His eyes find mine, and I watch recognition flicker through the pain. The alpha's mate. The Luna. He tries to speak, chokes on blood, spits it onto the cobblestones before managing words.
"Korren knew. Had wolves waiting in the rocks above the canyon. Ambush." He coughs again, a wet and terrible sound. "We're holding, but the losses—" His head drops forward. "The alpha sent me to warn you. Korren split his forces. Strike team heading for the keep while we're distracted."
The words hit me a moment later. Then cold washes through me, colder than the winter air, colder than the stone beneath my feet.
"How many?" Signe has appeared at my shoulder, her voice sharp with command. "How many wolves and how far?"
"A dozen. Maybe more. Fast movers, no heavy fighters." The messenger's eyes are glazing. He is losing too much blood. "They'll be here by?—"
He slumps in the guards' arms, unconscious or dead, and suddenly the warning horns are sounding from the eastern watchtower and the keep is erupting into chaos around me.
Korren sent wolves to take me while Stellan was away. While the pack's strength was committed to the canyon, while the fortress stood defended by the old and the young and the wounded. A strike team of fast movers to slip through the perimeter, grab the omega, and vanish before anyone could mount a pursuit.
I should be terrified. Part of me is. But beneath the fear, something fiercer is rising. Something that tastes like the training Helena drilled into my bones, like the woman I was before I ever heard the name Stellan Varen.
I will not cower in a locked room waiting to be taken. I will not be the prize Korren claims while the man I have chosen bleeds for his territory and his people.
I turn to Signe and see my own resolve reflected in her pale eyes.
"Where is the forge?"
The forge is hot and loud and exactly what I need.
The blacksmith is a grizzled wolf named Dag who lost his leg to a hunting accident twenty years ago and has spent every day since turning raw metal into weapons. He takes one look at me and reaches for a blade without being asked.
"Short sword," he says, pressing the hilt into my palm. "Silver-edged. Balanced for someone your size."
The weight is familiar. Not identical to the blades Helena trained me with, but close enough. I give it an experimental swing, feeling the way it moves through the air, and nod.
"What else do you have?"
By the time I leave the forge, I am armed like a woman expecting war. The short sword hangs at my hip. A pair of silver daggers rest in sheaths strapped to my thighs. A third knife, smaller and easier to conceal, is tucked into my boot. Dag offered me armor, but the pieces he had were sized for wolves, too heavy and too bulky for the speed I will need.
Speed. Helena's voice echoes in my memory. You will never match a shifter for strength, but you can be faster if you train for it. Faster and smarter and more willing to fight dirty.
I find the remaining defenders in the courtyard, a ragged collection of older wolves, wounded warriors, and adolescents too young for the front lines. They look at me with expressions that range from skepticism to outright hostility. A human presuming to give orders. An omega who should be locked safely away while real wolves handle the fighting.
I do not have time for their doubts.
"Korren's wolves are coming for me," I announce, pitching my voice to carry. "A dozen of them, maybe more. Korren hasused me as his excuse to justify this war, and now he thinks he can use me as a pawn to break your alpha." I let my gaze sweep across the assembled faces. "I am no one's excuse. I am no one's pawn. I am luna of the Northern Pack, and I will not let them take this keep while our wolves bleed in the canyon. They expect to find a helpless prize waiting to be claimed." My hand finds the hilt of my sword. "They are wrong."
One of the older wolves steps forward, a scarred warrior with iron-gray hair and a missing eye. "And what would you have us do, human?"
"The eastern approach is the most vulnerable. That is where they will come. I want archers on the walls and fighters at the gate. Anyone who cannot fight should barricade themselves in the great hall." I draw the short sword and let the silver edge catch the light. "And I will be at the front. If they want me, they can come and take me."
Silence stretches across the courtyard. Then one of the older, scarred warriors laughs, a harsh bark of sound that holds something that might be respect.
"You heard our luna," he calls out. "To your positions. Let's teach these Blackridge dogs what it costs to come for our own."
The title jolts through me. Luna. Stellan called me that in front of the pack when he broke Ragnar's arm. I had not realized they accepted it.
I don't have time to think about what that means. The warning horns sound again, closer now, and then I see them coming through the trees.
Wolves in their shifted forms, silver-gray and black and tawny brown, moving with the terrible speed that makes their kind so deadly. A dozen of them, just as the messenger warned, flowing across the snow like shadows given teeth and hunger.
I plant my feet at the gate and wait.
The first wolf hits the outer wall in human form, a grappling hook sailing over the parapet before he hauls himself up with terrifying speed. An arrow takes him in the shoulder, but he does not stop. He drops into the courtyard and shifts mid-fall, silvery mist swirling around a body that reforms into something massive and snarling.
