Chapter 3

For the next three days, Moonspring turned into Boone and Coralie's playground.

Packmates came by in waves to gawk.

Every mouth praised Rourke for his generosity and Boone for his luck, for landing a brother as loyal as that.

"You can't fault Captain Rourke. He'd even haul out his moonwater to treat a brother right."

"And Elara's easygoing too. Any other she-wolf would have torn into them by now."

I couldn't be bothered to listen to a word of it, and went back to the cabin to pack up what little I had.

There wasn't much. A few rolls of old remedy recipes, and the bone blade my mother had left me.

As for the jars and bottles I couldn't carry, Boone and Coralie had already run through most of them.

The day before the ceremony, a she-wolf came stumbling to the spring with a pup in her arms.

The pup's face was flushed red with fever, its little limbs twitching.

"Healer, please, just one ladle of water from the spring to bring my baby's fever down." Her voice shook so hard she could barely get the words out.

I started to get up, but Coralie stepped into the doorway to block me.

"The place is booked today, we're having a celebration. Who has time for your brat?" She backed away half a step in disgust. "Keep it away from here. I won't have your bad luck spoiling our happy day."

The she-wolf turned to beg Rourke instead.

Rourke was busy greeting guests. He frowned and waved her off. "Didn't you hear? Come back another day."

The pup's crying grew weaker and weaker, until it was nothing but broken little gasps.

The she-wolf held her child tight and left, looking back at every step.

I gripped the recipes in my hand and said nothing.

This spring was meant to save lives. In their hands, they wouldn't spare a single ladle to save a child's.

I was still wrapping the recipes in cloth when the door swung open.

Coralie sauntered in, went straight for the wooden box on my table, and tipped the silver clasps inside, the ones I used to seal my remedies, into her own pocket.

"You won't be needing these anyway." She weighed the clasps in her palm, then glanced at the bundle in my hands. "Oh? Still hiding things, are we? Come early tomorrow, sister-in-law. Put on your servant's clothes and be quick with the drinks. Don't keep the guests waiting."

I ignored her.

Getting no rise out of me, she sneered. "Don't act so high and mighty. A healer who can't even hold on to her own man, this is about all she's good for."

Then she scooped up my silver clasps and walked out.

That night, Rourke sat at the table, throwing back one drink after another.

He reeked of it, and when I came in, he raised a hand to wave me over.

"Elara, come here. Tomorrow is Boone's big day. Clean yourself up and look decent. Don't go embarrassing me with that miserable face."

I didn't move. "I'm not going."

Rourke set his cup down hard. "What's gotten into you now? You've been behaving these last couple of days."

"I'm tired. I want to rest."

He gave a cold snort, stood, and came to loom over me.

"Suit yourself. The place and the moonwater are all ready, so it makes no difference whether you show up. But I'm warning you, don't cause any trouble tomorrow."

With that, he flopped onto the bed and was soon snoring away.

I looked at his unguarded back, then went to the mirror and loosened my collar.

The mate mark on my neck was a raw, angry red.

Among wolves, a mate mark bound two souls together. To sever it from one side alone meant pain like being skinned alive, tendon by tendon.

I bit down on a strip of cloth, picked up my mother's bone blade, and pricked my fingertip. I let the blood drip onto the mark and spoke the old words that break a bond.

The pain exploded up through my bones, like someone sawing at my soul with a dull knife, inch by inch.

My whole body shook and cold sweat soaked my clothes, but I never let out a sound.

The mate mark should have carried every bit of that pain straight to him.

Instead, Rourke just rolled over, and his snoring grew louder.

He didn't care whether I lived or died, so of course he never felt the bond snap.

The light on my neck faded, little by little.

The mark that had once burned blood-red turned into a dead, ashen scar.

I wiped the bone blade clean, put it away, and stepped out into the night.

Thorne was already waiting on the cliff behind the hills.

Dressed all in black, he looked taller than I remembered, his eyes sharp as a hawk locked on its prey.

I handed over the deed to Moonspring along with the resource contract.

Thorne glanced at them and raised a brow. "Rourke's the guarantor. You're setting your own mate up to be ruined."

"He's not my mate anymore."

I pulled my collar aside and showed him the dead, ashen scar.

Thorne's gaze rested on it for a moment. He didn't ask. He drew a heavy pouch from his coat and tossed it into my arms.

"Fifty thousand gold. Moonspring is mine now, outright, effective at once. From this moment, this land and every root and leaf on it belongs to me."

I weighed the pouch in my hand and nodded.

"When I sold this land, I only cared about one thing." I looked at him. "The buyer couldn't be the soft kind."

Thorne let out a snort. "Soft isn't a word anyone's ever used on me."

"Good." I tucked the pouch away. "Like we agreed, don't come around until the ceremony is over. Not a moment sooner."

Thorne tilted his head and looked at me, as if he had just heard something funny.

"Once the deal is closed, this land is mine. When I come, how I come, and whose hand I take off when I get here, none of that is yours to decide."

He folded the deed away, turned, and walked off into the pitch-black night.

"You just sit back and watch."