Nicero’s gaze remained fixed on the forest below. “Love doesn’t excuse what he did.”
“No,” I agreed quietly. “But it explains why it still hurts.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then the Moon-root pulsed — stronger this time — sending a vibration through my bones that made my wolf stir uneasily.
“It’s beginning,” Nicero murmured.
“What is?”
“Blackfang doesn’t bind wolves,” he said. “It reshapes them.”
---
Training began at dawn.
They did not give me a ceremonial weapon or a private instructor. They threw me into the sparring pit with warriors twice my size and told me to survive.
The first blow shattered my balance.
The second knocked the breath from my lungs.
I tasted blood before I could draw magic to shield myself.
“Again,” barked the ash-gray sentinel who had challenged me at the border.
I forced myself upright, shaking, my wolf snarling in humiliation beneath my skin.
This wasn’t punishment.
This was recalibration.
In Silvermoon, I had been protected by status. By reverence. By the unspoken law that Luna did not bleed in public.
Blackfang had no such law.