The days crawled by so fast, so painfully.

Each morning, Selene woke before dawn, her wound still aching, the bandages stiff with dried blood. She wore the uniform Kaelen had ordered for her, dark gray, fitted at the waist, a mark of her new title as Beta. Yet that title had become a mockery, a whisper used to taunt her instead of respect her.

Kaelen hadn’t spoken to her since that night.

In the meetings, he sat at the long obsidian table, surrounded by his council and the other wives who ...