The walls of the pack house had never felt so cold. Even now, hours after they’d dragged Rick’s body out of the cell, the chill clung to me like a shadow I couldn’t shake off.

I couldn’t erase the memory—his lifeless body slumped forward, his face too pale, his eyes wide open in a frozen kind of terror. I had screamed then, and the sound of my own voice still echoed inside me.

Rick wasn’t just another rogue to me. He and Knox had been the closest thing to family back in that ...