The rain tasted like blood.
Selene kept her shadows coiled tight around her wrists as Kael's enforcers dragged her through the mud toward Blood Moon territory. Cyrus limped beside her, his arm slung over Roran's shoulder...though the beta's grip looked more like a threat than support. Every few steps, Roran's fingers dug into Cyrus's wound, making him hiss.
Bastard.
She lunged forward, but Kael's arm barred her way. "Don't."
His voice was low, meant only for her. The first word he'd spoken directly to her since the rejection. It scraped against her raw nerves.
"You're letting him hurt Cyrus," she spat.
Kael's jaw tightened. "I'm keeping you both alive."
A lie. Everything about him was lies. The way he'd once smiled at her by the river. The way his fingers had lingered on her wrist when they were teenagers. The way he'd looked at her last summer, when her shadows had saved a child from drowning and he'd whispered "Beautiful" like it was a prayer.
Now his eyes were glacier-cold.
The gates of Blood Moon Keep loomed ahead, the iron spikes along its walls crusted with old blood. The guards didn't meet her eyes as they passed.
"Where's Liora's body?" Selene demanded.
Roran laughed. "As if you don't know."
"I didn't"
Kael's hand clamped her shoulder. "Quiet."
The command rolled through her, the Alpha power in it making her bones vibrate. Her shadows recoiled, hissing. She hated that her body still responded to him, that even now, rejected and filthy, some traitorous part of her wanted to obey.
The morgue stank of herbs and rotting meat. Selene gagged as they shoved her inside. A slab of stone dominated the center of the room, stained dark from decades of death.
But it was empty.
"Where is she?" Kael snarled.
The healer, a wisp of a woman named Nala, trembled. "Sh-she was here an hour ago, Alpha. I swear it!"
Roran backhanded her. "Liar."
Selene's shadows lashed out instinctively, wrapping around Nala's waist and yanking her away before Roran could strike again. The movement cost her, black spots danced in her vision. She hadn't fed her magic properly in weeks.
Kael's gaze snapped to her. "Don't move."
"Or what?" She bared her teeth. "You'll reject me harder?"
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes.
Then,
A drop of water hit the stone slab.
Then another.
Selene looked up.
Liora's corpse hung from the rafters, her golden hair dripping onto the slab below. Her throat gaped, the edges of the wound too precise, too clean. But it was her eyes that stopped Selene's breath, wide open, glowing faintly blue.
Impossible.
Dead wolves didn't glow.
Nala screamed. Roran cursed. Kael went utterly still.
And Liora's lips moved.
"She sees you," the corpse whispered.
Then the ropes snapped.
Liora's body crashed onto the slab, just as the doors burst open behind them. Kael's father, Alpha Orric, stood framed in torchlight, his silver-streaked beard bristling with fury.
"Enough!" His voice shook the room. "The shadow bitch dies at dawn."
Kael stepped forward. "Father"
"Unless," Orric interrupted, his gaze locking onto Selene, "she can track the killer. Shadow wolves can speak to the dead, can't they?"
The room went silent.
Selene's stomach dropped. She could, but the ritual required blood. Alpha blood.
Kael's fingers twitched toward his dagger.
Liora's corpse sat up.
"Too late," it rasped.
Then it laughed.