every hair on my body lifted.

My mother’s eyes flashed to him. “You know I am right.”

“I know nothing about you.”

“You know enough to feel the bond,” she said. “You know enough to understand what happens if it is sealed before her wolf is free.”

Kaiden said nothing.

That terrified me more than anger would have.

I looked up at him slowly. “What happens?”

He did not look at me.

“Kaiden.”

His name left my mouth before I could stop it.

His eyes dropped to mine.

For a second, the entire forest vanished.

There was only him.

Only the dangerous heat still simmering between us. Only the way his hand felt against me. Only the impossible truth that my enemy’s touch was the only thing keeping me standing.

“If I mark you before your wolf wakes fully,” he said, voice rough, “the bond could claim her before she can choose me.”

My chest tightened.

“Choose you?”

His gaze darkened.

“A mate bond can exist without a mark. The mark seals it. Body. Blood. Wolf.” His jaw worked. “If your wolf is bound, she cannot consent to that seal.”

The word consent cut through some of my panic.

Not because he said it.

Because he cared.

Magnus would have marked, used, and broken anything that gave him power.

Kaiden looked furious at the idea of taking something my wolf could not give.

That frightened me in an entirely different way.

Because monsters were easier to hate when they acted like monsters.

My mother smiled faintly, as though she saw the thought cross my face.

“Good,” she whispered. “Perhaps the Moon did not choose poorly after all.”

Kaiden’s eyes narrowed. “Do not speak as though you understand the Moon’s will.”

“She spoke long before either of us were born.”

The black mark on my mother’s throat pulsed again.

This time she cried out.

I lunged forward without thinking.

Kaiden caught me.

“Stop holding me back!” I snapped.

“She is being pulled,” he said.

His voice was hard, but not cruel.

My mother staggered, her form flickering at the edges like smoke disturbed by wind.

Fear crashed through me.

“No. No, please. Don’t go. Not again.”

Her eyes filled with grief.

“I never left you willingly.”

The words shattered me.

Tears blurred my vision, hot and unwanted.

“Where are you?”

Her mouth opened.

No sound came out.

She clutched her throat. The black mark spread higher, crawling beneath her jaw like living shadow.

“Where are you?” I screamed.

Her eyes met mine.

“The drowned chapel,” she forced out. “Beneath the roots where the old moon fell.”

Kaiden went rigid.

The warrior beside him paled.

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

My mother looked past me, into the darkness behind Kaiden.

Her expression changed.

Horror.

“Run.”

Kaiden turned instantly.

The forest exploded.

A wolf larger than the others burst from the mist, but wrongness clung to it. Its fur was patchy and wet, its eyes black from edge to edge. Its jaw hung too wide, teeth slick with dark foam. The scent that hit me was rot, river water, and old blood.

Kaiden shoved me behind him.

The corrupted wolf lunged.

Everything happened too fast.

Kaiden shifted mid-strike.

One moment he was a man.

The next, a massive black wolf slammed into the creature, all muscle and shadow and silver-eyed fury. The impact shook the ground. They rolled across the stones, snarling, teeth tearing, claws ripping through earth.

My breath vanished.

Kaiden’s wolf was enormous.

Beautiful.

Terrifying.

The other Nightveil wolves attacked at once, but the corrupted creature fought like pain meant nothing. It took claws to the throat and kept moving. It tore into one warrior’s shoulder. Blood sprayed across the mist.

I backed toward the cliff without realising.

My mother’s flickering shape was still there, but fading.

“Vanya!” she shouted.

I turned to her.

She reached toward me with shaking hands.

“Your pendant. Find it. Do not let Magnus keep—”

Her voice cut off.

A black tendril wrapped around her throat and yanked her backward into the trees.

“Mother!”

I ran.

This time Kaiden was too busy fighting to stop me.

I plunged into the mist after her, branches slashing at my face. My mother’s outline flickered ahead, dragged by something unseen.

Then she vanished.

I stumbled to a stop in a small clearing.

Empty.

Silent.

No mother.

No wolves.

No path.

Only a stone altar half-buried in moss.

And on top of it lay my mother’s silver pendant.

The same pendant Theron had shown me at the border.

Impossible.

My hands shook as I reached for it.

The second my fingers closed around the metal, pain ripped through my chest.

Not silver pain.

Memory.

The world vanished.

I was seven again.

Hidden beneath a staircase.

Watching Alpha Magnus kneel before a hooded man with silver scars across his hands.

Watching Elder Orick hold my mother down.

Watching Theron, younger and terrified, clutch my pendant in his fist.

Then Magnus spoke words I had never remembered until now.

“Bind the child’s wolf. When the Nightveil Alpha comes for his promised mate, he will find nothing worth claiming.”

I gasped as the memory released me.

The pendant burned hot in my palm.

Behind me, a voice said, “You were never meant to live long enough to remember that.”

I turned slowly.

A man stood at the edge of the clearing.

Tall.

Silver-haired.

Smiling.

His scent was Nightveil.

His eyes were Kaiden’s silver.

But colder.

Older.

Wrong.

“Hello, Vanya,” he said. “I am Riven Draven.”

My blood went cold.

He stepped closer.

“And I am the one who asked your pack to send you home.”