Prologue
Aster, 12 Years Old
Oma thinks I'm asleep, which is the only reason I hear her order a child’s murder.
As a seeress for the Adalwulf pack, I’m called to use my power for the good of the pack. But on this cold, dark night, I wish I could live as a normal girl. Then I wouldn’t be overhearing Oma, the seeress, plot with the high priest of the Moonborn, the Warden.
I’m curled up in an overstuffed armchair in her quarters, where I’d passed out with an aching head after she put me through a grueling afternoon and evening of training. I woke when the Warden entered, my body coming alert, wary in the presence of a predator, but pretended to be asleep, remaining still and keeping my breath slow.
I work hard to make myself invisible here in the Adalwulf castle. It helps me avoid verbal or physical abuse at the hands of Odin or Aiden. They hate anything they can’t control–and no one can control the Sight. Deep down, they fear and resent our witch-muddied bloodline, even though Oma and I are prized possessions as their pack’s veilwalkers–the Seeresses who can see beyond the veils of reality into the future.
“I had a vision,” Oma tells the Warden.
I can’t see him, but I can sense his aura. It’s grey and thick and oily like putrid smoke. In man form, he’s big and burly, a brutal enforcer. He’s always in war paint–his ice-blue eyes framed in a band of black. It’s supposed to evoke his wolf’s distinct markings. I think he looks like a raccoon. His long, white-blond hair worn with a drastic side-part, makes him look like a mad wizard. Right now, he’s probably taking Oma’s measure. Normally, she would offer her visions up directly to Odin, so the fact that she called the Warden in here and is speaking to him in hushed tones means there’s subterfuge going on.
My skin prickles with warning. Knowledge is power, and secrets are the most powerful of all. I learned that early in my seeress training.
“You need to kill the wolf without ears,” Oma murmurs.
“What did you see?” The Warden’s voice always sounds harsh. Cold and hungry for violence, never sated.
“It is not for you to interpret the visions,” Oma says in the authoritative voice she uses when working with the big egos of dangerous wolves. “I am the Seeress.”
“And I don’t take orders from you.” His voice is as cold as his eyes, and I have to stop myself from reflexively curling into a tighter ball.
I hear Oma pace around the small antechamber to her bedroom. Unlike the wolves who prowl this mansion, her movements are loud and uneven. We’re in the medieval stone behemoth built in the crook of the Adalwulf pack’s pine forest, nestled at the foot of a mountain beside a crystalline lake. There’s electricity and hot water, but Oma insists on living in the dark ages, lighting candles and using the fire for heat. She says fire contains magic, so we must keep it close.
I hear the sound of Oma’s teapot boiling, and she pours two cups of tea. The scent of lavender and lemon balm nips at my nose. She’s stalling. She always pours tea when she’s debating her next course of action.
Oma’s ancient–she won’t tell me exactly how old, but I think it’s over one hundred. She and Odin, the alpha of the Adalwulf pack, are magically bound by a powerful spell. Oma draws power from Odin’s body, giving her an unnaturally long life. By sharing in his alpha magic, all of her visions are of and for the pack’s well-being. She siphons some of his alpha power, as she did from his father before him. He will be the last alpha she serves, though. When he dies, so will she.
The fire pops and crackles in the grate.
“I won’t drink your witch's brew,” the Warden says.
“I have no reason to poison you.” A touch of condescension in Oma’s tone. A bluff, a challenge. Oma has plenty of poisons in her apothecary. My first chores revolved around tending, picking, drying, and storing the powerful plant medicine. I wouldn’t put it past her to put something in the Warden’s tea, to make him more pliable. She’s done it to me plenty of times.
Another long silence. This is how you play pack politics: slowly, using silence to shift the power to your side. It’s not easy when you’re the lone woman among arrogant alphas–cruel wolves who’d rather kill first and never ask questions.
A chair scrapes across the stone, the sound startling me. I stifle my gasp. It’s nothing, I tell myself. Just Oma is settling into a seat at her table.
There’s so much tension, it’s hard for me to breathe.
“I had a vision of a wolf without ears breaking the stone altar. Desecrating the bond of magic shared by the Moonborn and the Adalwulfs. The dais itself cracked in half, and the pup straddled the broken halves. He was bathed in moonlight. He wore the mantle of the Adalwulf alpha.”
The clink of china and a slurping sound tell me Oma’s sipping her tea.
“You think it’s the deaf pup born from the Blood Heir Alpha Rites.”
Goosebumps inexplicably race across my skin. Every nerve in my body charges, like I’ve been asleep for all of my life until this moment.
It takes all my concentration not to bolt upright, wide-eyed and ready.
Everything in the pack revolves around the Adalwulf alpha. His power is propped up by the cult of the Moonborn.
Hundreds of years ago, the Grandmothers’ Coven made a pact with the Adalwulfs. The pack provided protection to the coven in the new world, and in exchange, the coven offered up and bound their most powerful veilwalker to the Adalwulf pack to serve as Seeress. Over the years, the veilwalkers and the wolves bred together to become the Moonborn.
The Alpha Rites–the sex ceremony in which the alpha females are stripped naked and blindfolded, bound with vines to the ceremonial stone to be bred by the alpha or several powerful alpha males–ensures the most powerful pup becomes alpha.
