Prologue: Banishment

I twist in the seat, pulling against the straps that bind me, hissing in pain as the threads of silver sear my skin. I snarl and bare my teeth at the driver and his mate in the front of the car. They only stare forward, they show no emotion at all.

Familiars, I realise, I have been left to the care of bloodless, brainless Familiars. I fling myself against the straps, howling my rage and frustration. If only I could set my wolf free. Fer would know what to do. But the silver will kill her. My Fer, she is all I have left.

I slump back in the seat, trying to see out the darkened windows of the car. Through the windscreen I can make out the mountains of the Wildlands looming black against the gold and magenta of the Wolf Moon sky. On either side of the car, the outlines of forest pines whoosh past in blurs of bristly bark and spiky spruce needles.

No one came to say goodbye. Not one member of my family. Not one friend. My last view of my own mother was of her slender, upright back as she stood and turned her back on me. My father signed the peace treaty, stood and did the same. Every member of my pack followed. Only Didi lingered. For just a moment I saw his sweet, round face. I could still see the baby he had once been though he was now twelve years old. His eyes sought mine and I trembled at the pain I saw there. He didn’t understand. I had to speak to him. I stepped forward and the pack guardian yanked me back. Didi turned away.

Silvia Ironwolf, for your crime of murder, you will be forever banished from the Packs, Omega Rovit intoned. Another humiliation. To have my fate read out to me by the lowliest member of the Ironwolf Pack while all the others turned their backs. Rovit had loved it. He had worshipped Jedan and probably wanted to kill me slowly right there and then. He leaned forward, his face close to mine, his spit landing on my face, And if you ever return to the Wildlands, he finished, You will be torn limb from limb, your remains fed to the vultures.

If my hands had not been bound by the leather mitts, shackled together with silver, I would have ripped his sneering face from his skull and fed that to the vultures.

Shackled like an animal. Cast out like a criminal. I feel the scrape of my nails against the soft leather interior of the mitts.  The packhouse guardsmen blunted many tools before giving up on removing the iron from my fingertips. It had been excruciating but I never let them see it. The iron is a part of me now.

They said that Jedan was barely recognizeable when they found him.

They said that the iron was an affliction, a curse that had been bred out of the Pack centuries ago. They said I was cursed. That it was my curse that had killed Jedan, future Alpha of Firewolf.

It was Jedan's inability to understand 'No' that killed him.

Vuko had not said goodbye either. The tears prickle my nose and sting my eyes. I won’t cry. I won’t.

Of course he didn’t come to say goodbye.

I killed his brother.

Vuko my love.

I had dreamed that at my Naming, the Moon Goddess would show him to be my mate. Usually we would have to wait until we were both twenty-one. But surely she must see how we love each other?

Another, darker thought comes then. Did she also see Jedan follow me to the forest? Did she see him give me a choice that was no choice at all? Choose me or no one will have you, he had said. That’s not a choice.

My wolf, so newly named, had not held back and I did not try.

From within the shadows of the Wildlands, comes a long, mournful howl. Vuko! I knew it with every fibre of my body, with the blood that coursed through my veins, with the beating of my heart. I open my mouth to answer him, cracking my jaw bones as the voice of the wolf within me strains toward the sound of him, the memory of his scent. Her cry joins with mine, creating a sound so intense, so pure that the Familiars turned to stare and the car swerves wildly across the roughened road.

Then Vuko is beside the car, shifting between wolf and human, pacing us even as the car speeds up. He calls to me through the window. But the words are snatched from his mouth by the slipstream. The car veers again, crashing into him. I scream as he is sent reeling from the blow, thrown like a limp doll against a pine tree. The car moves on and I twist around in the seat, the smell of burning flesh, my flesh, wolf's flesh. I can no longer tell. All I know is that I can no longer see Vuko.

I cannot see him!

My wolf and I howl our distress and there is no answering howl.

Throughout that interminable journey I replay that scene over and over in my mind, praying that I have not killed him too.

The car races on, over the mountains and into the Barren. Far, far away from the Wildlands.