After My Mate Let Our Daughter Die, I Left Him

The rogue backed up another step. Its yellow eyes locked on my hands, and I looked down again.

Silver light pulsed under my skin. Not steady. Not calm. It flared and faded like a heartbeat I couldn't control, and every time it flared, the thing inside me pushed harder against the wolfsbane fog.

The cage wall was rusted thin near the bottom corner. I didn't think. I just moved.

I threw myself at it. My shoulder hit metal and the whole frame shuddered. Pain shot down my arm—the one the rogue had bitten—but I hit it again. And again. The silver light under my skin got brighter, hotter, and the fourth time I slammed into the wall, the metal screamed and tore open.

I fell through onto gravel and broken glass.

Behind me, the rogues started howling. Not hunting calls. Fear.

I ran.

My legs barely held me. The wolfsbane was still in my blood, thick and wrong, but something else was burning through it now, something that didn't care about poison or pain or how far I could make it before I collapsed.

The forest opened up ahead. I knew where I was going. The river cliff. The northern border where Shadowmere territory ended and the drop was steep enough that no wolf bothered patrolling it.

I could hear them behind me. Not the rogues. Enforcers. Voices shouting, boots on gravel, someone calling for the Beta.

I didn't look back.

The trees thinned. The ground turned to rock. And then there was nothing in front of me but open air and the sound of rushing water far below.

I stopped at the edge.

The river was black under the moonlight, moving fast, chunks of ice spinning in the current. It was the kind of cold that killed. I knew that. Every wolf knew that.

I pressed my hand against the hem of my dress. The lock of Lilliana's hair was still there, sewn in tight. The only piece of her I had left.

"I'm coming, baby," I whispered.

Then I jumped.

The fall lasted forever and no time at all. Wind tearing at my clothes, my hair, the world spinning. And then the water hit me like a fist.

Cold. So cold it stopped being cold and just became pain, total and crushing. My lungs locked. My limbs went stiff. The current grabbed me and pulled me under, and I couldn't tell which way was up.

And then the wolfsbane started to break.

I felt it crack first in my chest, like ice splitting. The thing that had been pushing—burning—since the banquet suddenly surged, and the poison in my blood couldn't hold it anymore.

My bones snapped.

Not broke. Reshaped. My spine arched and lengthened, ribs cracking outward, hips reforming with sounds like wet branches breaking. My jaw stretched, teeth pushing through gums that split and bled. My hands—my fingers curled and the nails extended into claws, and I tried to scream but my throat was changing too, the sound coming out wrong, deeper, animal.

Fur erupted across my skin. Not brown like the Shadowmere wolves. Not gray or black.

Silver-white. Luminous even underwater, glowing faint in the black current.

And then she spoke.

*I am here.*

The voice was inside my head, but it wasn't mine. Feminine, fierce, ancient. Not the small uncertain wolf I'd been expecting since I was thirteen.

This was something else.

*I have always been here. They buried me, but I am here.*

My body finished changing. I was huge. Bigger than any wolf I'd ever seen, muscles thick and coiled, paws the size of dinner plates. Power radiated off me in waves I could feel even through the freezing water, an aura that pressed outward like heat.

I kicked toward the surface.

When I broke through, the air hit my lungs and I gasped, paddling hard toward the far bank. The current was brutal, dragging me downstream, but my new body was strong—stronger than anything I'd ever felt. My claws found purchase on rocks. My legs drove me forward.

I hauled myself onto the opposite shore and collapsed.

My sides heaved. Water streamed off my fur. I could see my reflection in a shallow pool nearby—a massive silver-white wolf, eyes still my own brown but brighter, sharper, and the aura coming off me made the air shimmer.

*What are you?* I asked the voice.

*What you always were,* she answered. *What they tried to kill.*

I tried to stand. My legs shook but held. I was in Ironcrest territory now. I could smell the border markers, strong and deliberate. Lycan land.

I took one step. Then another.

That's when I caught the scent on the wind.

Male. Powerful. Layered with authority and something else—something that made my new wolf go still and alert inside me.

Footsteps. Two sets. Coming fast through the trees.

I turned, hackles rising, and two figures stepped into the clearing.

The first was tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of build that said Gamma or higher. He stopped short when he saw me, eyes widening, and his hand went to his chest in an instinctive gesture of respect.

The second was taller. Darker hair, sharp features, eyes that caught the moonlight and held it. He wore no pack insignia, but the aura rolling off him was unmistakable.

Lycan.

His gaze locked on me, and for a long moment neither of us moved.

Then his nostrils flared. His pupils dilated.

And his wolf—I felt it, heard it somehow through the space between us—roared one word inside his head.

*Mate.*