Rhiannon's POV
The boy was dying in my hands, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
"Stay with me," I begged, pressing harder against the gaping wound in his chest. Blood—so much blood—poured between my fingers, hot and slick. "Please, just stay with me."
His eyes, barely focused, found mine. He couldn't have been more than seventeen. Someone's son. Someone's brother.
Like Kieran had been mine.
"I can't—" The boy's words dissolved into a wet cough. His body jerked once, twice, then went completely still.
No. No, no, no.
I felt for a pulse I knew wouldn't be there. My healing magic flickered weakly in my palms, trying to spark life into flesh that had already surrendered. But I was too late. I was always too late.
"Rhiannon." A hand touched my shoulder. "He's gone."
I shook my head, even though I knew the truth. Even though I'd watched this same scene play out dozens of times in the three years I'd worked these blood-soaked battlefields. The field hospital tent reeked of death and suffering—a smell I couldn't wash off no matter how hard I scrubbed.
"Time of death?" someone asked from behind me.
I looked down at the boy's face, now peaceful in a way it hadn't been moments before. Seventeen years old. He'd never get to be eighteen. Never fall in love. Never have children of his own.
Just like Kieran never would.
"Rhiannon." The voice was sharper now. "We need this bed. There are others—"
"I know!" I snapped, pulling my bloody hands away from the corpse. My corpse, because I hadn't been good enough to save him. I stood on shaking legs and stepped back, letting others move in to carry the body away.
Around me, the tent churned with organized chaos. Medics rushed between cots where wounded soldiers screamed or whimpered or lay in terrible silence. The latest battle had been brutal—Alpha Caspian's forces had crushed another Silverfang position, and our people were paying the price in blood.
His people had done this. The Executioner King himself had probably stood on some distant hill, watching through cold eyes as he ordered the attack that had killed this boy.
The same eyes that had watched my brother die three years ago.
I moved to the washing basin mechanically, scrubbing the boy's blood from my hands. The water ran red, then pink, then clear. But I could still feel it on my skin. I always could.
"You did what you could," said Mara, another medic, as she passed by with fresh bandages. "The wound was too severe."
I didn't answer. What was there to say? That I should have been faster? That I should have tried harder? That every soldier who died on my watch felt like another debt I could never repay?
That every death reminded me of the one that should have been mine?
"Rhiannon Silverfang." A commanding voice cut through the chaos of the tent.
I turned to find two pack guards standing at the entrance, their faces grim. My stomach dropped. Guards never came to the field hospitals unless—
"You're summoned to pack headquarters. Immediately."
The tent went quiet. Other medics stopped what they were doing to stare. Being summoned meant one of two things: you were being honored, or you were being punished.
And people like me didn't get honored.
"What for?" I asked, though my voice sounded distant to my own ears.
"The Council didn't say. Just that you're to come now."
My mind raced through possibilities, none of them good. Had I failed to save someone important? Had my mother finally convinced the Council to banish me completely? Was this another suicide mission to the front lines—somewhere even more dangerous than here?
I pulled off my bloodstained apron with numb fingers. Around me, the other medics wouldn't meet my eyes. They never did. To them, I was the woman whose brother had died for her sins. The one who had defied an Alpha's direct order and paid for it with the life of someone better than herself.
They weren't wrong.
As I followed the guards out of the tent and into the dying light of evening, my thoughts drifted back—as they always did—to that day three years ago. The burning settlement. The children's screams. Caspian's cold command to let them burn.
And my choice to disobey.
I had saved twelve children that day. Twelve lives pulled from the flames while Caspian's soldiers watched in shock that anyone would dare defy their Alpha during wartime.
He'd called it treason. Undermining his authority when he needed his soldiers to obey without question.
The sentence had been public execution.
But Kieran—my beautiful, brave, stupid brother—had invoked the Law of Substitution. An ancient right that let family take another's punishment. Before I could stop him, before I could even scream, he'd walked onto that platform.
And Caspian Blackthorn had watched with those ice-cold eyes as my brother's head rolled.
I stumbled on the path, and one of the guards steadied me. "You alright?"
No. I would never be alright again.
Pack headquarters loomed ahead, torch-lit and imposing. My heart hammered against my ribs. Whatever waited for me inside, it wouldn't be good. Nothing good ever happened to me anymore.
We entered through the main hall, our footsteps echoing on stone. The guards led me down a corridor I'd only seen once before—the day I'd stood trial for treason.
They stopped at a heavy wooden door. Knocked twice.
"Enter," came my mother's voice from within.
My blood turned to ice.
The guards pushed open the door, and I stepped into the Council chamber. Five members sat in a semicircle, my mother Mira at the center, her face carved from stone and grief.
"Sit," she commanded, gesturing to a single chair facing them all.
I sat, my spine straight despite the fear clawing at my throat. Whatever this was, I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me break.
Mira's eyes—the same green as mine—held nothing but cold satisfaction. "The Elders have brokered a peace treaty to end the war."
I blinked. A peace treaty? After decades of bloodshed?
"And you, Rhiannon, have been selected to seal it."
Dread pooled in my stomach. "Selected for what?"
My mother's smile was razor-sharp and cruel.
"For the Blood Treaty. You're going to be bound as mate to Alpha Caspian Blackthorn. The man who ordered your brother's execution."
The world tilted sideways.
"You'll finally be useful to this pack," my mother continued, her voice dripping with venom. "You
leave for the Neutral Ground tomorrow. They're waiting."