Chapter 3

Before the offerings, Sienna had maybe two years left in her. Silver in the blood goes for the kidneys first, and there is no cure for that, only replacement.

Four years of me gave her a body that worked. A priestess stands through a full moon rite from dusk to dawn without sitting down. She got the seat the year after she got my kidney.

I was the other half of it. Nobody learns to open a chest on a wolf who can only be opened once.

Ninety-nine times. Scars carry over when you shift, and mine came through on the pelt as bare lines down one flank, so I had stopped running with the pack. It had been three years since anyone in Blackpine had seen my wolf.

Until tonight I had believed every bit of it was buying something.

"Cassian." My voice came out thin. "If I don't come off this stone."

He put his hand against my face. "Don't talk like that. If it happened, I'd follow you."

I bit down until I tasted metal. "You'd better mean that."

"A life for a life?" Sienna said, without looking up from my chest. "And what am I?"

"You pulled me out of the Vein," Cassian said. "You're worth more to me than I am. Ask me for anything."

"Anything." She let it sit for a moment. "You still won't open the doors for me."

"We've been through it."

"Half the Elders think you handed me this seat. Let them stand there and watch me take a heart out of a living wolf and none of them says it again." She tipped her head. "And the young ones have never seen a chest opened. They should learn it from someone who knows how."

"If your hand slips in front of forty people, that stays with you."

He was quiet a moment, and then he told the guard on the door to bring them in.

"I don't agree to this," I said.

He didn't stop what he was doing. "One night. When it's finished you can have the ceremony any way you want it. Under the black pines, or take the whole pack up the coast. Say it and it's yours."

"Is that what our ceremony is? Something you spend?"

He didn't answer.

"You never loved me at all, did you."

For four years I had blamed the goddess, and the pack, and my own blood. I had never once got as far as him.

Then I remembered the hunt.

Four years ago, spring, the north line. A trapper put a silver round through me before Cassian could get clear, and I went down in front of him. He was still holding my head up off the ground when the wound closed over. I watched his face while it happened. He was frightened for about a second, and then he wasn't frightened at all.

He was better to me after that than he had ever been. That same week he took me down to Vessa and had her go through me from throat to hip and write all of it down.

A kidney that filters silver out. Blood that keeps another wolf's body running. Sienna was two years from dead and I was made to order.

"You hate me," I said. "There's no other way you do this."

He took long enough that I knew he was picking the words.

"I don't hate you, Wren. What happened to June happened because you couldn't keep to one wolf. These four years were Sienna's chance and they were what you owed. Tonight it's paid off."

"After we're mated I'll be the way I used to be with you."

I laughed. It went on until it turned into something else.

Cassian. If you knew who dug you out of that shaft, would any of this have been worth it.

"I'd die before I took your mark," I said.

"Who else would have you," he said, and turned toward the door.

They came in and filled the room and then the steps behind it. Forty of them, more. Two of the young ones had their phones up over the heads in front.

Sienna talked while she worked. She was good at it. Her voice went clear and pleasant the moment she had people to use it on.

Then she stopped, took the corner of the sheet, and pulled it off me.

The roof of the rite room is open to the sky. The moon came down through it onto the altar and there was nothing on me at all.

She turned the tip of the needle down toward my belly.

"Before we go on. You'll see this on a body sooner or later, so learn it now. She lost a pup at seven months." She let the point rest there. "Look at it properly. This is where a she-wolf ends up when she lets strays put their teeth in her. Don't be her."

Nobody said anything. The room was warm from all of them, and I had never been so cold in my life.

The saw stopped. She set the lifter under the cut edge and the front of my chest came up.

Something in me let go. I felt the wet spread out under me and run to the edge of the stone, and there was not one thing I could do, and forty people were watching me.

Sienna waved one of the boys forward with his phone. "That's normal. Pain does it. You'll see it every time."

Cassian put his hand flat over the lens.

"Don't look at that," he said. "Keep going. I'll see to it."

He got water and cloth and cleaned me himself. He was careful about it. He did it the way he had done it every day for a month after I lost her, when I couldn't get to the washroom on my own.

Then he looked up and saw my face.

I had enough air for three words.

"I hate you."

Something moved behind his eyes and was gone again.

I stopped looking at him and looked up through the opening at the moon.

I was eighteen the first time he asked me. End of the season, frost already on the pines, and he had been walking me back to the sheds every night for a week without saying anything at all. I said yes before he got the whole question out.

If I had it again I would have kept walking.

Sienna picked her voice back up.

"Now the part that matters. We take the heart."