Chapter 15

Amelia

The woods were thicker tonight.

Fog crawled between the roots like a serpent, slick and slow. The moon, veiled behind scattered clouds, gave only slivers of light. I moved quickly, but with care, every snapped twig felt like a scream in the silence. And I found it's harder for me to walk in silence, and I found it harder for me to be able to focus at all.

Claire had trusted me with everything.

I gave her my loyalty, even if it meant me cheating on the man that I now called Alpha. But I owed it to her. Had it not been for her, I would have been long dead. I would have been thrown out a long time ago. I would have been a rogue. One of them, one of those who are exiled.

But I hated that I’d become good at this. I hated how good I had become at lying, deceiving and playing those that trusted me.

The path she used for these meetings wound just outside Blackthorne’s eastern perimeter, nearly invisible beneath overgrowth. And hopefully