When I woke, the air tasted like ash and pine.

My wrists ached first raw from silver cuffs, the iron biting deeper every time I shifted. Then came the weight: chains draped across my lap, bolted into the stone floor beneath a fur rug that smelled faintly of musk and cedar.

I blinked through the blur. No firelight. No chanting council. Just the low crackle of a hearth, shadows stretching along cabin walls polished dark by age.

Not a cell. Not the pack’s cavern.

A lodge.

His lodge.

The ...