Chapter 40 · The Cost of a Crown

The stone under my knees wasn't warm fromthe sun. It was warm because three wolves had already bled out on it. I was kneeling in the middle of the wet, shaking.

“Look at her,” Vane said. He paced in a slow circle, arms wide, playingto the pack. “Six years mated to an Alpha and she still can’t stand up straight.”

I flattenedmy palms against my thighs. Anything to stop the trembling.

Twenty feet away, Valerius was onone knee. His left arm hung at a sickening, useless angle. A silver burn scarred his ribs. Every breath he took draggedmore dark blood down into his belt.

He was alive. I felt it—that thin, humming thread betweenus. The one he’d cut in front of everyone, yet it still pulsed every time he hurt. I hated thatI could still feel him. I hated that it mattered.

“You had a good run, brother,” Vane sneered. He circled closer. “Coldest Alpha in the north. Everyone said so. And then you tossed your mateout in the snow over a bloodline? Turns out, the bloodline was in her the whole time.”

Silence. Forty wolves, and not one of them breathing.

I’d heard this silence before.