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Mid-drill, pain hit Luna Winter. Not for the first time. She stopped. Hand pressed to her chest. Her wolf Frost whimpered inside her. She finished the session. Walked out. Didn't stumble. Not in front of the warriors who respected her. The healer examined her. "Your... Fated Mate is with another. The bond mirrors it, which triggers the pain." Winter already knew who he could be with. Layla. Alpha Dion's Beta. The one he took instead of his Luna to Bloodstone—Alpha Zulan's territory. She told the healer to burn the records. Then she went home. Found her mother's journal. Opened to page forty-three. Zulan. The Lycan King's lost son. The man her husband had just spent three days with. The man whose family her parents died protecting. Dion still had no idea who he'd brought his mistress to meet. And Winter was already planning. *** The training grounds were loud in all the ways that mattered. Wooden blades cracked together. Boots tore at the dirt. Men barked when they swung too wide, when they lost footing, when someone’s elbow caught a rib hard enough to bruise. The noise should have blended into one dull rhythm by now. Instead, Winter heard every mistake separately. It was why she walked the perimeter instead of standing still. A Luna who planted herself in one place saw only what happened in front of her. Winter preferred to see everything. “Your guard is too low,” she said as she passed one pair. “If that had been steel, you would be dead.” The younger warrior flinched and corrected immediately. She kept moving. The Ember Soul warriors training under her this morning were new enough to still think effort deserved praise. It did not. Effort without skill got pack members killed. Effort without discipline turned patrols into funerals. A male to her right overextended on a lunge, nearly stumbling into the man across from him. “Again,” Winter said. He straightened at once, chest heaving. “Luna, I—” “Did I ask why you failed?” His mouth shut. Good. Winter stoppe
