Chapter 1

A faint, hairline "crack" came from deep within my gland.

Like a thin layer of ice finally giving way under too much weight—splitting clean through. I sat rigid on the edge of the bed, clearly smelling a scorched bitterness seeping into my blood, rising up through my respiratory tract.

The old wolves of the clan had a heavy name for this scent: "Bone-rot breath."

When a wolf smells this on himself, it means his wolf nature is dying, bit by bit. This was the third time my wolf gland had collapsed.

Hours earlier, the Physician Guild's sound-bone had delivered an ultimatum: I was to contact my partner immediately and undergo a full examination with family accompaniment. I stared at the sound-bone on the table and dialed Victoria's contact mark again.

Two busy signals. Then a sudden silence.

With a wolf's hearing, I could clearly catch a faint breath on the other end—the soft rush of air when a bone receiver is brought close to the lips.

She was listening.

But the next second, the cold disconnection tone rang through the empty room. She hung up.

Late at night, the front door was flung open by the wind.

Victoria was back. Before she even stepped into the foyer, my nose was flooded with a dense scent—northland cedar mixed with the musky tang of tundra wolfgrass. They'd gone hunting together. The cedar was from the scent had permeated on Sebastian's armor.

She only got halfway through unfastening her cloak before her brow furrowed deeply. Her nose had caught it too—the sour, decaying smell that came with my gland collapse.

"Did you mess up the house again?" She didn't look at me, pinching her nose in disgust, her words cutting like a blade. "The whole place stinks of that rotting decay!"

"I didn't go out today," I said slowly, rising to my feet, my voice raspy from the metallic taste in my throat. "The Physician Guild said my gland isn't doing well—I need you to come with me—"

"Stop pretending." She cut me off coldly, a sneer curling at the corner of her mouth. "Every time you want to shirk your clan duties, you drag out some 'health issue.' Damian, you just make me sick."

She dropped her outer robe and walked straight into the inner chamber. The door slammed shut, sealing her off from me completely.

I slumped back against the cold chair, feeling the ache creep up from my knees and calves again. This pain had been with me ever since the first gland collapse.

It was a full moon night. Sebastian claimed he needed moonherb for medicine. Moonherb only grew on the cliffs of the north slope. That night, my gland was in agony—I couldn't shift at all. I had to walk the frozen ground on human legs. I fell into an ice crevice later, crawling through frost-tipped grass on my knees for half the night, nearly dying there. If Elder Twilightfang hadn't passed by gathering herbs and dragged me back to the tribe, my bones would have been buried in snow.

The second collapse—Sebastian had deliberately scattered invisible silver powder on the floor of the Alpha council hall. Silver is lethal poison to wolves. The moment I stepped on it, the poison stabbed straight into my marrow.

He collapsed theatrically, accusing me of intending harm toward the Luna. Victoria wouldn't even hear an explanation—she ordered me thrown into the dungeon. The floor was covered in ice gravel and silver shards. For two days I lay on that uneven silver grit, my stomach churning, dry-heaving nonstop. It wasn't until the steward came to bring food that he found me burning with fever, too weak to even open my eyes.

But the coldness at home was nothing compared to the humiliation outside.

Since my gland atrophied, I'd lost the Alpha's commanding presence. Beta warriors who once bowed to me now walked straight through me, shoulders colliding. Passing cubs even dared to bare their milk teeth and snarl in my face.

Unmated she-wolves would flick their tails and gossip openly behind my back: "An Alpha who can't even shift, can't even touch silver—what right does he have to hold the leader's position?"

A wolf pack's loyalty is written in instinct—they naturally follow the strongest wolf. But my scent was too weak now—so weak that even Omegas could smell the frailty and slowness in this shell of a body.

Just yesterday, the Elder Council received a joint petition demanding a review of my Alpha status. Sebastian had been sitting in the gallery, idly twirling a crescent bone ornament—the kind only an Alpha was permitted to wear.

When I went to the supply depot for herbs, the forester, in front of several young wolves, grabbed a handful of blackened, low-quality leaves and dropped them at my feet.

"Pick them up, Alpha." The crowd around me burst out laughing. "Isn't this exactly what you're fit for now—these lowly tasks?"

They knew my sense of smell was damaged, that I was extremely sensitive to rotting leaves. The moment the moldy stench hit my nose, it convulsed uncontrollably; my eyes flushed with a reflexive red.

I didn't resist. Head down, amid the roaring laughter, I picked up those rotten leaves one by one.

Swallowing the dull ache splitting my chest, I walked to my daughter Lila's door.

It wasn't closed all the way. She was sitting on the carpet, her back to me. She'd just shed her baby teeth; her new canines were sharp and white—strong and healthy, thanks to my blood.

At the sound of my footsteps, Lila turned. Those wolf eyes, clearly inherited from my pale pupils, glared at me like I was her enemy.

"Useless Alpha!" Her young voice struck like ice picks. "You can't even shift—you're just a blind dog!"

Before I could step closer, her wolf ears flattened against her skull, her tail bristling straight up. That was the defensive posture a cub took only toward a hostile intruder.

"Mother said you stole Uncle Sebastian's Alpha bloodline. You don't belong here."

Seeing her recoil like that, my hand—raised halfway to touch her hair—stiffened and dropped back.

"Get some sleep," I said, my voice hoarse, and slowly backed out of her room.

The moment the door closed, my gland erupted with a cruel, searing pain. I could even hear the crack of the wolf core splitting further.

I knew why they resented me.

Seven years ago, when Lila's heart failure required an Alpha blood-relative transfusion, I wasn't waiting outside the ward. Six years ago, when Victoria broke her right fang fighting an enemy Alpha to protect the territory and needed a same-source pulp transplant, I wasn't at her side either.

They naturally assumed I'd fled—that I'd gone north to run off with a stray she-wolf.

But they would never know—who it was that lay in Elder Twilightfang's dim underground healing den, with thick drainage tubes pulling out half his wolf blood. Who it was that had his right fang torn out by the root, his wolf core stopping cold, nearly dying on the operating table.

That night, Elder Twilightfang used nearly a lifetime's savings, pouring precious antler powder and moon dew down my throat, pulling me back from the brink of dissolution.

Losing that fang, losing too much of my source blood, my gland had tipped irreversibly into atrophy.

When I dragged my bandaged body back home, Victoria only smelled the sharp scent of unfamiliar she-wolf on me—because Sebastian, under the guise of visiting, had smeared tundra she-wolf gland fluid on my bandages beforehand, masking the heavy scent of blood and herbs.

"You went out whoring, got mauled by some she-wolf, and you have the nerve to come back?"

That day, Victoria called me a coward, stripped me of my place in the den, and forced me to kneel on the frozen ground outside in penance.

To protect them from further harm, I swallowed the truth about the transfusion and the extraction. But my silence bought me nothing but years of relentless degradation.

I pushed open the front door and stepped into the subzero yard.

As my knees hit the cold stone slabs, my broken body barely registered the chill anymore. A massive full moon hung in the night sky, its silver-white light pouring down on my hair and back without reservation.

For every wolf, the light of the full moon is the source of power—the Moon Goddess's highest blessing and calling to the clan.

I knelt there in silence, bathed in that celestial light.

But sometime along the way, the gland at the back of my neck had stopped pulsing with heat. It lay there like dead meat—numb, silent.

I closed my eyes slowly and finally understood.

I could no longer feel the Moon Goddess's call at all.