The slave cells beneath Blackwood never fully went dark.

Torchlight leaked weakly through the iron corridors at all hours of the night, flickering across wet stone and rusted chains while water dripped steadily somewhere deeper underground.

Tanya had counted the drops for the first day.

Stopped sleeping the second.

By the third, she started imagining Eva’s face in the shadows.

That part annoyed her most.

Not the chains.

Not the bruises around her throat where Killian grabbed her hard enough to leave fingerprints.

Eva.

Always Eva.

Even dead, she somehow stayed between them.

Tanya sat motionless on the edge of the narrow prison cot while distant thunder rolled above Blackwood Castle. Her silver dress had dried stiff with blood near the sleeves, though she could no longer remember whether most of it belonged to her or the guard she’d stabbed two nights earlier trying to test the locks.

The cut on her palm still throbbed faintly.

Worth it.

Pain meant she was still moving forward.

Outside the bars, footsteps echoed softly through the corridor.

A guard approached carrying food.

Young.

Nervous.

Avoiding eye contact already.

Tanya smiled slowly.

There you are.

He shoved the tray through the bars too quickly, nearly spilling the water in the process.

“Careful,” Tanya said lightly. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m not.”

Cute.

His voice cracked halfway through the sentence.

Definitely loyal to her faction before the arrest. Probably one of the lower Moonfang wolves her father placed inside Blackwood years ago.

Tanya studied the hidden insignia stitched near the inside of his sleeve and almost laughed.

Killian really had stopped seeing the details around him once grief took over.

The guard turned to leave.

“Wait.”

He hesitated.

Not smart enough to keep walking.

Tanya leaned back casually against the stone wall.

“Tell me something.”

Silence.

“How bad is it upstairs?”

The guard swallowed.

“Alpha sealed the outer gates.”

That quickly?

Interesting.

“And the council?”

“No one knows what’s happening anymore.”

Good.

Chaos spread faster than fear.

Tanya lowered her voice slightly.

“People are starting to question him, aren’t they?”

The guard said nothing.

Which answered the question immediately.

Tanya tilted her head.

“Killian was always unstable. Blackwood just ignored it because he won wars.”

The guard looked uncomfortable now.

“Stop talking.”

“But now?”

She smiled faintly.

“Now he’s hearing ghosts.”

That hit.

She saw it in the way his shoulders tightened.

Rumors spreading already.

Perfect.

Tanya stood slowly and approached the bars.

The torchlight caught the bruising around her throat beautifully. Dark purple against pale skin.

“Tell me honestly,” she said softly. “Do you really think he survives this?”

The guard looked away.

Another answer.

Tanya’s smile widened.

“You’re scared of him now.”

“He’s the Alpha.”

“No.” Her voice sharpened slightly. “He’s a wounded animal pretending to still be king.”

The silence stretched long enough for water to drip three more times somewhere down the corridor.

Then finally:

“What do you want?”

There it was.

Tanya stepped closer to the bars until the guard physically stiffened beneath her gaze.

“Keys.”

The storm worsened above Blackwood sometime after midnight.

The thunder covered most sounds beneath the castle.

Most.

Not all.

The guard died quietly.

Tanya made sure of it.

One hand over his mouth while the stolen silver knife slid carefully between his ribs. Slow enough to avoid screaming. Deep enough to reach the heart.

His body twitched once before collapsing against the prison wall.

Tanya crouched beside him, breathing hard for a moment while blood spread across the stone beneath her knees.

Then she calmly removed the prison keys from his belt.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

The deeper tunnels beneath Blackwood smelled ancient.

Most wolves didn’t even know they existed anymore. The hidden corridors were leftovers from the first war packs centuries ago, long before Killian’s bloodline ever sat on the throne.

Tanya knew every inch of them.

She’d spent years memorizing the castle while everyone else underestimated her.

Beautiful girls always heard more secrets than people realized.

She reached the western crypts twenty minutes later.

The giant vault door waited beneath layers of old wolf runes carved into black stone.

The Crescent Vault.

Even now, Tanya felt a flicker of awe looking at it.

The ancient Blackwood relic rested inside.

The true source of the territorial shields protecting the pack.

Which meant tonight, for the first time in Blackwood history, someone was about to steal the kingdom itself.

Tanya pressed her bloody palm against the central rune.

Nothing happened.

Her smile faded.

“Open.”

Still nothing.

The vault only obeyed recognized bloodlines.

Which meant Killian changed the protections after imprisoning her.

Smart.

Too late, though.

Tanya reached into her sleeve and removed the silver knife again.

The blade trembled slightly in her hand from exhaustion and blood loss, but she forced herself steady before dragging it deep across her forearm.

Pain flared instantly.

Blood poured over the runes.

The entire vault groaned.

Blue light flickered violently beneath the stone.

Then slowly—

The doors opened.

Cold air rolled outward.

Tanya laughed softly despite the pain burning through her arm.

Inside, ancient relics lined the chamber beneath silver firelight.

Old Alpha crowns.

Wolf-bone weapons.

War banners from extinct packs.

Centuries of Blackwood history buried underground.

Tanya ignored all of it.

Her eyes locked immediately onto the object resting at the center of the chamber.

The Crescent Stone.

Curved obsidian wrapped tightly in silver chains, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat beneath the darkness.

Even from across the room she could feel the power coming off it.

Old power.

Pack power.

The kind rooted directly into blood and instinct and territory.

Tanya stepped closer slowly.

The chains rattled faintly.

Warning her.

She rolled her eyes.

“Oh, please.”

The moment her fingers touched the relic, agony shot through her arm hard enough to nearly drop her to her knees.

The stone rejected her instantly.

Wolf magic burned beneath her skin while smoke curled upward from her palm.

Tanya gritted her teeth harder.

“You belong to me.”

The Crescent Stone pulsed violently again.

For one brief second she almost let go.

Then Killian’s face flashed through her mind.

The look in his eyes when he chose Eva.

That ruined everything.

Tanya grabbed the relic harder.

The silver chains snapped open one by one.

And somewhere high above Blackwood—

The territorial shields flickered.

The castle bells started ringing almost immediately afterward.

Too late.

Tanya wrapped the Crescent Stone tightly inside black cloth and ran.

Chaos already spread through the upper halls by the time she reached the southern stables. Wolves shouted through corridors while guards rushed toward the western towers trying to locate the breach inside the vault system.

No one expected the attack to come from within.

That part made escaping easy.

Two loyalists waited beside the horses exactly where she ordered them to.

A dark-haired Beta woman stepped forward immediately.

“My Luna—”

“Don’t call me that.”

The woman fell silent.

Good.

Tanya mounted the horse without assistance and looked back once toward the distant silhouette of Blackwood Castle rising through the rainstorm.

Killian was in there somewhere.

Probably bleeding himself apart trying to hold everything together.

A cold satisfaction settled briefly through her chest.

Let him suffer.

Let him drown in Eva’s ghost until there was nothing left of him worth saving.

“You’ll regret humiliating me,” she whispered toward the castle.

Then she rode south into the wilderness.

The farther they traveled beyond Blackwood territory, the quieter the world became.

No patrol scents.

No pack markers.

No laws.

Only predators.

By dawn, they reached the abandoned iron quarry hidden deep within Bloodfang territory.

The place looked dead.

Sharp black cliffs surrounded the canyon while old blood stains darkened the stone beneath layers of rainwater and mud.

Tanya dismounted slowly.

Her two escorts suddenly looked nervous.

That alone told her enough.

A growl echoed somewhere inside the quarry.

Then another.

Figures emerged from the shadows one by one.

Rogues.

Massive.

Scarred.

Half-feral beneath the Blood Moon.

One wore a necklace made entirely of wolf teeth.

Another still had dried blood caked beneath his claws.

The atmosphere shifted instantly.

These weren’t pack wolves pretending to be monsters.

These were monsters.

The rogues parted slowly down the center of the quarry.

Heavy footsteps echoed through the canyon.

Then Alpha Richard appeared.

Huge didn’t fully describe him.

The man looked carved out of violence itself, towering above everyone around him with scars running across almost every visible inch of skin. One side of his face had been shredded long ago, leaving pale claw marks stretching from brow to throat while his blind eye remained clouded white beneath the rain.

His remaining eye fixed on Tanya immediately.

Cold.

Intelligent.

Dangerous enough to make her escorts step backward instinctively.

Richard noticed.

Amused.

“Well,” he said, voice rough from years of growling more than speaking. “That’s interesting.”

Tanya held his gaze.

The giant rogue Alpha’s attention shifted slowly toward the black cloth bundle beneath her arm.

“The Crescent Stone?”

“As promised.”

Richard smiled.

Not pleasantly.

Predators didn’t smile pleasantly.

“You really betrayed your own kingdom.”

Tanya’s expression hardened slightly.

“They betrayed me first.”

Richard stepped closer until his shadow swallowed her completely.

Rainwater dripped from his beard onto the mud between them.

“And what exactly do you want in return?”

Tanya looked north.

Toward Blackwood.

Toward Killian.

Toward the place where Eva Frost still haunted every corner of his life.

Then she smiled.

Slowly.

Beautifully.

Broken enough to finally become dangerous.

“I want to watch him lose everything.”