Chapter 1: Giving ceremony
The night of her Giving Ceremony, the stars did not sing.
They say when a wolf child steps into moonlight for the first time, the Moon Goddess watches from the heavens. If the child is worthy, the stars shift. A pulse is felt in the earth, a hum in the bones. The child hears it—and the wolf inside awakens.
Nyrielle Veyne heard nothing.
She stood in the sacred circle beneath a full moon at only ten years old, dressed in silver silk, her raven-black hair braided with white feathers. Her bare feet dug into the cold dirt, surrounded by the howling wind and the robed Elders. Her father stood behind her, silent, powerful, eyes like sharpened obsidian.
She waited.
And waited.
But nothing came.
No shift.
No howl.
No wolf.
The air grew still. The Elders whispered. The Seer frowned. The stars blinked, indifferent.
And Corvin Veyne turned his back.
He didn't speak to her again for a long, long time.
She was born during the blood-soaked final days of the Dominion War, when the world of wolves tore itself apart.
The Alaric Dynasty had ruled for centuries—true-blooded Alphas descended from the First Moonborn. They held command over the Nine High Packs, each pack sovereign but bound to the Blood Crown. Her father, once a loyal High Alpha of the Obsidian Pack, served beneath the reigning King with sharpened teeth and smiles.
Until the night he didn't.
Corvin Veyne led a brutal uprising—the Betrayal of Silver Hollow. It was swift. Surgical. The King's court was slaughtered, his heirs cut down. His allies were burned in their dens while they slept. The High Packs fractured.
Corvin took what was left of the Obsidian Pack, rallied the fearful and the ambitious, and buried the Alaric name.
All but one.
The Alpha's son survived.
A boy ripped from the flames, barely clinging to life. No one knew how. No one saw him again. The bodies were never fully counted in the aftermath.
They thought he was ash.
But ash remembers.
And ash rises.
Nyrielle knew none of this as a child.
Only that she lived in a great cold house on the edge of the Blackmoor cliffs, a mansion too big for a girl with no wolf.
She was called halfborn. Moonless. Unworthy.
Some days, she believed them.
Other days, she stared into the mirror and watched her reflection blur around the edges. Her bones itched. Her dreams whispered.
And she began to wonder if being unworthy was the same as being nothing.
She was twenty when her father summoned her again.
He hadn't spoken her name in years.
The message came like a blade slipped between her ribs: one sentence, written in clean, precise ink.
"Prepare yourself. You are to be bonded."
No greeting. No explanation. Just another command from the man who had given her life and then left her in the shadows to rot like some forgotten sin.
She stared at the letter for a long time.
Then folded it… and set it on fire.
He arrived the next night, not alone.
Her older brother, Eryx, stood beside him—taller now, broader, wrapped in the gold-stitched black of the Veyne line, looking every inch the son Corvin had kept.
Nyrielle waited for them in the parlor of the coastal manor they had left her in years ago, like a ghost they didn't know how to bury.
"You've grown," Eryx said, stepping into the firelight. His eyes scanned the room but never quite settled on her.
Corvin Veyne said nothing at first, only crossed to the hearth like it was his home again. Like he hadn't cast her out of the bloodline with silence and scorn.
He turned to her then, and she saw it—the faint twitch in his jaw, the way his fingers curled slightly into a fist before relaxing again. He was older now.
"You are to be bonded."
"I got the letter," she said. "Before I burned it."
"You're giving me to a man you tried to destroy."
The words came sharp and measured, her voice steady despite the storm in her chest.
Eryx shifted uncomfortably. "This alliance is necessary."
"So was slaughtering his bloodline?" she snapped. "Does Kael Drenmor know he's marrying into the same house that razed his?"
Corvin's eyes flicked to the side—just for a moment—but it was enough.
A crack.
A tell.
"Yes," he said. "The Council demanded a resolution. This is it."
"And Kael accepted it?" Her throat tightened. "He accepted me?"
Even Eryx looked away.
Corvin's mouth was a hard line. "He agreed to the Ceremony of Thorns."
Her stomach dropped.
The Thorns. A ritual older than the high packs themselves. Sacred. Bound by blood magic.
She took a step forward. "I'm not a wolf."
"No," Corvin said, eyes glittering. "But you are still my daughter. And that is what matters."
A silence stretched between them like a blade.
Then Eryx's voice broke it. Soft. Almost pitying.
"You could do something for this family for once."
She turned sharply.
He held her gaze now—firm, bitter. "You've been an embarrassment since the day you were born. Moonless. Powerless. Dead blood. And still Father kept your name."
"Kept it?" she hissed. "He buried it."
"You should be grateful this chance even exists." His voice rose slightly. "If you refuse, the alliance breaks. And do you know what happens then?"
She clenched her jaw.
Eryx stepped closer. "Kael Drenmor has already made it clear. If not you, then Myra."
Their youngest sister.
Nyrielle froze.
"You would risk her life," he said, "because of your pride?"
Her voice cracked. "You're manipulating me."
"We're surviving," he said.
Corvin watched in silence, unreadable.
And then she saw it—beneath the indifference, beneath the stone—
Fear.
"You're afraid of him," she said, slowly. "That's why you offered me. Not just for peace. Because Kael terrifies you."
Corvin's lips twitched. Not a smile. A tremor.
"You think he'll come for you," she whispered. "You think he'll finish what you started."
"You will marry him," Corvin said, recovering quickly. "And you will get close to him. Learn him. Report to me what you find. What he hides. Who he still commands."
A spy. Not a daughter.
A tool, finally sharp enough to use.
She stared at him, hating everything—him, Eryx, the blood in her veins. And still…
Still, there was that wretched, gasping part of her—too small to kill, too loud to ignore—that wanted to be seen. To be useful. To be something.
She turned away from them both, staring out at the window where waves crashed against the cliffs, silver under the moonless sky.
"I'll do it," she said.
The room was silent.
"But not for the family. Not for you."
She turned back, eyes burning.
And for once, Corvin Veyne didn't speak.