The Alpha Who Rejected Me Needs My Blood

o

stool with the card in my lap, reading the same t

e home

er always crossed her sevens, and so did the person who wrote this. Either

hing I did was draw blood from Caelan. He lay half asleep when I entered his room, his skin hot and gray, the black veins crawling

doorway. He had been hovering there since sunris

I did not look up. "Please clo

ed, Dr. Calder." His smile

let out a breath I had

samples: Caelan's blood, a swab from the coughing woman on the porch, and a

he inside. It attacked the bond between a wolf and its human half, which was why no healer could stop it. You could not cure a creature who

ad a name for the weakness: an unstable compound that needed a stabilizer, or the

ogether with a rare resin that grew only on the northern slopes. The ratio was exact. One part to seven to three. My mother had invented it when I was twelve, in this very room, to ease the pa

it into a weapon and somebody had used that same weapon, s

work had been stolen, twisted, and fed t

t rose in my chest was colder than tears. I picked up a glass beaker and

om the doorway, "was a

her hands, wearing a bright red scarf and a fac

to dinner. I'm Wren. I'm his sister. You'r

and meant it. "It h

workbench and glanced at the broken glass without a

n I ate every crumb. When the sun went down, I locked the clinic and sat in the dark with a single lamp, my mother's formula written o

outside the window, a figure was crossing the snow in the moonlight, tall, thin, and unsteady. He wore on

el

. He did not go toward the lodge, or the gate, or the training field. He went toward the old pack cemetery at the

k. It was my mother's grave. I knew it before I saw the name. Someone had cleared the snow from the stones. A g

le body shook. I could not hear his words but I saw his back heave once, then

I hated that it did. Then he stood up, wiped his face with the back of his han

t, Ivy. I know y

from behind the tree, and the

ot to follow

d me." He did not turn. "Ask your

e pale marker. At the flowe

ve is this

a long moment. Then,

bod