Blood beneath fingernails never truly washes out.

Maeve knew this, just as she knew the iron-thick scent of a royal retinue miles before they breached the valley.

Kings brought war, and war took sons.

But this king was looking for something else, hunting a ghost among the living, the lie burned.

Maeve plunged her bare hands back into the wooden vat, ignoring the angry red skin at her wrists.

Hide scraping was a miserable trade, smelling of rotting fat and wet dog, but it kept people away.

In the lower village of Oak Haven, isolation was a currency Maeve hoarded.

She hauled the heavy sloughing deer hide over the scraping beam.

Her knuckles ached.

Cold autumn wind whipped through the gaps in the wooden slats of her lean-to, carrying the sharp bite of impending frost.

Finn, drop it.

Maeve didn’t look up.

She didn’t need to.

Her hearing, sharpened by proxy to the blood in her children’s veins, caught the wet, tearing behind the wood pile.

A boy of four crawled out from the shadows.

His face was smeared with dark soil and something distinctly red.

He held a dead rabbit by the neck.

Its head hung by a thread of sinew.

Finn didn’t cry or pout like a human child caught in mischief.

He just stared at her.

His eyes, a startling, luminous amber, caught the gray daylight.

They were the eyes of a predator weighing its options.

I said, “Drop it.”

Maeve repeated.

She kept her voice flat.

Showing fear was a mistake.

Showing anger was worse.

Finn opened his jaw.

The rabbit hit the mud with a dull smack.

Beside him, the wood pile rustled.

Rowan, his twin sister, slithered out.

She was smaller, all sharp elbows and tangled black hair, but she moved with a terrifying fluid grace.

Rowan sniffed the rabbit, then looked at Maeve, baring teeth that were just a fraction too pointed for a human mouth.

A low, rhythmic sound vibrated in her narrow chest.

A growl.

“We are hungry.”

Rowan said.

Her voice was raspy, unused to human vowels.

“You ate porridge not 2 hours ago.”

Maeve wiped her burning hands on her coarse linen apron, leaving dark streaks.

She stepped away from the scraping beam and grabbed the rabbit by its hind legs, tossing it over the fence into the briars.

“No raw meat.

What is the rule?”

“Cooked meat.”

Finn muttered, staring at the briars.

“Like the weak things.”

“Like the living things.”

Maeve corrected sharply.

She crouched in the mud, grabbing both children by their rough-spun tunics and pulling them close.

They smelled of damp earth, dried pine needles, and that underlying, unmistakable musk of wild canine.

It was getting stronger.

Every month the scent grew thicker, harder to mask with garlic and wood smoke.

“If the elders see you eating raw kill.”

Maeve whispered, her breath ghosting over their dirty faces.

“They will hang us all from the weeping willow.

Do you understand?

They will put iron collars on your necks.”

Rowan touched her throat, a flicker of genuine apprehension crossing her feral features.

Finn just scowled.

Maeve stood, her knees popping.

She was 24, but she felt 50.

Her body was a map of exhaustion, worn down by the sheer physical toll of keeping two alpha-blooded pups hidden in a settlement of superstitious humans and low-ranking wolves.

Suddenly, Finn sneezed.

Then he stiffened.

Rowan dropped to all fours, her fingers digging into the mud.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up.

Maeve froze.

The wind shifted, blowing down from the northern ridge.

At first, she smelled only the approaching rain.

Then, it hit her.

Ozone, crushed copper, old blood, and pine resin.

It was a scent so heavy it made the back of her throat taste like metal.

It was a suffocating pressure in the air, a pheromonal weight that told every instinct in a 100-mile radius to submit or die.

The alpha king.

Maeve’s heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

She tasted bile.

No.

Not here.

Why is he here?

The village warning horn sounded a long, mournful blast that echoed off the valley walls.

Mama?

Finn asked.

He was trembling.

It wasn’t fear.

It was the biological reaction of an unpresented pup to a supreme alpha.

His little body didn’t know whether to cower or challenge.

Inside, Maeve hissed, grabbing their arms.

Now, she shoved them into the dark, smoke-stained hovel she called home.

Her hands shook as she grabbed a handful of cold ash from the hearth.

She rubbed it frantically into Finn’s hair, dulling the unnatural raven sheen.

She smeared soot across Rowan’s cheeks and down her neck, masking the sharp predatory lines of her jaw.

Outside, the ground began to vibrate.

The rhythmic thud of armored warhorses struck the dirt road.

Listen to me, Maeve said, gripping her children’s shoulders hard enough to bruise.

You look at the mud.

You do not look up.

You do not speak.

You breathe through your mouth so you don’t smell them.

You are human.

You are sick, weak, human children.

Understand?

Finn’s amber eyes were wide, dilated entirely black.

It hurts my head.

I know.

Maeve pulled him to her chest, pressing a hand to the back of his neck.

She closed her eyes.

The memory she had buried for 5 years clawed its way to the surface.

Cold stone, the smell of burning tapestries, a man bleeding out on the cellar floor, his chest heaving, his eyes wild and unseeing with the fever of the alpha rut.

She had just been a servant trying to bring water to the wounded.

He had grabbed her wrist.

He had been burning from the inside out.

He didn’t ask her name.

She never offered it.

She survived the night, stole a cloak, and ran before the dawn broke and his mind returned to him.

Now, Cailin had come to Oakhaven.

“Everyone out!”

A voice bellowed from the street, followed by the harsh crack of a whip against a wooden door.

“By order of the king, to the square.

Muster for the census.”

Maeve swallowed the lump in her throat.

She grabbed her heavy wool shawl, threw it over the children, and pushed them toward the door.

The village square was a slurry of brown water and animal dung.

Rain had begun to fall in thin, icy sheets, pasting hair to foreheads and soaking through thin peasant wool.

Over 200 people stood in ragged lines, shivering in the cold.

The silence was absolute, broken only by the coughing of the sick and the nervous stamping of hooves.

Maeve stood in the third row, her hands resting firmly on the backs of Finn and Rowan’s necks, forcing their heads down.

The mud seeped through the soles of her worn boots, chilling her toes to numbness.

At the head of the square stood 30 heavily armored guards.

Their cloaks dyed the deep, bruised purple of the royal house.

But Maeve didn’t look at them.

Her gaze was fixed on the ground, yet she felt him exactly as if he were burning a hole in the air.

King Cailin dismounted.

His boots hit the mud with a heavy, deliberate thud.

He didn’t wear a crown.

He didn’t need one.

He was massive, broad-shouldered, and cloaked in dark furs that smelled faintly of slaughter.

His armor was scarred, boiled leather, and blackened steel.

He didn’t look like the triumphant heroes in the bard songs.

He looked exhausted.

He looked like a man who hadn’t slept deeply in half a decade.

“The tithe is short.”

Caelan’s voice rolled over the square.

It wasn’t a shout, but the low, gravelly resonance of it vibrated in Maeve’s chest.

It was a voice used to commanding bloodshed.

“Grain is missing, and the warden tells me three of your young men fled into the woods rather than face conscription.”

The village elder, a frail man named Brom, stepped forward, trembling.

“My king, the rot took the winter wheat, and the boys, they were afraid.”

“Fear does not feed an army, Brom, nor does it hold the border.”

Caelan began to walk down the first line of villagers.

His movements were slow, deliberate.

He was inspecting them, testing the air.

He was looking for wolves, conscripts for his vanguard.

Maeve pushed Rowan’s head down a fraction more.

The child was stiff as a board under her hand.

“Breathe through your mouth,” Maeve prayed silently.

“Please, just be still.”

Caelan moved to the second row.

The air grew thinner.

Dogs in the nearby alleys were whining, pressing their bellies to the dirt in submission.

The sheer, suffocating weight of his presence made Maeve’s lungs burn.

She focused on the frayed hem of the tunic in front of her.

Then, Caelan stopped.

He was 10 ft away.

The wind shifted, blowing directly from Maeve to him.

The king froze.

His head snapped up.

Underneath her hand, Finn let out a tiny, involuntary whine, a pup responding to the pack leader.

Maeve’s blood ran cold.

Cailan turned slowly, his eyes pale and sharp as chipped flint scanned the crowd.

He wasn’t looking at the faces.

He was tracking the scent.

He took a step forward, shoving past a terrified baker, breaking the line.

He stopped directly in front of Maeve.

The mud squelched beneath his boots.

Up close, he smelled of wet iron, sweat, and something hollow and bitter.

Maeve kept her eyes glued to his chest plate, where the leather was cracked and stained.

Cailan didn’t look at her.

He looked down at the two small, soot-covered shapes huddled against her skirts.

For a long, agonizing moment, the only sound was the rain hitting the mud.

“Step back,” Cailan ordered the villagers around them.

The crowd scrambled away, leaving Maeve and her children standing isolated in a small circle of empty, churning mud.

Cailan crouched.

The hinges of his armor groaned.

He was now eye-level with the pups.

He reached out a large, calloused hand, missing two joints on the pinky finger.

He grasped Finn by the chin and tilted the boy’s face up.

Maeve stopped breathing.

The rain washed the soot from Finn’s forehead.

He glared back at the king, his lips peeling back just slightly to reveal gums that were too dark, teeth that were too sharp.

Finn’s amber eyes blazed with a defiant, stupidly brave light.

Cailan’s breath hitched.

A muscle feathered in his jaw.

He released the boy’s chin and leaned closer, inhaling deeply.

His nostrils flared.

Maeve saw the exact moment the king registered the scent.

It wasn’t the smell of a peasant child.

It was raw, unadulterated alpha power reeking of pine and iron.

Cailan stood up slowly.

He towered over Maeve, casting a long, dark shadow over her.

When he finally looked at her face, his expression was a terrifying blankness.

“Look at me.”

He commanded.

Maeve forced her chin up.

She met his gaze.

There was no recognition in his eyes.

To him, she was just a filthy scarred woman in a mud-soaked apron.

She was no one.

“What are these?”

Cailan’s voice dropped to a dangerous, lethal whisper.

It was meant only for her.

“My children, my lord.”

Maeve said.

Her voice didn’t shake, though her hands did.

She hid them in the folds of her apron.

Cailan let out a short, harsh breath that might have been a laugh.

“Do not play me for a fool, woman.

These are no human runts.

They stink of the deep woods.

They are wolves, alpha-blooded.”

He stepped closer, closing the distance until the wet wool of his cloak brushed her knees.

The pressure of his aura was a physical weight, pressing down on her shoulders, demanding she drop to her knees and bare her throat.

She locked her knees to stay standing.

“A human carrying alpha pups.”

Cailan murmured, his eyes narrowing, searching her dirty face for a lie.

“They should have torn you apart from the inside out.

I am strong enough.”

Maeve replied flatly.

Cailan’s jaw tightened.

“A rogue alpha breeds in my territory, leaves his bastards in a human village to hide them from my cull.”

He leaned down, his face inches from hers.

She could see the faint silver scars webbing across his cheek.

“Who is the father?”

“He is dead.”

The lie slipped off her tongue smoothly, practiced a thousand times in the dark.

“I did not ask if he was breathing.”

Cailan snarled softly, the wolf in him pushing against the edges of his control.

“I asked who he was.

Give me a name, or I will take these pups to the keep and throw them in the fighting pits to see what strain of blood they carry.

Panic, hot and bright, spiked in Maeve’s chest.

She stepped slightly in front of Rowan, shielding her.

A drifter.

A mercenary passing through during the winter wars.

I didn’t know his name.

He took what he wanted and left.

Cailan stared at her.

His pale eyes traced the dark circles under her eyes, the hard set of her mouth, the desperate trembling line of her shoulders.

He inhaled again slowly, drawing her scent into his lungs.

Lie, wet linen, fear, and beneath it, buried under years of dirt and exhaustion, something else.

A phantom trace that made the king’s pupils dilate.

He looked back down at the boy.

Finn was still staring at him with those amber eyes.

Eyes that mirrored the king’s own.

You lie, Cailan said, his voice suddenly void of anger, replaced by a cold, clinical certainty.

Pack the children.

You are coming with me.

No, Maeve blurted out, her composure cracking.

My lord, please.

They are nothing to you.

They are just peasants.

Cailan turned his back on her, signaling to his captain.

Put them on the wagon.

If the mother resists, bind her.

If the pups bite, muzzle them.

He didn’t look back as he mounted his horse.

Maeve stood in the freezing rain, her children clinging to her legs as the purple-cloaked guards closed in around them.

The secret she had bled to keep was unraveling in the mud.

The wagon ride lasted two days, a bone-rattling crawl through mud-choked ravines and sleet.

Maeve didn’t sleep.

She sat rigidly on the splintered floorboards, keeping Finn and Rowan wedged between her knees under the heavy wool blanket.

The guards didn’t speak to her.

They just watched the pups with a mixture of disgust and wary respect, their hands resting on the pommels of silver-hilted swords, Blackridge Keep rose from the jagged granite of the mountains like a scab.

It was a fortress built for siege, not comfort.

The air here was thinner, biting at the lungs, and reeked heavily of wood smoke, roasting meat, and the overwhelming territorial musk of a hundred alpha-blooded soldiers.

Rowan whimpered as the wagon lurched over the courtyard cobblestones.

The sheer volume of dominant scents was crushing her.

“Swallow it,” Maeve whispered into the girl’s matted hair, rubbing a warm hand up and down her narrow spine.

“Be a stone.”

Guards herded them into the lower levels of the Keep.

The damp chill of the dungeons was entirely absent.

Instead, they were pushed into a large, austere chamber heated by a roaring hearth.

The floor was covered in thick, woven rugs that smelled of sheep fat.

A heavy oak table dominated the center, bearing a silver platter piled high with half-cooked venison.

The door slammed shut, locking with a heavy metallic clack.

Finn scrambled out from under Maeve’s grip immediately.

He hit the floor on all fours, scrambling toward the table.

Rowan was a second behind him.

They didn’t use their hands.

They tore into the meat with their teeth, growling low in their throats, snapping at each other when their muzzles crossed.

Maeve sank against the heavy oak door and slid to the floor.

Her knees gave out.

She squeezed her eyes shut, listening to the wet, tearing sounds of her children eating raw flesh.

The lye burns on her wrists throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

She had failed.

Five years of scrubbing floors, eating moldy bread, and freezing in a hovel to keep them off the radar gone because the wind had shifted on the wrong afternoon.

The heavy iron handle beside her head turned.

Maeve scrambled to her feet, wiping her dirty hands on her apron.

King Cailan stepped into the room.

He had stripped off the blackened plate armor, wearing only a coarse linen tunic and thick leather trousers.

Without the steel, he looked leaner, but no less lethal.

The dark bruises of exhaustion under his pale eyes were stark in the firelight.

He smelled of sweat, saddle leather, and the metallic tang of dried blood.

He didn’t look at Maeve.

He leaned against the stone archway, crossing his arms, watching the pups.

Finn paused, a strip of bloody venison hanging from his jaw.

He looked at the king.

The boy’s hackles rose, lifting the ragged collar of his tunic.

He didn’t retreat.

He swallowed the meat whole and planted his small, dirty hands on the rug, emitting a high, rattling snarl.

Cailan tilted his head.

A strange, tight expression crossed his face.

He pushed off the doorframe and took a slow step into the room.

Rowan abandoned the meat and scurried backward, hiding behind the table leg, but Finn held his ground.

“Curious,” Cailan rumbled.

His voice was a low vibration that vibrated through the floorboards.

“By all rights, a pup that young should be on its belly, pissing itself in submission.

Yet he challenges.”

“He doesn’t know any better,” Maeve said quickly, stepping between the king and the table.

“He is just a child.”

Cailan’s pale eyes finally snapped to her.

The dismissal in them was absolute.

“He is a wolf.

Instinct does not need to be taught.

He recognizes a threat, and his blood tells him he has the right to stand against it.

That requires a very specific lineage.”

He stepped closer to Maeve.

She forced herself not to step back, though her boots felt glued to the floor.

“I have spent the last 3 hours scouring the archives,” Cailan said softly, his gaze dropping to her throat, looking for a mating mark, trying to determine which of my traitorous Bannerman slipped into the low valleys to breed.

The boy has the amber eyes of the northern ridge packs, but his jaw and the girl’s speed, that is lowland blood.

It doesn’t make sense.

I told you.

Maeve kept her voice dead and flat.

He was a drifter, and I told you I am not a fool.

Caelan reached out.

Maeve flinched, turning her face away, bracing for a blow.

Instead, his large scarred hand caught the collar of her rough woolen tunic.

He didn’t pull her close, but his grip was immovable.

With a sharp tug, he tore the fabric downward, exposing her left shoulder and collarbone.

The cold air hit her skin.

Maeve gasped, trying to pull away, but he held her fast.

Look at you, Caelan murmured, his voice tightening.

He wasn’t looking at her breasts or her skin with any kind of desire.

He was staring at the thick silvery raised scars that stretched from her collarbone down toward her sternum.

They looked like the roots of a pale dead tree.

Human women do not survive carrying alpha pups, Caelan said, his thumb brushing millimeters from the ruined flesh.

The heat radiating from his hand made her shiver.

The pups drain them.

They consume the mother’s calcium, her iron, her very life force to fuel their own monstrous growth unless the sire bites the mother, unless he shares his blood to heal her through the pregnancy.

He let go of her torn tunic, taking a half step back.

He looked genuinely disturbed.

You have no bite mark, Caelan noted, his eyes scanning her unblemished neck.

No wolf claimed you to keep you alive.

You bore the sheer parasitic brunt of their alpha blood entirely on your own.

It tore your body apart from the inside, and you just endured it.

Maeve pulled the frayed edges of her tunic together, her fingers trembling.

I survived.

That is all I have ever done.

Caelan stared at her, the cogs turning violently behind his pale eyes.

Who’s blood is strong enough to trigger a royal challenge in a four-year-old, yet reckless enough to leave a human to rot?

I don’t know his name.

Maeve’s voice cracked.

The exhaustion was finally pulling her under.

The heat of the fire, the smell of the meat, the suffocating presence of the king, it was too much.

It was dark.

He was dying.

Or I thought he was dying.

I just wanted it over with.

Caelan froze.

The crackling of the hearth seemed to amplify in the sudden dead silence of the room.

Finn, sensing the shift in the air, stopped growling and sat back on his haunches, watching them with unnerving intelligence.

Dying?

Caelan repeated.

The word sounded foreign in his mouth.

He was bleeding, Maeve said, staring at the floorboards, the memory spilling out like water from a cracked jug.

She couldn’t stop it now.

The lie was too heavy to carry anymore.

He was burning up.

The rut fever had taken him.

He dragged me down.

I didn’t fight him because I knew he would snap my neck if I did.

Caelan’s breathing changed.

It grew shallow, uneven.

He took a step toward her, closing the distance entirely.

He grabbed her left wrist.

It wasn’t a gentle touch.

It was a vise grip, his fingers wrapping around the thin, fragile bones of her forearm.

Maeve let out a sharp gasp of pain and tried to yank her arm back.

Let go.

Stop moving.

Caelan’s voice was a ragged command.

He lifted her arm into the firelight.

He ignored the angry red lie burns on her hands.

Instead, his thumb traced a very old, very specific scar on the inside of her wrist.

It was a crescent shape.

The distinct indentation of a thumbnail digging so deep it had permanently scarred the tissue.

Cailin lifted his own right hand.

He looked at his missing pinky joint and then at his thumb.

Five years ago, the winter rebellion, he had taken a silver-laced broadsword to the gut.

His guard had shoved him into the cellar of a burning tavern to hide him while they held off the assassins.

The silver had poisoned his blood, triggering a violent, delirious fever.

The wolf inside him, terrified of death, had demanded the most basic, primal acts of survival.

Breed.

Pass on the line.

Survive.

He remembered the dark.

He remembered the smell of smoke.

He remembered dragging a small, terrified shape down to the cold stone floor, gripping her wrist to keep her from fleeing.

He remembered tearing into her, driven by pure, unadulterated madness.

He had woken up alone, covered in his own blood, the fever broken.

He had assumed the woman was a hallucination, or a corpse left behind in the ashes.

Cailin dropped her wrist as if it burned him.

He stumbled backward, his boots catching on the heavy rug.

He hit the edge of the oak table, rattling the silver platter.

He looked at Maeve.

Really looked at her.

He saw the harsh lines of her mouth, the muddy brown of her hair, the dark, sunken hollows of her eyes.

She was not a queen.

She was not a fated mate.

She was collateral damage from the worst night of his life.

Then, Cailin looked past her knees to the two pups huddled on the floor.

Finn stared back.

The boy’s jaw was locked, his amber eyes reflecting the firelight.

Cailin’s own eyes.

Cailin’s own jaw.

Gods, Cailin breathed.

The word was scraped raw.

He dragged a trembling hand over his face, pressing his fingers into his eyes.

Maeve watched the most feared alpha in the Western Territories unravel in the span of 10 seconds.

She felt no triumph, only a deep, hollow dread.

“You knew,” Cailin said softly, dropping his hand.

His pale eyes locked onto hers, filled with a sudden, turbulent fury.

“You knew who I was in the square.

You looked me in the eye and lied to my face.

You would have taken them,” Maeve snapped, the maternal terror finally hardening into anger.

“You would have dragged them into this stone cage and turned them into weapons, or worse.

Your council would have killed them because their mother scrubs hides for a living.

They are my blood,” Cailin roared, the sound hitting the stone walls with enough force to rattle the iron sconces.

Rowan shrieked, covering her ears.

Finn didn’t flinch.

He bared his teeth, a tiny, feral echo of the king’s own rage.

Cailin saw the boy’s reaction, and the shout died in his throat.

His chest heaved.

He stared at the four-year-old child who carried the supreme bloodline of a kingdom, smeared in mud and raw venison blood.

He looked back at Maeve.

The fury in his eyes was replaced by a crushing, suffocating realization of what he had done to her.

He had broken her body, left her to face a lethal pregnancy alone, and condemned his own children to scavenge in the mud like feral dogs.

“I didn’t know,” Cailin said.

His voice was completely stripped of its royal cadence.

It was just the voice of a broken man.

“If I had known “It doesn’t matter what you would have done,” Maeve interrupted, her voice tired, devoid of any romantic illusion.

She rubbed her scarred wrist.

You know now.

So, what happens?

Caelan stared at her for a long time.

The fire crackled.

The smell of raw meat and ozone hung heavy in the air.

There was no apology that could fix the past 5 years.

There was no fairy tale bridge between the man in the armor and the woman in the mud.

They do not leave this keep, Caelan said finally.

His tone hardening into something permanent and heavy.

He wasn’t asking, and neither do you.

Maeve looked at the heavy iron door and then down at her burned, ruined hands.

She had traded one cage for another, but as she watched Finn wipe his bloody mouth on his sleeve, she knew she had survived worse.

Fine, Maeve said softly.

But you were buying them proper clothes and they are not eating off the floor.

Caelan looked at her, a faint, cynical ghost of a smile pulling at the corner of his scarred mouth.

He nodded slowly.

Done.