My Son Gave My Name to His Father's Mistress

"Your Highness?" I repeated, the title tasting like ash on my tongue. I kept the hunting knife leveled at the stranger's chest. "Stand up. Slowly."

The figure rose from the deep snow. The heavy gray hood fell back completely, revealing a woman with sharp amber eyes and a jagged scar cutting across her jawline.

"My name is Seraphine," she said, keeping her hands visible. "I am a guide from the Royal Court. I have been tracking that signature for three weeks."

She nodded toward my left arm. The skipped dose of silver powder burned against my wrist bone, radiating a heat so intense it melted the snowflakes landing on my sleeve.

"You track heat?" I asked, my grip tightening on the hilt of my blade.

"I track the blood of the Moon Goddess," Seraphine corrected. "It runs in your veins. And it is finally waking up."

"I am an exiled border guard," I said. "My blood is entirely ordinary. If you followed me to recruit a mercenary, you wasted your time."

"Ordinary wolves do not survive sixteen years of silver ingestion," Seraphine countered. "Damon Blackpine fed you a lie. He convinced you that you were sick. He used that powder to keep you weak."

"Damon didn't know what it was," I snapped. "He thought it was medicine for a chronic defect."

"And you believed him?" Seraphine challenged.

"I believed the fever that tore through my body every time I missed a dose," I said. "Now tell me what you know, or I leave you bleeding on this trail."

Seraphine did not flinch at the threat. She reached into the folds of her cloak.

I raised the knife higher. "Empty your hand."

She pulled out a flat, heavy object and tossed it through the freezing air.

I caught it with my free hand. The cold metal bit into my palm. It was an old, tarnished token. I rubbed my thumb over the surface, feeling the raised edges of a crest.

A silver wolf with two heads, entwined in thorny vines.

The exact same mark stamped on the empty crimson pouch I found in my canvas bag.

"Where did you get this?" I demanded.

"It belongs to the Court," Seraphine said. "The royal guards carry them. The same guards who transport the silver powder."

I shoved my knife into its sheath and ripped the canvas flap of my bag open. I pulled out the crimson leather pouch Lola had planted in my gear. I pressed the heavy metal token against the stamped crest on the bottom corner of the leather.

The two-headed wolf aligned perfectly. No gaps. No discrepancies.

"Lola didn't just steal my medicine," I said, staring at the matching crests. "She replaced it with Court property."

"The stray who took your place?" Seraphine asked.

"She isn't a stray," I said, my voice hardening. "She has ties to the Royal Court. And she knew exactly what she was doing when she swapped the pouches."

I looked up at Seraphine. The pieces of Lola's trap were finally forming a clear picture, but the center remained blank.

"Why?" I asked, stepping closer to the guide. "Why go through the trouble of framing me? Why does the Court care about a border guard in a northern pack?"

"Because of what you are," Seraphine said. "Come with me to the Royal Court, Wrenna. The answers are waiting for you there."

"Give them to me now," I insisted.

"The mountain pass is freezing, and you are going into withdrawal," Seraphine said, glancing at my glowing wrist. "I will not explain the intricacies of royal bloodlines while we stand in a blizzard."

"Try," I said.

"That silver powder doesn't suppress a disease," Seraphine said, her amber eyes locking onto mine. "It suppresses your true wolf. You have been locked inside your own body for sixteen years."

The words struck my chest like a physical blow.

Sixteen years of diminished hearing. Sixteen years of waking up with aching joints, believing I was flawed. Believing Damon and Elder Thorne when they looked at me with pity.

"Who did this to me?" I asked.

"The Alpha who raised you," Seraphine replied. "Damon's father. He knew what you were the day he found you."

"He took me in as an orphan," I said.

"He took you in as a prisoner," Seraphine corrected. "And Damon continued the cycle. They used your strength to guard their borders, but they kept you leashed with the powder so you could never challenge them."

"Damon didn't know," I argued, though the defense tasted weak.

"He banished you over a cup of tea," Seraphine said flatly. "Does that sound like an Alpha who valued your loyalty?"

I stared at the metal token in my hand. Caleb's small voice echoed in my ears. From now on, Lola is my mother.

"If I go with you to the Court," I said, my voice steadying. "I can never go back to Blackpine. I lose my claim to the Luna title. I lose my son."

"Caleb is Damon's son," Seraphine pointed out. "He made his choice."

"He is seven," I shot back.

"And you are exiled," Seraphine said. "If you march back down this mountain, Thorne will execute you for trespassing. You will die a rogue, and Lola will win."

She turned and pointed up the steep, snow-covered incline. "The Royal Court offers the truth. It offers the power you were denied."

She pointed back down the trail, toward the flickering torchlights of the Blackpine valley. "That way offers a rigged trial and an unmarked grave."

"I don't run from fights," I said.

"Then pick the right battlefield," Seraphine countered. "Verify your bloodline. Reclaim your wolf. Then decide what to do with Damon Blackpine."

The wind howled through the canyon, whipping my hair across my face. The heat in my wrist surged, a burning reminder of the skipped dose. My veins throbbed, demanding the substance I had relied on for over a decade. The fire began to spread up my forearm, turning my skin flushed and hot against the freezing air.

I stood at the fork in the trail.

Down the mountain lay the pack that betrayed me, the boy who turned his back on me, and the woman who stole my life. If I returned now, I could shove this matching token and pouch in Elder Thorne's face. I could force a confrontation and demand a trial by combat.

Up the mountain lay the Royal Court. Strangers. Politics. And a truth that could rewrite my entire existence.

I looked at the heavy metal token resting in my palm.

The two-headed silver wolf gleamed in the moonlight.

"We leave immediately," Seraphine urged, taking a step up the northern path. "The withdrawal will only get worse, and the patrols will eventually search this far up."

I did not move.

My boots remained planted in the snow at the crossroads.

I held the crimson leather pouch in my left hand and the royal token in my right.

My fingers hovered over the metal crest, tracing the thorny vines, ready to close my fist and choose my war.