The border patrol circled us, at least ten wolves strong. The stranger moved to stand between me and them, his body tense and ready to fight. But I could smell the fear on him beneath the bravado. We were outnumbered, outmatched. I was wolfless, and he was just one rogue against an entire pack's warriors.

This was a losing fight.

"Stand down, rogue," Jaxon commanded, his Alpha power radiating outward. "This doesn't concern you. The girl is packed properly."

"She's a person," the stranger growled back. "Not property."

"She's a murderer and an oath-breaker. She belongs to the Shadowmoon Pack until Alpha Marcus decides otherwise. Now step aside, or we'll kill you where you stand."

I felt the stranger tense, ready to fight anyway. Ready to die for someone he'd just met. The nobility of it made my chest ache.

"Don't," I whispered. "Please. You tried. That's more than anyone else ever did."

"Kira "

"Run. While you can."

He looked at me, something like regret flashing across his scarred face. Then he turned to Jaxon. "She deserves better than this. Better than you."

"And yet, here we are." Jaxon's smile was cruel. "Run along, rogue. Before I change my mind about letting you live."

The stranger held my gaze for one more moment. Then he disappeared into the darkness, moving so fast I barely saw him go.

Smart. At least one of us would survive the night.

Jaxon stalked toward me, and I fought the instinct to back away. I'd already run. Already tried to escape. There was nothing left to do but face whatever came next.

"You tried to leave." He stopped inches from me, his Alpha power pressing down like a physical weight. "After everything, you tried to abandon your pack."

"This pack abandoned me first," I said quietly. "Ten years ago, when you all decided I was a monster."

His hand shot out, gripping my throat. Not hard enough to choke, but enough to remind me how powerless I was against him.

"You are a monster," he said softly. "And now you've proven it. Trying to run, breaking pack law, consorting with rogues." His grip tightened slightly. "My father is going to make an example of you."

Good, I thought distantly. Let him. Maybe this time, the example would be execution, and I'd finally be free.

Jaxon must have seen something in my eyes that lacked fear, that emptiness, because his expression was twisted.

"You think you want death," he said. "But that would be too easy. No, I think we'll find more creative punishments for you, Kira. We'll make you wish for death. We'll make you beg for it."

He released me, and I stumbled backward.

"Bring her," he ordered the patrol.

They shifted to human form, and hands grabbed my arms, dragging me back toward pack territory. I didn't fight. What was the point?

They took me to Alpha Marcus in his study, despite the late hour. He sat behind his massive desk, and his disappointment was somehow worse than his anger would have been.

"Kira." He said my name like a curse. "When I said you weren't to leave, I thought I was being clear. Was I not clear?"

"You were clear, Alpha."

"And yet you tried to run anyway. Tried to leave the ack territory without permission. Do you understand what that makes you?"

"A rogue," I whispered.

"Worse. A rogue by choice. A wolf that turns their back on a pack is worse than one born to that life. It's betrayal." He stood, walking around the desk to stand in front of me. "The punishment for attempted desertion is severe."

I kept my eyes down. "I understand, Alpha."

"Do you?" He grabbed my face, forcing me to look at him. "I don't think you do. I think you've been allowed to wallow in your self-pity for too long. I think you've forgotten what real consequences feel like."

He released me and returned to his desk, pulling out a length of silver chain.

My stomach dropped.

"One week," he said calmly, as if discussing the weather. "Seven days in silver, in the pack prison, on display for all to see. No food. Water once daily. And every wolf who passes may voice their grievances to you. Do you know what we call that?"

"Public punishment," I breathed.

"Exactly. So that everyone sees what happens when you break pack law. When you try to abandon your pack." He handed the chains to Jaxon. "Take her to the prison. Make sure the silver is tight; we wouldn't want her to slip free."

Jaxon took the chains with a satisfied smile. "My pleasure, Father."

The prison was underground, cold, and damp. There were six cells, but only one was currently occupied by a rogue they'd captured last week who'd killed a pack member. He growled at us as we passed.

Jaxon dragged me to the back cell, the one visible from the stairway. The display cell.

"Hands," he ordered.

I held out my wrists. The moment the silver touched my skin, it began to burn. I bit down on my scream as he tightened the chains, wrapping them around my wrists and ankles before securing them to the wall.

The burns were instant, deep, agonizing.

"You did this to yourself," Jaxon said, crouching in front of me. "You could have just accepted your place. I'm grateful you were allowed to stay at all after what you did. But no, you have to try to run."

"I wasn't running from the pack," I gasped through the pain. "I was running from the cruelty."

"Same thing." He stood. "I'd almost feel sorry for you if you weren't such a pathetic creature. Even the Moon Goddess Herself gave you a chance, and you wasted it by being... you."

He left me there, and the silver continued to burn.

The first day was agony. The silver chains seared through skin, and without my wolf to heal, every moment was torture. Pack members began coming within hours, just as Marcus promised.

They spat on me. Threw rotting food. Told me exactly what they thought of murderers who tried to abandon their responsibilities.

I stopped listening after the first few hours.

The rogue in the other cell, though he didn't speak much, felt his eyes on me constantly.

"You're not healing," he rasped on day two. "The silver's going to kill you."

I didn't respond. Maybe that was the point.

"You're wolfless," he continued. "I can tell. What did you do to lose your wolf?"

"I killed my mother," I said flatly.

He was quiet for a long moment. "Did she deserve it?"

No one had ever asked me that. In ten years, no one had ever asked if maybe, just maybe, I'd had a reason.

"She was trying to kill me," I whispered. "She'd gone mad. I was fourteen. I just... I reacted."

"Then it was self-defense."

"That's not how my pack saw it."

"Then your pack is full of fools."

I almost laughed, but it came out as a sob.

By day four, infection had set in. The burns wept constantly, and I couldn't feel my hands anymore. Everything was getting hazy, dreamlike.

"You're going to die," the rogue said. "Silver poisoning is spreading."

"Good," I mumbled.

"That's a waste."

"Of what?"

"Of whatever you could have been."

The hallucinations started on day five. I saw my mother, her face twisted with madness and love and accusation. Saw Jaxon as the boy he'd been, before he learned to be cruel. Saw the stranger from the border, his hand outstretched.

Run, he said in my fever dream. Run and never stop.

On day six, I felt something shift inside me. Deep in the place where my wolf used to be, something stirred. It was small, barely a whisper, but it was there.

Wake up, it seemed to say.

But I was so tired. So ready to let go.

Day seven arrived. The final day of my punishment. Pack members came to gawk one last time at the example I'd been made into. I barely registered their presence anymore.

Then Marcus appeared, and even through my delirium, I felt his power.

"Take her down," he ordered.

Guards unlocked the silver chains. I collapsed immediately, and my legs wouldn't hold me. The burns on my wrists and ankles were black, rotted.

"She's half-dead," one guard muttered.

"Then heal her enough to stand trial," Marcus said coldly.

Trial?

Through the haze, I tried to understand. What trial?

"The pack has voted," Marcus announced, his voice carrying through the prison. "They find you unworthy of the Shadowmoon Pack. You are hereby exiled, Kira Shadowmoon. Banished from these lands. If you return, you will be killed on sight."

Exile. They were exiling me.

"But Alpha," one of the guards said nervously, "she's too weak to survive exile. She'll die in neutral territory within hours."

"Then she dies." Marcus's voice was final. "Take her to the border. Strip her of everything. She gets nothing from this pack."

They dragged me up the stairs, and the daylight burned my fever-bright eyes. The whole pack had gathered three hundred wolves, watching.

Elena stood next to Jaxon, both of them watching with cold satisfaction.

At the border, they tore away my clothes, leaving me with only my thin underthings. One guard tried to take my mother's necklace, a simple silver pendant I'd somehow kept hidden for years.

"No," I rasped, clutching it. "Please."

"Let her keep it," Marcus said. "Let her remember what happens when wolves forget who they are."

They threw me across the boundary line. I hit the ground hard, pain exploding through my infected wounds.

"You have until sunset to get out of our territory," Marcus called. "After that, the hunt begins."

I lay there for a moment, staring up at the sky. The sun was already past its peak. Maybe four hours of daylight left.

Four hours to drag my broken body far enough away that they wouldn't find me when the hunt started.

I should have died. Every logical part of me knew I was too injured, too weak, too far gone from silver poisoning.

But that small whisper inside that thing that had stirred on day six wouldn't let me quit.

Get up, it demanded.

I couldn't.

GET UP.

My hand, numb and burned, dug into the dirt. Then the other hand. I pulled myself forward an inch. Then another.

That's it. Keep going.

I crawled. I don't know how long. The world was fever and pain and the slow drag of my body across the forest floor. Behind me, I heard the pack howling, celebrating my exile. Celebrating that they'd finally rid themselves of the cursed murderer.

The sun crept lower.

I crawled deeper into neutral territory, leaving a trail of blood behind.

When the sun finally set, I heard the hunting party, released to make sure I got far enough away. Or to finish me off if I didn't.

I couldn't go any further. My body simply stopped responding.

This was it, then. This was how it ended. Not by my choice at the cliff, but here, broken and alone in the dirt, hunted like an animal.

The hunting party grew closer. I could hear them tracking my blood trail, and I could hear their excited calls when they picked up my scent.

I closed my eyes.

At least it will be over soon.

But then a different sound. A growl, low and warning. The hunting party stopped, confused. There was a confrontation, snarling, the sound of a fight.

Then silence.

Footsteps approached. I couldn't even open my eyes anymore.

Hands touched me gently, despite their roughness.

"Stubborn girl," a familiar voice said. "I told you to run."

The stranger from the border. Somehow, impossibly, he'd come back.

"Couldn't," I mumbled. "No wolf."

"I see that now." He lifted me carefully. "What I also see is that your wolf isn't gone, girl. She's sleeping. Deep, but she's there."

"Sleeping," I repeated. Nothing made sense anymore.

"And I think," he said, carrying me away from my former pack's territory, away from everything I'd known, "that she's about to wake up."

The last thing I remember before darkness claimed me was his voice, low and certain:

"You're going to survive this. And when you do, you're going to burn that pack to the ground."