Chapter 3

After I left Cael's villa, my body broke down fast.

Every night, my joints swelled until I couldn't bend them. The blood I coughed up had turned black. My hair came out in clumps — handfuls on the pillow each morning.

I was dying. I knew it.

Before I went, there was one last thing I needed to do.

Get back the only thing my parents ever left me — a pendant carved from white wolf bone.

It used to hang around my neck. Three years ago, Cael was ambushed at the border. Critical injuries, deep coma. I put the pendant around his neck, and whatever protection my parents had left sealed in that bone kept him breathing through the worst of it.

When he woke up, he tossed it in a desk drawer in his study. Never gave it back.

I called a car and went to the villa again.

The house staff all knew about the broken engagement by now. They gave me looks when I walked in — some pitying, some uneasy — but no one stopped me.

I went straight upstairs and pushed open the study door.

Cael wasn't there.

Dove was.

She sat in his desk chair, turning my wolf-bone pendant over in her fingers like it was a toy.

When she saw me come in, she smiled. Not a flicker of surprise.

"Wren. You actually showed up." She stood and walked toward me, swinging the pendant between us. "Looking for this?"

"Give it back." I kept my eyes on the pendant. My voice was so weak I could barely get the words out.

"Give it back?" A short laugh. "Cael said everything in this house is mine now. Including this piece of junk."

"That belonged to my parents."

"So what?" Dove stepped in close and dropped her voice. The sweetness was gone, stripped down to bare teeth. "Wren, you're a stray nobody ever claimed. Your parents are dead, and you'll be joining them soon. What makes you think you get to take anything from me?"

I was done talking to her. I reached for the pendant.

But my body had nothing left. Dove shoved me — barely any force behind it — and I went down hard.

The broken ribs lit up. My vision went black around the edges.

Then, from downstairs — a car engine.

Cael was home.

Dove's face changed in an instant.

She looked down at me on the floor. Then over at the desk, where a silver blade sat next to a stack of papers.

Silver. A wolf's worst weakness. Every pup in the pack learned that before they could shift.

Dove picked up the blade without a second's pause, aimed it at her own left shoulder, and stabbed.

The scream that came out of her split the air.

Blood spread across the front of her white dress, blooming fast.

She ripped the blade out and forced it into my hand, closing my fingers around the handle before I could react. Then she collapsed to the floor, going limp.

The study door crashed open.

Cael burst in.

His eyes found Dove first — crumpled on the ground, blood pooling under her shoulder. Then me — sitting against the desk, gripping a bloody silver blade.

"Dove!" He was across the room in two strides, pulling her into his arms.

"Cael..." Her voice came out thin, choked with crying. "Don't blame Wren... she just wanted the pendant so badly... it's my fault, I shouldn't have tried to stop her..."

Cael was shaking. He whipped his head around and locked his eyes on me.

I had seen Cael angry before. This was something else.

"You used silver on her." The words hit so hard my eardrums ached. "You actually used silver on her."

I sat on the floor with the blade still in my hand.

I didn't try to explain.

There was no version of the truth he'd believe.

"Give me back the pendant." My voice was flat.

A laugh cracked out of him — short, unhinged.

He set Dove down carefully on the couch, then turned and walked toward me. One slow step at a time.

"You want the pendant?" His jaw was clenched so tight the words barely came through. "If anything happens to Dove, you're paying for it with your life."