Chapter 1 Untitled Chapter

The iron gates of Silverfang Citadel groan open just as dawn bleeds across the sky, pale gold cutting through the mist, and I step through before my courage has time to fracture.

The healer’s veil drapes over my face, soft linen brushing my lips every time I breathe, but it feels heavier than armor, heavier than the five years I spent learning how to disappear. My heart pounds too fast, too loud, like it’s trying to betray me before I even make it past the first courtyard, and there’s a metallic taste coating my tongue that I refuse to acknowledge.

I keep walking.

Don’t hesitate. Don’t look around. Don’t remember.

I am not Lyra Moonveil.

I am Mist.

The name settles over me like a second skin, practiced and precise, and I let my shoulders round just enough, let my steps soften, let my presence shrink into something forgettable. Five years in the Deepwood carved this version of me into existence, stripped away the girl who once believed in bonds and crowns and destiny, and left behind something quieter, colder, sharper.

Rowan used to say survival wasn’t about strength. It was about control.

Control your breath. Control your eyes. Control the way your pulse reacts to danger.

Right now, I am barely holding that control together.

The courtyard is already alive, thick with the scent of blood, sweat, and fear. A convoy must have arrived before dawn because the place is crawling with wounded warriors sprawled on stretchers, leaning against pillars, groaning as healers rush between them with bowls of water and strips of linen.

The smell hits me first.

Iron and rot and something deeper—something wolf.

My stomach twists, but my hands don’t shake.

I move into the chaos like I belong there.

Like I’ve always belonged there.

“Over here,” someone barks, and I turn without thinking, dropping to my knees beside a soldier clutching his side. His uniform is soaked through, dark and sticky, his breathing shallow and uneven.

My fingers hover over the wound for half a second.

Then the Moonfire answers.

It always does.

It blooms under my skin like something alive, silver light threading through my veins, licking at my fingertips before spilling out into the open air. It doesn’t burn me anymore. It hasn’t in years. Now it feels like instinct, like breathing, like the only honest part of me left.

The soldier gasps as the light sinks into him, his body jerking once before going still.

“Easy,” I murmur, my voice steady even as my chest tightens. “Stay with me.”

His flesh knits under my touch, slow but sure, the torn muscle pulling back together, the bleeding easing until it stops completely. It’s not perfect. It never is. But it’s enough to keep him alive.

It’s always enough.

“Thank the Moon,” he whispers, his voice weak.

I don’t answer.

I just move on.

One after another, I drift through them like a ghost, kneeling, touching, healing, and every time the silver flames rise, I feel it—the echo of something I still don’t understand, something buried deep inside me that doesn’t belong to any omega.

Unfit blood.

The words slam into me without warning, sharp and cruel, dragging me back to a place I’ve spent five years trying to forget.

The amphitheater.

The crowd.

The way his voice carried over everything.

Cold. Absolute. Final.

My hands falter for a fraction of a second, the light flickering, and I clamp down hard before anyone notices.

Not here.

Not now.

But memory doesn’t care about timing.

It drags me under anyway.

I remember the way the world tilted when he said it, the way something inside me cracked open in front of everyone, exposed and bleeding and humiliated. I remember the weight of their stares, the whispers, the pity twisted with disgust.

And I remember him.

Not the king.

Not the Alpha.

The man.

The one who found me later that night, when the moon was high and the world was quiet, when his hands were rough and his breath was hot against my skin and everything about him contradicted the words he had thrown at me hours before.

My body remembers him in ways my mind hates.

The heat. The pull. The bond that shouldn’t have happened.

The mark that still burns under my collarbone like a secret I can never outrun.

I swallow hard, forcing the memory down, locking it away where it belongs.

Five years.

Five years of running, hiding, surviving.

Five years of telling myself that whatever existed between us died the moment he chose his crown over me.

And yet, my fingers press into another wound, the Moonfire spilling out again, brighter this time, almost restless, and something inside me tightens.

Because suddenly the air changes.

It’s subtle.

Barely there.

But I feel it.

A shift.

A pressure.

My wolf stirs before I can stop it, a low, dangerous growl curling through my chest, rising fast and sharp like it’s been waiting for this moment.

No.

Not here.

Not him.

But the scent hits me anyway.

Dark pine. Smoke. Power.

It slams into me like a physical force, knocking the breath out of my lungs, and for one terrifying second, everything inside me fractures.

Want.

Hate.

Hunger.

Rage.

They collide so violently I almost lose my balance.

He’s here.

Alpha King Kael Thorncrest is here.

I don’t need to look it up to know it.

My body already knows.

My wolf surges forward, desperate and furious, clawing at the edges of my control, and I lock it down with everything I have, forcing my head to stay bowed, forcing my hands to keep moving like nothing has changed.

You are Mist.

You are no one.

You do not react.

Bootsteps approach.

Slow. Measured. Heavy with authority.

Each one lands like a hammer against my spine.

Closer.

Closer.

Stop.

They stop right in front of me.

My pulse spikes so hard it hurts.

“ You’re new.”

His voice is lower than I remember. Rougher. Like something inside him has been carved out and left raw.

It wraps around me, familiar and foreign all at once, and I have to bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from reacting.

Don’t look up.

Don’t—

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The words come out calm. Steady. Controlled.

Not mine.

Not Lyra’s.

Mist’s.

I keep stitching the soldier in front of me, my hands precise, my breathing even, like I’m not unraveling from the inside out.

Silence stretches.

I can feel his gaze on me.

Heavy.

Searching.

Too close.

For a second, I think he’s going to push further, going to ask something else, going to rip this fragile disguise straight off my face

But he doesn’t.

And that almost makes it worse.

Because it means he’s thinking.

I finish the last stitch, tie it off cleanly, and that’s when it happens.

A mistake.

A slip.

Just one.

I glance up.

It’s instinct. Nothing more. A healer checking her surroundings.

But the moment my eyes meet his, the world tilts.

Kael looks different.

Harder.

The edges of him sharper, like the years have stripped away anything soft and left only something ruthless behind. His eyes are darker too, shadowed in a way I don’t remember, like he hasn’t slept in a very long time.

And for one heartbeat.

One single, fragile, impossible heartbeat, somehing flickers there.

Recognition.

Not full.

Not certain.

But enough.

Enough to make my blood run cold.

Enough to shatter the illusion I’ve been holding together since I stepped through those gates.

My breath catches.

His gaze sharpens.

And then, a voice fills the air.

“Let me through!”

The voice cuts through the courtyard like a blade.

Young.

Fierce.

Defiant.

Everything inside me freezes.

No.

No, no, no

My blood turns to ice as I recognize it, dread crashing over me so violently it steals the air from my lungs.

Rowan.