In Ashen Vale, two laws keep people alive: humans don't cross the forest line... and wolves don't bring humans into sacred territory.

I should be dead.

After rogues tear through my quiet border village, I wake in a stone fortress hidden deep in the woods-Ironpine Keep-surrounded by warriors who smell like smoke, snow, and danger. The worst part isn't the locked gates or the moonlit growls outside my door.

It's the man watching me like a sin he refuses to taste.

Ronan Varrick-the exiled alpha the High Council calls forbidden-saved me when he shouldn't have. He wants me gone before the Council discovers what he did. But his pack is dying from a strange silver poison that burns through wolf blood like fire... and I'm the only healer who can slow it.

The first time my hands brush the scars under his shirt, something violent sparks between us-an instinct he's spent a lifetime chaining down.

Now the Council demands my return... not to protect me, but to use me.

Ronan can hand me over and earn his way back into power.

Or he can claim what he swore he never would... and start a war that will expose wolves to the human world forever.