Chapter 1 The Last Howl

• "Get up."
• A boot slammed into my ribs before I could answer. I tasted smoke and copper, and somewhere behind me the den was still burning. I could hear it, that low crackle eating through wood and fur and everything my bloodline had ever built.
• "I said get up, omega."
• I got up.
• My wrists were already raw from the rope. Someone had looped it twice around my throat too, tight enough that every breath scraped. Around me, Blackthorn wolves stood in a loose circle, grinning, some of them still splattered with blood that wasn't theirs to spill. My father's blood. My sister's. I stopped counting whose after the fourth body.
• "Move." A shove between my shoulder blades sent me stumbling toward the hall.
• I moved.
• The victory hall of Blackthorn territory had never held one of us before tonight. Torches lined the walls, throwing long shadows across a stone floor slick with something I didn't want to name. Wolves packed in on both sides, howling low in their chests, a sound that wasn't celebration so much as hunger. I kept my chin up. My legs shook and I hated them for it.
• "Look at that," someone called out. "Last one standing and it's the pretty one."
• Laughter. I didn't flinch. I'd promised myself in the den, while my sister's screams were still fresh in my ears, that I wouldn't flinch again for the rest of my life, however short that turned out to be.
• They dragged me to the center and forced me down. A hand pressed flat between my shoulders, and my knees hit stone hard enough to bruise. I looked up.
• He was already watching me.
• Riven Blackthorn didn't look like a man who'd spent the night burning a bloodline to ash. His jaw was clean, his shirt barely marked, like the war had happened to everyone but him. He sat in a chair that wasn't quite a throne, one boot resting on the step below, and his eyes were the kind of gray that didn't belong on something that had just won a massacre.
• "So this is what's left," he said. Not to me. To the room.
• "The last of the Ashgrove line," someone answered, and pride cracked through the words like the speaker had done something worth bragging about. "An omega. Unclaimed."
• Riven's gaze didn't move off me. "Unclaimed," he repeated, slow, like he was tasting the word.
• "I'd rather die," I said, "than be claimed by anything wearing your colors."
• The hall went quiet in that particular way rooms go quiet right before something bad happens. Riven tilted his head. For a second I thought he might actually laugh.
• "Would you," he said.
• "Try me."
• He rose from the chair. Unhurried. Every wolf in that hall straightened when he moved, and I understood then, in my body before my mind caught up, exactly how far above them he stood. He crossed the floor in a handful of steps and crouched in front of me so we were eye level, so close I could feel the heat coming off him.
• "Here's what's going to happen," he said, quiet enough that only I could hear it clearly, though I knew every wolf in that hall was straining to. "You're going to live. Because dead, you're worth nothing to me. Alive, you're a message. Every pack that hears what's left of Ashgrove is warming my bed will think twice before they raise a hand against Blackthorn again."
• "I won't warm anything of yours."
• "You will." He said it the way other men said the weather. Certain. Bored, almost. "You'll fight me for a while. Maybe a long while. And then one day you'll stop, because that's what happens to things that get broken long enough."
• My hands were shaking. I hated that too.
• "My name is Silas," I said, because it felt like the last true thing I owned. "Not omega. Not trophy. Silas."
• Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone so fast I almost missed it. "I know your name."
• "Then use it when you kill me."
• "I'm not going to kill you." He reached out and took my chin between two fingers, tilting my face up further, and every wolf in that hall leaned in like they didn't want to miss whatever came next. "I told you. You're going to live. Right here. Under my roof, under my hand, until there's nothing left of Ashgrove in you but the parts I let you keep."
• A wolf near the front, broad and scarred across one eyebrow, spat on the floor near my knee. "Kill him after, Alpha. Ashgrove blood's bad luck. My grandsire always said it."
• "Your grandsire," Riven said, without turning his head, "is dead, and so is his opinion. Sit down, Marek."
• Marek sat down.
• I almost laughed. Almost. It came out instead as something closer to a breath, bitter and short, and Riven's eyes cut back to me at the sound like he'd caught something he wanted to keep.
• "You think this is funny," he said.
• "I think you like an audience," I said. "I think if it was just you and me in this room, you'd have already killed me and called it mercy."
• "Would I."
• "You said it yourself. I'm worth nothing to you dead. So no. You need them…" I tipped my chin at the wolves ringing the hall, "...watching. You need the story more than you need me."
• For a second, something almost honest crossed his face. Then it was gone, folded back under that same bored certainty. "Careful," he said. "You're smarter than I expected. That'll make this harder for you, not easier."
• "Good."
• "Riven." A woman's voice, sharp, from somewhere near the throne. "The collar."
• He didn't look away from me. "Bring it."
• Someone pressed cold iron into his palm, a collar dark as the smoke still rising off my home. He held it up between us so I could see it clearly, the way you'd let a caged animal look at the bars before you shut them.
• "Say something," he said. "One more thing. I want to remember what your voice sounded like before this."
• I spat at his feet.
• He didn't even blink. If anything, something in his face went sharper, more interested, like I'd finally done something worth his attention instead of his contempt.
• "Good," he said softly. "Hold onto that."
• He closed the collar around my throat himself, his fingers brushing my skin as he worked the clasp, rough and deliberate, and I braced for the cold bite of iron settling into place.
• What I got instead was fire.
• It tore up from where his fingers touched my neck and slammed straight through my chest, so violent I choked on the air I'd been holding. Riven froze above me, his hand still on the collar, his whole body gone rigid. The hall had gone silent again, but this silence was different, thick with something none of them understood yet either.
• His eyes found mine, wide now, stripped of every ounce of the boredom from a moment ago.
• "No," he said, low, almost to himself. "No, that's not possible."
• I felt it too. Felt it clawing through me, an ache that had nothing to do with the rope or the bruises or the collar locked cold around my throat, and everything to do with the man crouched in front of me with his hand still burning against my skin.
• Around us the hall had erupted into noise, wolves scrambling back from their alpha like the fire might jump to them next, someone shouting a word I didn't catch over the roar in my own ears. None of it mattered. All I could feel was his hand, still locked at my throat, still burning, and the collar hanging half fastened between his fingers.
• "Get it off," I said, my voice cracking on the last word. "Get your hand off me."
• He didn't move. Couldn't, maybe. His jaw was tight, his breath uneven, and for the first time since they'd dragged me into that hall, Riven Blackthorn looked like a man who had lost control of something.
• "I can't," he said.
• The bond had chosen its moment. And it had chosen the one man on earth I'd sworn to kill.