The flagstones of Ashfell are a cruel, biting frost against her knees. Ayanda keeps her spine rigid, her gaze fixed on the iron-shod boots of the man who broke her father’s house. High above, the Great Hall is a cavern of shifting amber firelight and predatory silence. King Zoran Vuk sits upon a throne of jagged antler and black iron, his presence a heavy, suffocating weight in the air. He does not speak. He simply watches, his storm-grey eyes tracing the line of her throat with a hunter’s precision.
She is the sacrifice, the treaty skin offered to mend a jagged border. Hidden in the thick wool of her left sleeve, the small glass vial of wolfsbane oil presses against her pulse—a final, desperate insurance she hopes never to draw. The air in the hall shifts as the Alpha King leans forward. He does not smell of iron or woodsmoke like the warriors of Riverbend. He smells of frozen earth and a dark, ancient power that makes her inner wolf coil in instinctive, terrified recognition.
Zoran rises, his wolf-pelt mantle dragging like a shadow across the stone. He stops inches from her, the heat of his body a mockery of the hall’s chill. He tilts his head, nostrils flaring as he catches a scent that shouldn’t be there: the lingering ghost of silver and another man’s claim.
Zoran’s hand moves toward the collar of her furs, his fingers hooking the edge of the leather.
