Chapter 1
Every herb in Moonspring, I had coaxed to life myself, drop by drop, with a healer's touch.
But to my mate, Rourke, the place was just a backyard for his best friend Boone to use and wreck however he pleased.
I had put up with it for a long time.
I put up with it until Boone, planning his own mating ceremony, trampled half a year of my work into the mud right in front of me. I put up with it until Rourke forced me to my knees through our mate mark, just so his friends wouldn't see him lose face.
In three days, Boone would hold the grandest mating ceremony the pack had ever seen, right here in Moonspring.
And I looked at the land transfer I had just agreed to, and said a single word.
Fine.
By the time I reached the herb beds, Boone's fiancée Coralie was ripping a stalk of bloodroot out by the roots, its faint blue glow still flickering as she flung it into the mud.
A pile had already gathered at her feet, all of it herbs I had tended for half a year, none of them ready to harvest.
I rushed over and grabbed her wrist.
"What are you doing? That's life-saving medicine, and it isn't even grown yet!"
Coralie shook me off, rolled her eyes, and brushed the dirt from her hands.
"What are you shouting about, Elara? They're just weeds. Boone says they glow, they look pretty, so I'm pulling extra to line our ceremony platform."
She said it like she had every right to, the way someone pulls weeds from the side of the road.
She looked me up and down and scoffed. "A healer who spends all day in the mud and the weeds, and now you're going to tell me what to do?"
Boone came strolling over from the spring, swirling one of the crystal cups I used for brewing remedies. It was full of cloudy fruit wine. He tipped what was left into the spring and rinsed his hands in the water.
"Don't be stingy, sister-in-law." He slid an arm around Coralie's waist and bared his teeth at me. "Rourke and I grew up thick as thieves. What's his is mine, and what's yours is his, so it all comes back to me in the end anyway. I pull a few of your weeds and you want to raise hell?"
"Take whatever of Rourke's you want." I stared him down. "Moonspring is mine."
"Elara, what are you making a fuss about now?"
Rourke strode up in his guard captain's leathers. He didn't spare a glance for the ruined herbs, just frowned at me.
"Boone is finally having his mating ceremony. Why are you nitpicking over a few weeds?"
"A few weeds?" I pointed at the wreckage on the ground. "This is the life-saving medicine I owe the Council next month. He destroyed half a year of my work just to decorate a platform!"
"So it's ruined. I'll hunt a few extra kills in the wildlands next month and make it up to you." He was getting impatient now. "Boone is my brother. He asks for one small thing, and you have to embarrass me over it?"
Coralie melted against Boone at once, her voice going soft and wounded. "See? I told you your sister-in-law looks down on me. Forget it. We'll just hold it in some muddy corner at the edge of pack land. I was never good enough for a place this nice anyway."
Boone's face darkened. "Rourke, you promised me! You said you'd give me the best spot in the whole pack, so everyone could see the kind of show I can put on!"
Rourke couldn't stand having his word questioned. He stepped right up to me and looked down.
"Boone gets Moonspring for the ceremony. I'm your mate, which makes this my territory too, and I say so."
"In your dreams."
The next second, his dominance slammed down through the mate mark on our necks, like an invisible hand shoving me toward the ground.
My legs buckled. My knees cracked against the stone, and the blood drained from my face.
The mate mark should have carried my pain straight to him. The pain of my knees hitting rock. The pain of something being carved out of my chest.
But he only glanced down and frowned, as if the sight of me on my knees was an embarrassment.
"Get up. Apologize to Coralie, and we'll forget the whole thing."
Apologize.
They had destroyed half a year of my work, forced me to my knees, and now I was the one who had to say sorry.
Somewhere inside me, a thread I had called hope snapped clean through on that one word.
There was no anger, no tears. Only a cold that seeped up from my bones.
I pushed myself off the ground and wiped the sweat from my temple.
"Fine," I said. "I'm sorry. You can have Moonspring for the ceremony."
Rourke blinked, thrown by how easily I had given in. His face softened, and he reached out to pat my head. "That's more like it. We're family. No need to keep score."
I turned my head away from his hand and walked back to the cabin.
I shut the door, and the laughter outside fell away behind me.
I closed my eyes and opened the mindlink that had been sitting quiet in the back of my mind.
Thorne, from Blackfang, had left it open last month, when he came to make an offer on Moonspring. He told me to reach out whenever I changed my mind.
The link connected, and a voice came through from the other side, cold and lazy.
"Talk."
Outside the window, the three of them were still tramping through my herb beds. When I spoke, there was no warmth left in my voice.
"Your offer on Moonspring. Does it still stand?"
A soft laugh came down the link. "What happened? They finally push you over the edge?"
"The price doesn't matter." I cut him off. "I only have one condition."
