At five every morning, the whistle sounded across the Ironfang Pack's training grounds.

Evelyn lay awake in bed, staring at a thin crack in the ceiling. It began in the corner above the wall and ran all the way toward the chandelier, a bolt of lightning caught in time. She did not have to look outside to know what was happening on the grounds. The younger Wolfkin would be lined up in formation, cycling through speed drills and wolf-shifting exercises at their trainers' commands. Their howls cut through the morning mist and rolled in through her window with the smell of wet earth and forest.

She turned onto her side and drew the blanket up to her chin. Her room sat at the far end of the second floor in the family house, its north-facing window looking out over dull green trees and a blurred mountain ridge beyond. The training grounds were out of sight, but that made no difference. Sound and scent found their way in. Evelyn could catch the sharp, raw smell of Wolfkin skin tearing and knitting itself whole as they shifted. She could hear the trainers' clipped commands, the dry snap of claws crushing fallen leaves. Every detail told her the same thing: she was not one of them.

She did not have Wolfkin speed. She could not scent prey miles away. Under a full moon, she could not rearrange her bones, grow fur, and become a four-legged beast built to run.

She was only Evelyn. A girl with human lineage whom the pack leader had brought home.

Footsteps sounded in the hall. They were light, but unmistakably rhythmic. Evelyn knew at once that they belonged to Olivia. Her half-sister always walked with a faint spring in her step, as if she was holding back words she could not wait to say. Sure enough, a soft, quick knock came a second later.

"Evelyn? Are you awake?"

"I am." Evelyn pushed back the blankets, sat up, and rubbed her face.

Olivia eased the door open and leaned halfway into the room. Her golden hair had not been fully tied back yet. One loose strand fell beside her face; another had been tucked behind her ear. She had changed into everyday clothes after training, though a trace of dampness still clung to her forehead. When she saw Evelyn still in pajamas, her expression stalled for a moment, as though she had nearly said something and swallowed it instead.

"Grant wants you downstairs for breakfast at seven." Olivia used their father's name, which usually meant this was serious. "He said he has something planned for today."

Evelyn swung her legs from the bed and set her bare feet on the floorboards. The wood was cold enough to make her curl her toes by habit. "What kind of plan?"

"He didn't say. But Nathaniel was called into the study last night. They talked for a long time." Olivia came farther inside and sat at the foot of the bed, knees together and hands resting on her thighs. She watched Evelyn take a black T-shirt from the back of a chair, then hesitated before speaking again. "You got those letters yesterday, right?"

Evelyn's hands stopped for a beat. The rejection letters lay buried in the bottom drawer of her desk beneath an old textbook. She did not remember telling Olivia about them.

"I saw the envelopes when I walked past your room," Olivia said quietly. "Was it... all of them?"

Evelyn pulled the shirt over her head. The scrape of fabric against her skin gave her a few seconds to settle herself. She tugged her hair free of the collar before answering. "There's one school left. I'm on the waitlist. The rest rejected me."

Olivia opened her mouth, then closed it again. She got up, moved behind Evelyn, and straightened the back of her collar with the easy familiarity of someone who had done it a hundred times. "Where is the waitlist school?"

"Up north. In a human city. A long way from here."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?"

Evelyn turned to look at her. Olivia's face was serious. There was no pity in her eyes, only a careful need to be sure. Evelyn knew Olivia truly wanted her to leave. There were too many things in this house that made it hard for Evelyn to breathe, and Olivia understood that better than anyone.

"It is," Evelyn said.

She crossed to the desk, picked up the bottle of water she had left unfinished the day before, and took a drink. It was cold and faintly metallic, the usual taste of water that ran through mountain pipes. Eight years in pack territory had never made her used to it. Water from a tap in the human world was clean. It carried no other smell.

When she lifted her head, she saw the row of portraits on the wall.

Grant had arranged them there, along the wall at the bend in the hallway before the stairs. There were four in all, each set in the same dark wooden frame. One showed Grant as a younger man standing before Ironfang Pack headquarters, broad-shouldered and faintly frowning, with the look of an alpha ready for a challenge. Beside it were two portraits charting Nathaniel and Olivia as they grew up. In the first, they stood in the snow as teenagers. In the second, taken after their coming-of-age ceremony, they wore formal clothes and the family Crown Sigil. The newest was a family portrait: Helen sat in the center, Grant stood behind her, and Nathaniel and Olivia stood on either side. All four were dressed neatly, with an autumn forest behind them.

Evelyn let her gaze rest on the family portrait for two seconds. She was not in it. Years ago, Grant had said they would add her when she turned eighteen. Four months had passed since then, and he had not mentioned it again. Neither had she.

She knew why. Commissioning another portrait meant giving a human girl a permanent place in the family's history. Many members of the Ironfang Pack did not want that. Grant stayed quiet because he did not want to argue with the pack over it. Helen stayed quiet because her silence already said enough.

Evelyn looked away and opened the drawer. She took out the stack of rejection letters and found the one from the waitlist school. The page was clean and orderly, its wording polite, the closing printed in crisp black type. "Your application has been placed on the waitlist. We will..." A date followed. It had not come yet.

She returned the letter to the drawer and pressed it beneath the others. As she shut it, her knuckles struck the hard cardboard edge at the bottom, making a brief, dull sound.

Olivia was still standing by the foot of the bed.

"Are you... okay?" she asked.

Evelyn gave a short laugh and pushed the drawer closed. "People ask me that every day. Do I really look that bad?"

Olivia did not smile at the joke. She came over and stood in front of Evelyn, watching her in silence for several seconds. "You had another dream last night, didn't you? I heard you turning over. Again and again."

Evelyn did not answer. She had dreamed, just as she had many times before. Gray-white snow. A massive dark wooden door. The back of a man standing before it. Something curled around his left arm, a pattern she had never managed to see clearly in the dream. All she knew was that it ran from his shoulder to his wrist, winding like an ancient totem. She had never told anyone. Not even Olivia. She could not say whether it was an ordinary dream or the first warning of a Mindlink.

"Let's go downstairs," Evelyn said. "Don't keep Grant waiting."

As they stepped into the hall, low voices drifted from the far end. Grant was on the phone, speaking in short, hard phrases, anger held tightly under control. Evelyn and Olivia exchanged a glance. Olivia gave a slight shrug. She did not know what it was about either.

By the time they reached the turn in the stairs, Grant had ended the call. He stood outside his study in a charcoal-gray shirt, sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms. At forty-seven, he was still powerfully built, broad through the shoulders and back, though silver now threaded his hair. He saw his daughters coming down, gave one brief nod, and directed them toward the dining room.

The mood at the table was strained. Nathaniel had already taken the seat by the window. A cup of tea sat cold in front of him, which meant he had been there for some time without touching it. He looked up at Evelyn, his expression carrying a weight she could not name. Evelyn sat across from him. Helen emerged from the kitchen with breakfast and placed a plate before each of them. Steam rose from the bacon and scrambled eggs, one of the few scents in this house that did not belong to Wolfkin.

"I'm going to headquarters this afternoon." Grant sat down and picked up his fork, though he did not begin eating. "There's a meeting there tonight. Nathaniel, Olivia, and Evelyn will all attend."

Evelyn's hand stopped before it reached her fork. She looked from Grant to Nathaniel. Nathaniel lowered his eyes and gave her nothing. Olivia plainly had not expected it either. Her fork struck the rim of her plate with a small clink.

"Me?" Evelyn asked.

"You." Grant kept his eyes on his plate, easing scrambled eggs onto the back of his fork more slowly than usual. That tiny hesitation told Evelyn he was choosing his words.

"I've never been allowed to attend one of those meetings before," Evelyn said. Her voice remained even, though her fingers had moved away from the fork to rest against the table's edge. She was not accusing him. She was stating a fact. For eight years, Grant had kept her out of every internal Wolfkin meeting. Whenever anyone asked, his answer was always the same: "Evelyn doesn't need to be involved in this."

"This time is different." At last, Grant raised his eyes to hers. Something sat in them that Evelyn could not quite read. It was neither guilt nor command. It looked more like a decision he had made long before this conversation. "The meeting concerns every member of this family. That includes you."

"Which part concerns me?"

"The details will be discussed there."

Another answer that explained nothing. Evelyn wanted to press him, but Helen brushed her knee beneath the table. Evelyn glanced toward her stepmother. Helen's expression was gentle and restrained, her lips pressed into a thin line that said, not now. Evelyn swallowed the rest of her questions and picked up her fork again. The bacon on her plate had already gone cold, its fat congealing into a pale, translucent film. She poked at it but did not lift a piece.

Breakfast continued in silence. Grant ate slowly, pausing every few bites as though something else required his thought, his fork hanging in the air for seconds before lowering. Nathaniel never touched his tea and ate with mechanical focus. Olivia was the only one who occasionally made a sound as her cutlery met the plate, but she did not speak either.

After breakfast, Grant put on his coat and left first. As he passed behind Evelyn's chair, he paused for less than half a second, as if he meant to say something. In the end, he only patted the back of her chair and strode down the hallway. The front door clicked shut behind him.

Helen began clearing the dishes. As she stacked Evelyn's plate on top of the others in her hands, she lowered her voice. "Wear something a little more formal, all right? Not the black T-shirt."

Evelyn looked down at the black shirt and jeans she had worn for nearly five years. She wore them to every formal occasion. She did not wear the embroidered, fur-trimmed clothes favored by Wolfkin girls because she did not want every gathering to turn her into something people stared at. But beneath Helen's words, Evelyn heard something else.

Helen was not worried about manners. She was worried Evelyn would make the family seem less respectable in front of other Wolfkin.

"I understand," Evelyn said. She did not meet Helen's eyes.

Helen carried the dishes into the kitchen. Water began running in the sink.

Evelyn returned to her room and stood before the mirror. A young woman in a black T-shirt looked back at her. Her short hair was tied behind her head. Her face was lean, her cheekbones sharper than those of most Wolfkin girls, her eye sockets more deeply set. Her pupils were dark brown, almost black in dim light. Within the pack, that was the clearest sign of her human lineage. Wolfkin eyes caught amber or green-gold in darkness. Even without wolf-shifting, they could never entirely hide that animal gleam. Evelyn's eyes, however, stayed dark brown no matter how the light changed. They never reflected it back.

She studied herself for perhaps ten seconds, then took off the T-shirt and searched through her closet until she found a pale gray blouse. She fastened it to the second button and rolled the sleeves to two fingers above her wrists. After one more look in the mirror, she decided it would at least make things easier for Helen.

A knock sounded at the door. Olivia's voice came from the other side, more urgent than it had been that morning. "Evelyn, Grant sent word. The meeting's been moved up to early evening. He wants you ready sooner."

Evelyn opened the door. Olivia stood outside holding a small silver pin shaped like a wolf's fang. Its edges had been worn smooth, and the metal had dulled with age, but the fang's outline remained clear. Olivia had found it years earlier at a market stall, a handmade trinket she had loved ever since. She held it out to Evelyn.

"Wear this."

Evelyn looked at the pin. "It's yours."

"Not anymore." Olivia's voice was firm. "You don't have to turn into a wolf to prove you belong here."

Evelyn took it. The metal was cool against her palm. She pinned it to the inside of her collar, where only the smallest silver point showed from the outside. It was not conspicuous, but she knew it was there.

"Thank you," she said.

Olivia smiled, gave Evelyn's shoulder a quick pat, and ran back toward her own room to get ready. Evelyn was left alone in the hall. From far away came the clatter of Helen putting dishes away in the kitchen, along with Nathaniel's footsteps descending from the second floor. The sounds blended into the familiar daily rhythm of the house.

But Evelyn knew this day was different. Grant had never let her attend a Wolfkin meeting. Now he had changed his mind without warning, and he had said the meeting concerned her. The thought left her uneasy. The last time Grant had spoken in that tone was on the day he brought her into this house, when she was twelve. He had stood in the middle of the sitting room and introduced her to the pack members gathering around him. "This is Evelyn. My daughter." He had not explained who her mother was or why she had been brought back. Evelyn had not understood the hostility hidden inside those murmurs then. Later, she had learned. In the Wolfkin world, the word human was a stain all by itself.

She opened the drawer and looked once more at the stack of rejection letters. The date from the waitlist school was still far off, but it was at least a way out. If that one letter brought an acceptance, she could leave this place and go somewhere no one would pause to study the color of her eyes.

Evelyn closed the drawer. As she pulled her hand away from the desk, her knuckles brushed the frame that had sat for years at the bottom of an old keepsake box. Inside was a faded photograph: a young woman holding a baby in front of an old wooden cabin. No date had been written on it, but Evelyn knew it showed herself and Tessa Carver, her human mother.

A line had been written across the back in Tessa's hand. The letters were hurried and uneven, as though her hand had shaken as she wrote.

"Never let them know who you really are."

Evelyn looked at those words for a long time. Then she turned the frame facedown and put it back in the drawer.

She rose and went to the window. The whistle from the training grounds had stopped. In its place came the scattered chatter and laughter of young Wolfkin breaking up after drills. Someone walking away from the grounds glanced toward her window, then looked away again too quickly.

Evelyn had seen that look too many times. Curiosity, contempt, and caution, all tangled together.

She shut the window and headed downstairs. The evening meeting was coming, and she still had no idea what waited for her there. She knew only this: Grant had not called her to the meeting merely so she could meet representatives from other packs. There was something else. She could feel it, vaguely but insistently. It had something to do with the dreams she kept having, with the words Tessa had left on the back of that photograph, and with the parts of her own bloodline she had never understood.

At the bend in the stairs, the family portrait caught her eye again. She looked at Grant, Helen, Nathaniel, and Olivia smiling inside the frame, but she did not slow down.

She went down the stairs.

Outside, a deep howl rose from somewhere in the forest. It was not an ordinary training signal. It sounded like a warning. Evelyn's step faltered.

The howl had come from the boundary of the Ironfang Wilds.

She hurried toward the front door. Beneath the collar of her blouse, the silver wolf-fang pin rested against her collarbone, faintly cold.

Evening had arrived.

The Moonblood Daughter — Chapter 9: To Crownspire Palace

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