Chapter 1
King Declan Calloway
The courier’s throat bobbed as he read King Dominic Madison’s decree, his voice trembling like a cornered rabbit’s. “Failure to produce Savannah for her union with Prince Dominic will be seen as a breach of the Blood Pact… and grounds for further action.”
Glass shattered in my fist before he finished. Whiskey and blood dripped onto the portrait of my daughter—her painted green eyes still defiant beneath the crimson smear.
“Further action?” I hissed, stepping over the shards. The boy scrambled backward, parchment crumpling in his grip. “Your king mistakes my patience for weakness. Tell Madison his alliance burns with the next sunset if he dares—”
A choked gasp cut me off. The fool had gone pale, staring at the wolves’ mounted heads above my desk—their frozen snarls a reminder of what happened to those who crossed the Eastern Shifters. I seized his collar, the stench of his fear sour as rot. “Run. And pray your king’s threats outlive my daughter’s rebellion.”
He fled, leaving the decree amid the wreckage of her portrait. Savannah’s laughter seemed to echo in the splintered frame. This was her masterpiece: a shifter king humiliated, a peace treaty crumbling. My hunters outwitted at every turn. I crushed the parchment, its wax seal cracking like bones. Let Madison rage.Let the packs howl. I’d raze the continent before letting a traitor’s blood dictate my legacy.
The report in my hand hissed as whiskey seeped into its ink. Sightings near the Iron Peaks. Three hunters dead. A shadow with my daughter’s face. I traced the claw marks gouged into my desk—old wounds from the last time she’d tested me.
You should’ve learned, I thought, meeting her painted gaze. Ghosts didn’t frighten me. But living, breathing defiance? That I’d break.
I stared down the insolent eyes of my daughter in the faded portrait on my desk, a grim specter of rebellion and ruin. My breath felt thin as I dropped the latest report from my hunters atop a useless pile. Savannah’s disobedience was a living thing, gnawing at me, and I half expected to find the damn frame empty each time I looked up. A growing silence crushed the walls of my study as the rage swelled. Shadows crawled the surface of my desk, reports, and promises of punishment, all smothered in her defiance. I had warned her. I had promised her. It was not concern but certainty that hardened me. Savannah would have no peace in this world or the next until she bent her will to mine. I crushed the latest report in my fist and let it drop beside the others. Even ghosts would tire.
A dim glow from a single lamp fought against the creeping dark, spreading flickering light across the mounted heads of wolves I’d known in other days, other fights. I resented the weak flames for their similarity to the daughter who still evaded me. They burned and burned, only to fade in the end. The stale reports from my so-called hunters piled up in testament to their failures, crumpled paper haunting my study like Savannah herself. She would not get the best of me, not as long as I had breath. I stared her portrait down again, unable to look elsewhere. The air felt thin. The walls pressed close.
I wiped the blood from my hand, grabbed another glass, and poured. Let the anger fill me more than the whiskeydid. Her absence wouldn’t last forever. She wouldn’t outlast me. Another failed report slid from my hand, the sound of it settling almost as infuriating as the report itself. I promised my daughter that she wouldn’t get away with her insolence. With this mockery of her own kin. Her image was a sneer in oil and canvas, eyes a haunting green that questioned whether I could break her at all. I could. And I would. And I hoped she was alive and well to know the pain that awaited her.
More letters. More empty words from useless men who still couldn’t find her. I set my jaw, reading through them again. Reports of shifters vanishing across my kingdom. They’d grown in number and frequency, especially over the last few months. My initial anger told me that Savannah was among them. But only until I calmed myself with drink, with repetition, with a cold fury that knew her better. I refused to entertain weakness, to allow even a fleeting thought that she was anything but alive and mocking me with every evaded hunter.
I should have been worried. A weaker king might have been. But I knew my daughter, and more than that, I knew myself. I fought back anything that felt like fear and instead focused on Savannah’s rebellion, how she could turn on her own family. Her own blood. There were consequences for everything. And she would come to understand them all. Her portrait was a spiteful whisper on my desk, testing me. Daring me to flinch or look away. I would not.
I forced a grim smile as I piled the reports higher. My own defiance was iron. I crushed paper after paper, reading them each time with a vicious certainty. Let the girl hide. Let the coward run. She would come crawling back before I even thought to blink. I promised that much to myself and to the pale light and shifting shadows, and the promise ran through my veins with a conviction hotter than blood.
Savannah was gone. Her refusal was absolute. But my certainty was greater than hers, greater than anything she could imagine.Her delicate portrait lay before me, fragile and unguarded and everything she wasn’t. The rage in me swelled again, familiar and violent, and I dared to crush one of the damn reports a little harder than before. As if I could break the paper and not my own hand. I would get the better of her. I would get the better of them all.
I allowed a moment’s hesitation, a flicker of something weaker than I’d known in years. I let myself fear that she’d gone the way of the other missing shifters. My hand almost paused in its ritualistic tightening of another failed report. My breath almost slowed. Almost. But that wasn’t who I was, and it wasn’t who she was. I swallowed more whiskey, trying to keep control. It wouldn’t happen again.
Glass felt heavy in my hand as I let anger choke away concern. I told myself she was stronger than that. More conniving. I let my thoughts drift away from whether she was lost and instead forced them to settle on her punishment. On what she would face once she was brought back here, empty frame or not.
I drank deeply, settling the fire and the rage, and made my decision. Hunters were clearly not enough. I would need to set more of them on her trail, push them harder, further, more desperately than ever before. Savannah would not win. Not this time. She’d think she had, as all cowards do. But I knew better.
It wasn’t her safety that concerned me. Never that. It was her shameful, treacherous refusal to bend to my will. She would find no peace in this world or the next. And I would not rest until I saw her kneeling before me, eyes wide, understanding her place at last.
I set the whiskey down, steadying my hand, letting my mind wander to places darker than the night outside. I would ruin her. Break her. That was her destiny. Her defiance was no match for mine. She wouldn’t outlast me. Neither would Dominic who deigned to threaten me.
My pacing was a furious, relentless rhythm.
How dare they hold me accountable? How dare they think to threaten my rule? How dare they accuse me of breaking this alliance? This treaty. This farce of a marriage. My footsteps echoed my rage, punctuating the silence like a heartbeat.
I felt betrayed, but not by King Madison. I would show them what true betrayal looked like. Savannah thought she could slip through my grasp, that she could leave a stain on my honor, my pride, my name. I’d ruin her first.
The cold air settled on my skin. My breath had gone ragged with each explosive burst. My hands shook. There were moments I felt like a child in the storm of my own anger. Moments when her refusal, their demands, became more than I could bear. But only moments. And then the rage was back; it filled me more than blood, more than air.
Let them have their ultimatum. Let them believe they could scare me. Let the coward Madison and his pathetic son think they’d get what was mine. Let Savannah try and defy me. Her defiance was just like the boy—thin, brittle, easily broken. I refused to bow, refused to even consider the consequences of a lost alliance, a weakened throne. She’d pay for this with her life, with her soul. I didn’t care which.
My anger spiraled, and I welcomed it. It became a living thing, a twisted mockery of her cowardice and my strength. Savannah’s treachery had one last chance to run, and it was up.
There was no blood, no family. Only revenge.
Her defiance was insurmountable, and I laughed bitterly at the challenge of it all. At the thrill and promise and impending certainty of seeing her brought to heel. I stopped pacing, stopped in my track of thoughts that doubled back on themselves, that began and ended with fury. She couldn’t hide forever.
The thought was a comfort. She’d feel my anger across every mile, every dark shadow, every forgotten place she thought she could find refuge in. Her heart wasn’t that strong, her soul not that lost. I would reel her back.
