Blood tastes like old pennies and regret.

Caleb wiped it from his mouth, pushing Gwen forward.

She stumbled.

Dirt coated her knees.

Cold wind bit through her wool dress.

He traded her for peace, never realizing tearing their soul bond apart would rot his own lands into dust.

The great hall of Ashborne did not smell like a stronghold of kings.

It smelled of wet dog, rancid tallow, and fear.

Gwen stood near the hearth, though the fire had burned down to spitting anemic embers.

The cold seeped through the soles of her worn leather boots, settling into her bones.

She kept her chin tucked, her eyes fixed on a specific crack in the flagstone floor where spilled ale had dried into a sticky, dark crust.

If she didn’t look up, she wouldn’t have to see Caleb sweat, but she could smell him, her mate.

The word felt like a parasite in her mouth, something bitter she couldn’t spit out.

Biologically, her blood sang for him.

Practically, she knew Caleb was a coward clothed in an alpha’s heavy furs.

His scent, usually a crisp mix of cedar and autumn leaves had gone sour.

It rire of panic sweat, stale wine, and the underlying metallic tang of a beaten animal.

Across the heavy oak table, sat Gideon.

He didn’t look like a rogue king.

Rogues were supposed to be feral, starving things that gnawed on bones and died of winter sickness.

Gideon looked like a mountain that had decided to walk.

He wore boiled leather and chain mail that clinkedked with a dull, heavy finality every time he shifted.

He didn’t fidget.

He didn’t boast.

He just sat there eating a bruised apple with slow, methodical crunches, his pale eyes fixed on Caleb.

His scent was overwhelming, drowning out the sour fear of the ashborne wolves.

He smelled of crushed pine needles, ozone before a lightning strike, and dried blood.

“Half your winter stores,” Gideon said.

His voice wasn’t a roar.

It was a low rumble, the kind that vibrated in Gwen’s mers.

And a hostage of my choosing to ensure you don’t decide to raid my borders when the snows melt.

Caleb swallowed hard.

Gwen saw his throat bob.

“Half our stores will starve us.

Losing a war will also starve you,” Gideon pointed out softly.

He tossed the apple core onto the table.

It rolled, stopping against Caleb’s silver chalice.

“You challenged my pack.

You lost.

Now you pay the toll.”

“Half the stores and a hostage.

Take my cousin,” Caleb offered, his voice pitching a fraction too high.

Gideon didn’t even blink.

Your cousin is a drunk with a bad leg.

I have no use for him.

I want someone whose absence you will feel.

The silence in the hall stretched until it felt brittle enough to snap.

Gwen rubbed her thumb over her rough knuckles.

She was just a lower tier wolf, a scullery girl who happened to have the tragic misfortune of catching the alpha’s eye during the mating run.

Caleb had claimed her in the dark, driven by the inescapable gravity of the mate bond.

But in the harsh light of day, he had kept it secret.

He couldn’t present a maid as his Luna.

The pack needed an alliance, so she remained in the shadows, bound to him by a supernatural thread that felt more like a choke chain every passing month.

Caleb’s eyes darted around the room.

He looked at his beta, who firmly looked away.

He looked at his sister, who took a step back into the shadows.

Then Caleb looked at Gwen.

She felt the exact moment he made the decision.

It wasn’t a dramatic shift.

It was a pathetic, sickening slink of his spirit.

The bond between them, that invisible, taught string connecting her chest to his vibrated with his sudden selfish relief.

No, she thought, her breath catching.

You wouldn’t, not even you.

I have someone, Caleb said.

He stood up, the chair scraping loudly against the stone.

He walked over to the hearth.

Gwen didn’t back away.

She just stared at him.

She saw the dark circles under his eyes, the slight tremble in his jaw.

She saw the man she was destined for.

And she felt absolutely nothing but a profound hollow disgust.

He grabbed her upper arm, his fingers dug in, bruising the flesh beneath her wool sleeve.

Caleb, she whispered, a pathetic, broken sound she immediately hated herself for making.

She didn’t want to beg.

“Begging was useless.”

“She is important to me,” Caleb said, dragging her toward the table.

Gwen stumbled, her weak ankle giving way for a second, but he yanked her upright.

“Take her, Gwen.”

Gideon leaned back in his chair.

The wood groaned under his weight.

He looked at Gwen.

He didn’t look at her like a woman or a prize.

He looked at her the way a butcher inspects a cut of meat appraising.

Neutral a servant?

Gideon asked, his brow raising slightly.

She’s my mate, Caleb blurted out.

The great hall erupted into gasps and murmurss.

Caleb’s beta stepped forward, horrified, but Caleb held up a shaking hand.

Gideon’s eyes narrowed.

The heavy suffocating weight of his aura spiked, pressing down on the room until several younger wolves whimpered and dropped to their knees.

Gwen felt a sudden pressure in her nose as if she were deep underwater.

“Your mate,” Gideon repeated.

The syllables tasted dangerous in his mouth.

“You are offering me your mate to save your grain.”

Caleb’s grip on her arm tightened until she gasped.

“The bond is unconsummated.

The claiming bite hasn’t been marked.

She is bound to me, but she is pure.

I I renounce the bond.

I give her to you.

Take her and leave my lands.

Fate, Gwen decided in that moment, was a cruel, blind drunk.

She didn’t scream.

She didn’t spit in his face.

Her reaction was entirely, embarrassingly physiological.

Her stomach dropped.

A wave of intense nausea hitting her so hard she gagged.

The room spun.

The mate bond, the primal magic that was supposed to be sacred, tore.

It didn’t snap like a clean thread.

It ripped like wet canvas.

Gwen collapsed to her knees, hitting the stone floor with a bonejarring thud.

She clutched her chest, dry heaving as a phantom agony shredded her ribs.

It felt as though Caleb had reached into her rib cage and ripped out a handful of veins.

Through the roaring in her ears, she heard Gideon’s chair scraped back.

Heavy iron shaw boots stepped into her field of vision.

They stopped inches from her hands.

An alpha who sells his own soul to save his skin, Gideon said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

Deal.

The grain and the girl.

I’ll take her now.

He reached down.

Gwen expected rough hands, the same bruising grip Caleb had used.

Instead, a large, calloused palm grasped her shoulder, firm but careful.

He hauled her to her feet with terrifying ease.

Gwen swayed, her vision graying at the edges.

She leaned into him without meaning to, her face pressing against his chain mail.

It was freezing cold, smelling of that sharp pine and blood.

Caleb took a step forward, a momentary flash of regret crossing his face.

Gwen, you don’t get to speak her name anymore.

Gideon interrupted, not even looking at Caleb.

He adjusted his grip on Gwen, supporting her weight.

Pack your carts, Ashborn.

If the grain isn’t at the border by moonrise, I’ll return for your head.

Gideon turned, half carrying Gwen toward the heavy double doors of the hall.

She looked back over her shoulder.

Caleb stood by the table, looking small around him.

The hearth fire finally sputtered and died entirely, plunging his end of the hall into gray shadows.

Gwen didn’t feel brave.

She just felt tired, sick, and deeply entirely hollowed out.

The ride out of the valley was a prolonged torture.

Gwen wasn’t tied, which surprised her, but she was seated in front of Gideon on his massive warhorse.

The beast was built like a draft horse, all thick muscle and heavy hooves, churning up the freezing mud of the trail.

The rhythm should have been lulling, but every jostle sent a fresh spike of pain through Gwen’s chest.

The severed bond was an open, bleeding wound in her spirit.

She shivered violently, her teeth chattering so hard her jaw achd.

Her thinwool dress was no match for the biting mountain wind, but she refused to ask for a cloak.

She kept her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach, staring blankly at the horse’s coarse black mane.

Gideon rode in silence.

He didn’t try to make small talk.

He didn’t mock her tears, mostly because she wasn’t crying.

Her body was just leaking water from her eyes due to the biting wind, or so she told herself.

Occasionally, she felt the subtle shift of his chest against her back.

He was a furnace of heat.

Despite her terror of him, her freezing body instinctively betrayed her, leaning backward to steal the warmth radiating from his chest and thighs.

She hated herself for it.

She was leaning on the monster who had just bought her.

“Breathe,” Gideon said suddenly.

His voice was close to her ear, a low rumble over the howling wind.

I am breathing.

Gwen snapped back, her voice raspy and pathetic.

You’re taking shallow breaths.

You’re going to pass out.

Deep breaths through the nose.

She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but a particularly harsh jolt of the horse sent a spasm of agony through her chest.

She gasped, doubling over, her forehead hitting the horse’s neck.

A strangled sob tore out of her throat.

Gideon pulled back on the reinss.

The horse huffed, coming to a halt on the muddy ridge overlooking the edge of Ashborne territory.

Before Gwen could register what was happening, Gideon dismounted.

He reached up, grasping her waist, and pulled her down.

Her legs gave out the moment her boots hit the frozen mud.

She fell hard onto her hands and knees.

The nausea rose again, violent and unstoppable.

She wretched into the snow, bringing up nothing but bitter yellow bile.

She squeezed her eyes shut, humiliated.

She was a piece of traded property, throwing up like a sick dog in front of a rogue warlord.

A heavy dark fur cloak settled over her shaking shoulders.

It engulfed her, smelling strongly of wood smoke, and Gideon’s sharp static-like scent.

The sudden heat was a shock to her system.

“Drink,” Gideon commanded.

A leather water skin was pushed into her line of sight.

She looked up at him.

He was crouching in the snow, indifferent to the mud staining his leather breaches.

The harsh daylight caught his face.

He wasn’t handsome in the traditional sense.

His features were too sharp, a jagged scar cutting through his left eyebrow, his jaw covered in a thick, dark shadow of stubble.

But his eyes were a startling clear gray.

They weren’t cruel.

They were entirely unreadable.

Gwen snatched the water skin from him with a shaking dirt stained hand.

She unccorked it with her teeth and drank.

It was water, freezing cold, but it washed the sour taste from her mouth.

The physical tearing of a mate bond, Gideon said quietly, staring out over the valley they had just left, is meant to kill a wolf of weak constitution.

You’re holding up better than expected.

Thank you, she rasped bitterly, wiping her mouth with the back of her dirty hand.

I aim to please my new owner.

Gideon’s jaw tightened.

I didn’t buy you to own you.

Gwen let out a harsh, barking laugh that ended in a cough.

Right.

You bought me because you have a passion for charity.

What are you going to do with me?

Breed me to your soldiers?

Use me as leverage when Caleb inevitably fails to deliver the grain?

Gideon looked at her.

Really looked at her.

There was a flicker of something in those gray eyes.

Annoyance perhaps, or pity.

Both angered her.

“Caleb won’t survive the winter,” Gideon stated, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather.

Gwen frowned, clutching the furcloak tighter.

“He has half his stores.

He has the walls of Ashborne.

He has nothing,” Gideon corrected.

He stood up, towering over her again.

He pointed a leatherclad finger down at the valley below.

Look.

Gwen pushed herself up on trembling legs, walking toward the edge of the ridge.

This was the boundary line.

To her right lay the wild, untamed rogue territories.

To her left the valley of Ashborne.

She squinted through the gray afternoon light.

At first she didn’t see it.

The stone keep looked the same in the distance, but then she looked at the trees.

The ancient pines that lined the border of the packlands, the trees that stayed violently green even in the dead of winter were turning black.

As she watched, the needles curled and dropped like a shower of dark rain.

The frost on the ground seemed to creep inward, but it wasn’t a clean white winter frost.

It was a grayish, sickly blight.

The smell hit her a moment later, carried up on a thermal updraft.

It didn’t smell like pine and hearth smoke anymore.

It smelled like stagnant water and rotting root vegetables.

“What did you do?”

Gwen whispered, horror pooling in her gut.

She looked back at Gideon.

“Did your witches curse the land?”

“I did nothing,” Gideon said.

He walked over, taking the water skin from her slack grip.

A pack is tied to its alpha, but the alpha’s legitimacy is tied to the moon, to the land.

Caleb rejected his destined mate.

He traded away the only pure anchor he had to his own soul.

Gideon paused, his gray eyes catching the dull light.

He thought he was trading a servant to save his land.

He didn’t realize he was cutting out the heart of Ashbborne and handing it to me.

The land knows you’re gone.

It knows he sold you.

Gwen stared at the dying trees.

She was a scullery maid.

She scrubbed pots.

She didn’t have magic.

She wasn’t a highborn Luna who could bless crops.

But as she looked down at the mud beneath her boots, she noticed a tiny, stubborn white snowdrop flower pushing through the frozen soil right by her toe.

He thinks he bought peace, Gideon murmured, turning back to his horse.

He bought a famine.

By the time the spring thaw comes, Ashborne will be a graveyard, and his pack will beg to join the rogues.

He swung up into the saddle.

He looked down at her, offering a large, calloused hand.

Are you coming, Gwen?

Or do you want to walk down there and rot with them?

Gwen looked at the graying valley.

She thought of Caleb’s clammy hands, the cowardice in his eyes, the sickening rip in her chest that he had caused without a second thought.

She looked at the giant of a man holding his hand out to her, a terrifying unknown, smelling of blood and storms.

She reached up, her small, dirty hand grasping his.

His grip was solid.

He pulled her up in one fluid motion, settling her in front of him again.

As the warhorse turned away from Ashborne, stepping fully into the rogue lands, Gwen didn’t look back.

Gideon’s stronghold wasn’t a castle.

It was a scar carved into the side of the Wormtooth Mountains, a sprawling settlement of heavy timber, canvased tarps, and roaring iron brazers.

It smelled of rendering animal fat, wood smoke, and the sharp acidic tang of tanning leather.

It was loud.

Dogs barked.

Blacksmith hammers rang against anvils, and voices shouted over the howling wind in rough, clipped syllables.

It felt entirely aggressively alive.

Gwen expected a cage.

She expected a damp cellar or a collar.

Instead, Gideon dropped her off at a long wooden long house smelling of roasted onions and damp wool, pointed to an empty cot near the hearth and left her there.

For 3 days, she existed in a state of terrified paralysis.

Every time a heavily scarred rogue walked past, she flinched, but they ignored her.

They were too busy surviving.

By the fourth day, the terror morphed into a restless, crawling anxiety.

Sitting still made the severed mate Bond ache.

It felt like a phantom limb, a cold hollow beneath her ribs that throbbed whenever the wind howled.

She needed to move.

She needed to be useful because being useful was the only armor a scullery maid had ever known.

She found the wash tents near the half- frozen river.

Four broad shouldered women were plunging rough linen into boiling vats.

Gwen didn’t ask for permission.

She simply walked up, picked up a stiff bristle brush, grabbed a bloodstained tunic from the pile, and started scrubbing against the corrugated washboard.

An older woman with a missing left ear paused, wiping sweat from her forehead.

She looked at Gwen’s bruised, shaking hands, then at her pale face.

The woman didn’t sneer.

She just nudged a puck of harsh yellow lie soap toward her.

Take the iron smell out better, the woman grunted, then went back to her own work.

Gwen scrubbed until her knuckles bled.

The stinging pain of the lie eating into her raw skin was a brilliant, sharp distraction from the dull ache in her chest.

You’re ruining that tunic.

Gwen froze.

The voice was that low, chest vibrating rumble.

She slowly turned.

Gideon stood at the entrance of the wash tent.

He wore a heavy barefoot mantle, melting snow clinging to his dark hair.

He was watching her hands.

I can fix it, Gwen stammered, her heart hammering against her ribs.

She dropped the brush.

I’m sorry.

I just You’ve scrubbed a hole straight through the linen.

Gideon stepped into the tent.

The other women didn’t scramble or bow.

They merely nodded in acknowledgement and kept working.

He stopped in front of her wash tub.

He reached out, taking her wet, trembling hands in his massive ones.

His skin was calloused, rough as tree bark, but his touch was strangely clinical.

He turned her palms up, examining the bleeding knuckles and the red chemical burns from the soap.

I bought a hostage, Gideon said quietly.

Not a washerwoman.

You don’t need to earn your keep by stripping the flesh from your bones.

If I don’t work, I have no value, Gwen said.

The words slipped out before she could catch them.

A bitter raw truth.

She tried to pull her hands away, but his grip, though gentle, was immovable.

Value is a human concept.

Wolves don’t care about value.

They care about purpose.

Gideon finally released her hands.

He pulled a small wax tin from his pouch and set it on the edge of the washboard.

Pine pitch and chundula.

Put it on those cuts.

Then go to the kitchens.

They are butchering an elk.

Your hands are small enough to separate the silver skin from the meat without ruining the cuts.

He turned to leave, but paused, looking back over his shoulder.

Ashbborne didn’t rot because you have some hidden ancient magic, Gwen.

It rotted because you were the only one who actually touched the stone, worked the soil, and bled for the pack without asking for a crown in return.

The land recognizes sweat.

It recognized you.

Caleb only knew how to take.

A parasite cannot anchor a territory.

He walked away, his heavy boots crunching in the snow.

Gwen stared at the tin of salve.

She opened it.

It smelled intensely of pine, the exact scent of the rogue king.

She scooped a small amount out, rubbing it into her cracked skin.

It stung, then went blessedly numb.

For the first time since Caleb had dragged her across the great hall, Gwen took a full deep breath.

Deep winter hit the mountains like a swung hammer.

Blizzards choked the passes, piling snow drifts as high as the palisade walls.

The rogue camp merely dug in, burning their massive stores of wood, eating the grain they had extorted, and waiting for the thaw.

The warmth inside the long house was thick and heavy.

Gwen sat by the fire, mending a tear in a leather bracer.

She was warmer now.

She wore thick wool pants and a tunic lined with rabbit fur.

Her cheeks had lost their gaunt, sickly hollows.

The phantom ache in her chest had healed into a dull, thick scar.

She rarely thought of Caleb.

She was too busy helping the cooks, tending the hounds, and surviving.

The heavy oak doors of the long house banged open, letting in a swirl of blinding white snow and a blast of freezing air.

Wyatt, one of the border scouts, stumbled inside.

His beard was caked in ice.

He didn’t stop to brush it off.

He walked straight to the center of the hall where Gideon sat sharpening a broadsword.

“Refugees at the southern ridge,” Wyatt reported, his voice raspy.

About 40 of them, starving, half frozen, sickness in their ranks.

Gideon didn’t look up from his wet stone.

Rogues?

No.

Wyatt swallowed hard.

Ashborne.

The hall fell dead silent.

The crackle of the hearthfire suddenly sounded deafening.

Gwen lowered her sewing needle.

Her stomach gave a slow, uncomfortable roll.

“Send them back,” a scarred warrior muttered from the shadows.

“They had their walls.

Let them freeze behind them.

They claim their walls are rotting, Wyatt said, looking nervously at Gideon.

They say the blight took the winter stores.

The grain turned to black ash in the silos.

They’re begging for asylum.

Gideon finally stopped sharpening his sword.

He tested the edge with his thumb, then sheathed the blade.

He looked across the fire, meeting Gwen’s eyes.

He didn’t ask the question out loud, but it hung heavily in the smoky air.

Your people, your choice, Gwen stood up.

Her knees popped softly.

She walked toward the door, pulling her heavy barefoot cloak off a peg.

I want to see them.

Gideon stood, following her.

He didn’t argue.

The trek to the southern ridge was brutal, the wind slicing through even the thickest furs.

When they reached the guard outpost, Gwen looked down into the ravine.

She barely recognized them.

The proud wolves of Ashborne looked like walking corpses.

Their fine woolen cloaks were rags stiff with frozen mud.

Children cried softly.

Thin, reedy sounds that broke off into hacking coughs.

And standing at the front of the miserable cluster, leaning heavily on a wooden staff was Caleb.

He looked terrible.

His golden hair was matted with filth.

His cheekbones jutted out sharply against pale, graying skin.

He smelled of decay, panic, and overwhelming defeat.

When he saw Gideon and Gwen standing on the ridge, his dull eyes widened.

He dropped his staff, stumbling forward through the kneedeep snow, ignoring the rogue archers who immediately knocked arrows to their bowrings.

Gwen.

Caleb’s voice cracked.

It wasn’t the roar of an alpha.

It was a pathetic ready croak.

“Gwen, please.”

Gideon held up a hand, signaling the archers to hold.

He looked at Gwen.

She walked down the slope, her boots crunching loudly in the frozen crust.

She stopped 10 paces from Caleb.

The air between them felt dead.

There was no pull, no magical resonance, just the stench of a starving, broken man.

The land,” Caleb gasped, falling to his knees in the snow.

He looked up at her, tears freezing on his dirty cheeks.

“The land died,” Gwen, the water turned black.

The grain rotted.

“We have nothing.

I I made a mistake.

I was afraid.

I didn’t know.”

“You knew exactly what you were doing,” Gwen said.

Her voice was steady.

It didn’t tremble.

She felt a profound heavy emptiness looking at him.

I reject the trade, Caleb cried out, his hands clawing at his chest as if trying to grasp the severed bond.

I’ll give him back the grain.

I need you to come back.

The pack needs you.

The magic.

There is no magic, Caleb.

Gwen interrupted, her tone flat.

You didn’t sell a goddess.

You sold a maid.

You sold the person who cooked your meals and scrubbed your floors because you thought I was worthless.

And when you threw me away, you threw away the only foundation your pack actually had.

Caleb choked on a sob.

Please, I am your mate.

No, Gwen said softly.

You’re just a coward who is hungry.

She looked past him to the shivering women and children huddling in the snow.

She recognized the blacksmith’s wife, the stable boy.

The elders who had always ignored her.

They looked at her with wide, terrified eyes.

Gwen turned back, looking up the ridge at Gideon.

He stood like a dark monolith against the white sky, waiting.

Take the women, the children, and the sick.

Gwen called up to him.

Put them in the quarantine tents.

Feed them the broth.

Nothing solid yet, or their stomachs will tear.

Gideon nodded slowly.

He gestured to his guards.

“And him?”

Gideon asked, his voice carrying easily over the wind, pointing a massive leatherclad finger at Caleb.

Gwen looked down at the man kneeling in the snow.

He looked up at her with desperate, pathetic hope.

He thought her mercy extended to him.

He thought she was still the soft, yielding thing he had claimed in the dark.

“Leave him,” Gwen said.

Caleb’s face went completely slack.

“Gwen, no, you can’t.

I’ll freeze then.

You should have kept your winter stores, she replied, turning her back on him.

She didn’t run up the hill.

She walked with slow, deliberate steps.

Behind her, Caleb began to scream her name, but the sound was quickly swallowed by the howling wind and the heavy thud of rogue guards moving past him to gather the refugees.

When she reached the top of the ridge, Gideon was waiting.

He didn’t offer a patronizing smile.

He didn’t try to comfort her.

He simply pulled his own heavy mantle closer against the wind and fell into step beside her.

“The broth will need more salt,” Gideon murmured as they walked back toward the smoking chimneys of the stronghold.

“I’ll tell the cooks,” Gwen replied.

She looked down at her hands.

“The knuckles were calloused now, scarred from lie and hard work.

They weren’t pretty, but they were hers.

And as she stepped out of the freezing wind and back into the chaotic, smelling, fiercely living warmth of the rogue camp, she finally felt grounded.