I scrub blood out of the Alpha King's kennels for three meals a day and a cot. His Head Healer calls me "kennel girl" every single dawn. Nobody in this pack knows my real name. Because four years ago, I was the deadliest wolf in the North. Three years ago, my mother died under my hands. And tonight, the woman who humiliates me is about to kill a seventeen-year-old boy. I'm the only wolf alive who knows how to stop her. My collar tag says WREN MARLOWE — UNRANKED. KENNEL DUTY. Sub-level of the Blackfang compound. No windows. Concrete that never dries. I hose the training pens, oil the silver blades the warriors won't touch bare-handed, and haul the wounded's bedding to the burn pit. Three years of this. On purpose. "Marlowe." Seraphine Locke doesn't walk into a room. She descends, like frost. Thirty-one. Head Healer of the Blackfang pack, favored for Luna. Rose from apprentice to the Alpha King's inner circle in fourteen months, which is not a thing that happens to normal wolves. "My silver kit smelled of rust yesterday," she said. "It was oiled and logged. Twice." "Did I ask?" She smiled the way people smile when they want an audience. Two apprentice healers hovered behind her. "You're unranked, Marlowe. You touch cages. Healers touch wolves. Learn the difference." "Yes, Healer Locke." "Carry my kit up to the war room at moonrise. And bring the tea. No honey." She swept off. Behind her, one apprentice whispered, "Moon, she's vicious." The other whispered back, "She's not wrong, though. Marlowe's been down here for years. Nothing stays in a kennel unless there's nothing else in it." I kept oiling the blades. They weren't wrong either. There is nothing else in me. There used to be. Here's what nobody in Blackfang knows. My name isn't Marlowe. Marlowe was my mother's maiden name. My name is Wren Thorne. At nineteen, I was the youngest warrior ever named Blade of the North. At twenty-one, I had killed two hundred and six rogues, and I had a technique with my name on it — the Thorne Severing, the only known way to cut the Rot out of a bitten wolf before it eats the heart. Packs in four countries teach it. At twenty-three, the Hollowed came over the ridge in the dark. My father, Alpha Rowan Thorne, died at the gate. My mother, Luna Isolde Thorne, came into the healing tent at 2:14 a.m. with a rogue bite black to the shoulder, and I was the only wolf alive who could Sever, and I put a silver blade into her with my own hands. She died at 4:39 a.m. I walked into the river before dawn. I let them believe it took me. I burned the name. I took the kennel. Some wolves go rogue. I chose concrete and cold water. At moonrise I carried the kit up to the war room. The corridor was different that night. Polished. Nervous. Councilors in wool coats that cost more than my year. Because Blackfang was about to be handed a future. The Northern Alliance. Every pack from the ridge to the coast, protected under one crown — if the crown liked what it saw. And the crown was one man: Cassian Vale, Alpha King. Thirty-two. Holds fourteen packs by his voice alone. Executed his entire war council last winter for what he called "confident guessing." I set the tea down and turned to leave. That's when I saw the scroll open on the table. PATIENT: VALE, THEO. AGE 17. Rogue bite, left flank. Rot progression: day six. Six healers had already said cull him. Mercy. Clipped beneath was Seraphine's treatment plan, in her tidy hand, initialed with her tidy little S.L. I read it in nine seconds. Then I read it again, because my hands had gone cold. She'd planned a standard Burning. Silver ash to the wound. Full moonlight exposure. Ninety minutes. But the Rot was past the flank. You could see it in the vein map she'd drawn herself — the black thread already climbing toward the heart. A Burning drives the Rot inward. She wasn't going to cure him. She was going to push the curse straight into Theo Vale's heart, and he would be dead in under four minutes. Seraphine didn't see it. Six healers before her hadn't seen it. I did. Because I invented the only way around it, and buried the name that invented it. "Something interesting, kennel girl?" Seraphine was in the doorway. And behind her, in a black coat, watching me with the coldest gold eyes I have ever seen on a wolf, stood the Alpha King.