“She’s gone,” he said. “Even if she lived, I would’ve cast her aside. That runt and her mother were never mine.”
The bond we made under the Blood Moon, sealed in sacred rites and soul-fire, meant nothing to him.
I died choking on grief. My last breath a whisper of my daughter’s name.
But death did not keep me.
When I opened my eyes, I was clutching herbs—wild nettle and thistle root—the same ones I’d gathered on the morning Damien was offered the Alpha title.
Ayla lay beside me, cheeks flushed, chest rising.
Alive.
A second chance.
I burned the herbs in a copper dish and sold the den to a tinkerwolf for coin. And I didn’t look back.
This time, I did not crawl toward the memory of love.
I ran in the other direction—toward power,towards home.
We crossed frozen plains and haunted woods, took passage in caravans that didn’t ask questions, survived long enough to reach the gates of Stormveil.
It rose from the earth like something carved from legend—stone towers rimmed with frost, banners whipping in the wind. The guards at the gate moved to stop me, spears raised.