Chapter 2
Zinnia
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE
Come to me, little star. Come find me, now.
I will. Today. I sat up in bed, my magic coursing through me with a drumming yes, yes, yes. I’d never had much magic or hope before, but now my veins filled with a pleasant, liquid fire, and certainty.
I’d never shifted, a late bloomer even for my family, but for the past week I’d been dreaming of a tall, broad, dark-haired male who called me his little star.
I’d felt my wolf beginning to wake up with every dream, until it seemed like my hands might become paws and my teeth lengthen into fangs at any moment.
I could even smell a trace of him in the breeze that wafted through the open window from the northwest. Fresh cedar and the unmistakable scent of wolf.
I half-tumbled out of my bedroom, magic and hope moving through me in twin rivers, my wolf rising and howling in triumph that he was near enough for us to find. He would draw her out, and she would run under the moon with her mate.
The house was empty as I ran through it to the door. My mother had vanished the year before, crossing into Northern packlands with my aunt to beg for peace. They’d butchered our elders and children just for living near the Blue Mountains. No one ever came back.
Why the other packs had punished us for Occidens’ crimes, I’d never understand. We were healers, not warriors—a small river pack who’d kept our heads down for generations, whose magic came both from our wolf natures and from the earth itself, our witch heritage.
But it hadn’t mattered. They came for us anyway.
My father and brothers were killed before they could speak their truth.
Everyone else in our family had either been slaughtered or vanished.
My mother, my aunt, my cousins... The only ones left were me and my older sister Aster, and she was half-dead herself.
Her wolf had been slipping away for the past week as she mourned the death of her true mate, the other half of her soul.
She was already outside, working in the light of the full moon.
Dragging a fallen cedar limb across the clearing in front of our small house, and stacking it with a dozen others.
I was almost certain it was her own funeral pyre she was building, but I didn’t dare ask.
She’d shaved her hair in grief, and the light shone on the smooth, pale brown surface.
I stepped closer, but she didn’t turn to greet me. I spoke anyway. “I felt him, Aster. I think… I think he’s close.”
She didn’t ask who. Her chin dropped, and she pulled in a long, shuddering breath.
I stepped toward her, careful at first. But the words burned in my throat, and excitement pushed me closer.
She was a shadow of the sister I’d grown up with.
Still, she was my only remaining family, and I wanted her to feel this with me. For me.
“Did you hear me?” I said gently. “I think my mate is calling me.”
She didn’t turn, just stared straight ahead. “I hope not.”
The words stopped me cold. I blinked at her, stunned. “What?”
When she finally looked at me, her eyes were so hollow, it felt like staring into the space someone had left behind. “Stay in the house, Zinnia. Go back to bed. It’s safer.”
My wolf snarled low in my chest. The rush of joy and magic I’d woken with began to ebb, the world going heavy again. “Why?”
“Because if you never meet your true mate, you’ll never have to suffer like this.” The way she said it—flat, final—left no space for argument.
But it hurt. By the moon, it hurt. I swallowed hard, unsure what to say as she turned away again.
My wolf whined mournfully inside my chest, recognizing that Aster had given up. Dying from a broken heart, and a severed mate bond.
I ran. Not to escape my sister’s pain, but because I couldn’t bear not to find him. I left her behind, her sorrow too deep to follow, and chased the thread of him into the trees and over a shallow river.
Then the wind shifted. Cedar, again, but now the scent held something else bitter and resinous, like ink. Why would my mate smell of ink?
Ink and blood. Was he hurt? The lure was fading for some reason, but my wolf was on the hunt.
It took me hours of running on my human feet, following the scent, until I came close enough to slow. I hadn’t run across the Blue Mountains, but along the valleys that led to Occidens, the westernmost packlands, where the Alpha Mothers and Alphas once did their great magic and ceremonies.
Hearing voices, I slid into a stand of birches near some small outbuildings, leaves pressing on my skin as I asked the trees to conceal me.
It was dangerous to be so close to the pack housing.
I’d heard stories that the males here had gone feral after they’d been imprisoned inside their borders.
I’d heard worse rumors that Russian shifters had snuck into Occidens, ones who didn’t have honor and didn’t fear our magic, since they had their own.
I wasn’t sure it was true, and I was afraid to find out, but I was good at hiding.
And I had to reach my mate, no matter who stood between us. Though it was much harder to feel or even scent him now. What had happened to him?
As if I’d conjured them with my thoughts, a group of three male shifters appeared over the rise ahead, arguing loudly. I froze, still hidden by the shadows of the trees, my scent carried away from them by the breeze. I coaxed the magic out of the birch at my back to cover me as I listened.
The first one spoke with a local accent. “We need your help tracking him, Ruslan. The Occidens Mothers declared him our enemy, so he has to die.”
Another of the shifters spat on the ground. “Nyet. I’m no fool.”
The Occidens shifter’s voice was practically a whine. “Come on. He’s been kept chained for weeks, and he only escaped hours ago. He’ll be weak when we catch him.”
“Too dangerous to hunt, that one.” The Russian’s voice was accented, but I could understand every word. “Just because you wound a bear and trap it does not mean you should crawl into the cage howling your victory while he still breathes.”
The third man spoke. “Julian Rain’s not a fucking bear. May be as strong as one, but he’s mortal. He’s no danger, just a fucking loose cannon. A traitor.”
The Russian grunted. “A Moonblessed Warrior is always a danger. He’s the last of your dead Alpha’s line.
Strong and cunning. I cannot scent him or his magic even now.
No, my men and I, we will not throw our lives away.
You hunt him, you kill him, then we will march on the North together.
” He walked away, leaving the others cursing.
As they dispersed through the trees, I plastered myself to the trunk of the birch, its papery bark cool and flaking against my shoulders, the faint scent of damp earth rising from its roots.
One of the Occidens males held up a stick—a wand?
—as he passed, mumbling to it. I wrinkled my nose.
My parents had always taught me that true magic didn’t require a conduit, like the humans believed. Or magic words.
The male shoved the stick in his satchel. “He’s got to be close. Let’s try the storage buildings by the rim.”
They were gone in seconds, but I held still for much longer, my heart racing.
I’d heard stories of the Moonblessed Warriors, and even seen them from a distance when I was a little girl.
The Julian they were talking about was the only child of the old Alpha, Ithil Mar, and his mate Dahlia Rain, the Alpha Mother.
They were legendary shifters, their story a terrible tragedy…
and their son was being hunted by members of Occidens, his own pack.
A pack that had allied with Russian magicians.
Maybe the other packs had been right after all. Maybe Occidens was corrupt.
The scent of cedar, ink, and blood sharpened, pulling me from my thoughts. I blinked, seeing nothing.
Then suddenly, he was there. A tall, irregular shadow peeled away from the darkness, the air around it flicking like heat waves. My gaze kept slipping, as if something wanted me to look away—but each time I did, my wolf yipped, snapping my focus back.
A look-away spell. It had to be.
I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and let the scent root me. It was him.
When I opened my eyes again, my wolf looked with me. Together, we spotted him gliding between the trees, a few hundred feet away.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, more muscular than any male I’d ever seen. Dark pants, black shirt, sleeves rolled up. His skin was newly-marked in strange, swirling patterns across his forearms, neck, and face. As he came closer, I knew that was where the scent of ink and blood had come from.
Why had he done that? Shifters didn’t scar easily, but these markings were very definitely scars. Tattoos made with silver, maybe? Or magic, though I couldn’t sense any magic in his aura at all. How was he suppressing it? He had to be very powerful.
I couldn’t stop staring. His hair was dark and thick, falling down his back as he strode toward me, his eyes blazing with sparks of amber. I thought he’d seen me, since he stopped walking to inhale deeply, and looked around. But then a woman’s voice had him turning away.
“Julian.” A tall woman stepped soundlessly from the trees, her dark hair pulled back to reveal cheekbones unmistakably carved from the same mold.
His twin. She carried a canvas bag and handed it to him with a low, urgent whisper.
“I’ll distract them. Promise me you won’t come back. Not until it’s safe.”
“I promise, Meli. Don’t let them catch you, or Lily.”
“Never.” The word was a quiet vow.
“I’ll find you again. The Mountain Alpha might listen...” His voice broke as his sister embraced him, her shoulders shaking with silent tears.
In seconds, his twin had run away, and in a few more, I heard an outcry from the direction she’d vanished. Before I could think, Julian was only a few feet ahead of me, moving toward the stand of birches. He must have seen me, or sensed me under the magic I’d woven.
Of course he had. He was one of the most powerful shifters alive. And he was mine. My wolf gave a silent, joyful howl.
“Hello?” I whispered, ready to introduce myself quickly. He was running away, and I would need to go with him. I could help him call on the magic of the earth to soften our footsteps and encourage the breezes to whisk our scent away from the hunters.
I might be from a weaker line of magic wielders, but I’d learned to pull from the earth, and I was very good at concealment. Maybe too good. Judging by the way he was scanning the trees around me, sniffing the air with sharp, frustrated breaths, he couldn’t see me at all.
“Who are you?” he growled into the darkness.
He didn’t know me?
Of course not. A mate bond was established with a touch, not a dream. That first contact always connected the moon-fated pair.
Quickly, I reached out one hand and touched his arm, startling him. He jerked it away like my fingers had burned him, though tremors of pleasure shot through me from the brief contact.
More than tremors. It felt like the world was shifting on its axis, my soul and my magic sending out tendrils toward his warmth, his hidden wolf.
Mate. Mate! My wolf howled, though she knew she had to stay quiet.
I whispered, “I’m Zinnia.” The tattooed scars had felt peculiar under my fingertips, muting the sensation of the mate bond forming. Was it forming? It was hard to tell, though I could feel my magic reaching for him, recognizing him. The scars were spells. My wolf didn’t like them at all.
“Tell no one you saw me, girl,” he rasped at last, his voice harsh and his gaze on the place where his sister had vanished. “Don’t say anything unless you want to die.”
I froze, certain I’d misheard him. But his eyes were as hard as the cruel line of his mouth, and when my lips moved to form a word—though what I would say, I had no idea—he loosed a low, vicious growl.
My wolf whimpered just as quietly, keening. Mate?
He didn’t respond, if he even heard her at all. Without another word, he turned and ran on silent feet into the woods, far too quickly for me to follow, though I tried.
I ran and ran, following him as fast as I could, until my feet bled into the earth. My wolf grew weaker, my soul wailing as my mate left me. He hadn’t known me. He hadn’t felt the pull of the mate bond that was wrapped like barbed chains around my own heart, still pulling me to him as he fled.
But a far more sinister thought sprang up as I traced his path. Perhaps he had known me, had seen into my soul, and found me lacking. Unworthy. Perhaps I was too weak, too ugly, too ordinary for him.
It didn’t matter why. I’d been rejected by my soul’s mate.
I was alone.