QUICK LINKS: Chapter Summary 1–12 | 25–38 | 39–53 | 54–58
Chapter 13
At breakfast, Meryn meets Tomison Thorne, a noble-born recruit who wastes no time announcing he intends to lead the Strategos pack. During a castle tour, she maps out escape routes and spots Anassa on the terraces. The wolf doesn’t glance her way.
Later, Leader Aldrich lays out the four-month training cycle to the assembled recruits, split into the Forging and Proving phases, with milestones like the Voice Trial and the lethal Purge Trial, where packs cut the members they deem unworthy. Stark follows with a grim speech on strength, his eyes fixed on Meryn the whole time.
After the assembly, Meryn asks Beta Egith to release her so she can search for her sister. Egith refuses. Without a working bond with Anassa, Meryn is a target, and Egith won’t risk it. She agrees to look into the Nabber kidnappings but admits her interest in keeping Meryn alive is partly a betting pool she has with Stark. Meryn walks away knowing she’s on her own and starts thinking about another way out.
Chapter 14
After orientation, Meryn makes a break for it through the service tunnels, but she doesn’t get far. Just past the castle gates, crippling pain drops her where she stands. Izabel and Venna pull her back and explain that in the early stages of bonding, the psychic link has hard physical limits. Push past them, and it’s fatal for both.
With escape off the table, something in Meryn breaks. The twins sit with her through it, opening up about their own experiences of being underestimated. Their honesty steadies her, and Meryn stops thinking about running and starts thinking about how to use the bond to get Saela back.
Back at the barracks, the recruits are preparing for the Presentation, a ceremonial event where the new Rawbonds are put on display for the monarchy and visiting nobility. One look at Meryn’s state, and Izabel is already working out a plan to get her ready.
Chapter 15
Izabel and Venna spend the hour before Presentation transforming Meryn with borrowed finery. Mid-preparations, a recruit named Nevah warns her that King Cyril traditionally picks one Rawbond as his consort for the training period, and several women are already competing for the role.
In the arena, the direwolves are released to join their riders. Anassa arrives last, plants herself beside Meryn with obvious disdain, and refuses to bow to the monarch with the rest of the pack.
Then the Crown Prince is announced, and Meryn’s world tilts. The man stepping forward is Lee, the person she thought was a simple palace worker. The person she loves. He finds her in the crowd almost immediately, and the look on his face says he already knows exactly how this lands.
Chapter 16
Meryn holds herself together as Killian takes his place beside his father on the royal balcony. During the inspection, he slips her a note, though Stark catches it and doesn’t look pleased.
To entertain the nobility, Stark nudges the king into a demonstration. The king draws the Diren Blæd and uses it to push the direwolves telepathically, commanding them to find and kill the weakest candidate. The sword’s magic ignites a bloodlust Meryn can’t counter without a working bond with Anassa.
The pack turns on Meryn first. Anassa drives them off, and they redirect toward an injured Kryptos recruit. His own wolf joins the others in killing him before the king calls it off.
Back in her quarters, Meryn reads the note. Killian wants to meet her in the gardens at midnight. She stares at it, hollowed out, unsure what to do with the fact that the man she loves spent a year lying about who he was.
Chapter 17
Back in the dorms, a conversation with Nevah, who’s grieving a partner who was lost during the climb, shifts something small but real in how Meryn sees the people around her.
At midnight, Meryn meets Killian in the palace greenhouse. He tells her he hid the truth so she could know him without the weight of his title and that he has been using his position to search for Saela. He even offers to give up the throne. Meryn turns him down and makes herself clear. Finding her sister is all that matters right now.
On her way back, someone from the Daemos pack jumps her. Meryn cuts off her own hair to break free, then kills her attacker. Anassa briefly drops her wall and sends back a feeling of grim satisfaction. What unsettles Meryn most isn’t the killing. It’s how little she feels about it afterward.
Chapter 18
The next morning, Stark storms in demanding to know who broke the rule against lethal infighting. Meryn’s newly shorn hair gives her away. She confesses but holds her ground that it was self-defense. Stark brands her neck on the spot as a public record of the death. Venna quietly explains the ritual includes elements meant to help the skin heal.
Later, Egith runs the pack’s first riding lesson through a complex obstacle course. Everyone else moves in easy sync with their wolves. Meryn can barely stay on, and Anassa has no interest in making it easier.
Afterward, Egith tells Meryn she’s being moved to private quarters. The order came from above in response to the attempt on her life, though Egith is upfront that the isolation will likely breed more resentment. Alone in her new room, Meryn looks at the fresh tattoo on her neck. It looks uncomfortably like a collar.
Chapter 19
Meryn has Izabel and Tomison over to talk through the growing resentment from the pack. Izabel is cautious. Tomison tells her to own it and project confidence.
The next morning, Perielle confronts Meryn in the lounge and implies she earned her private room by sleeping her way into it. When she moves to strike, Meryn sidesteps it and makes herself clear. The next person who tries that walks away hurt. She also notes how much Perielle’s standing has grown since her wolf and Jonah’s were revealed to be mates, a rare pairing that carries serious prestige.
Their first lesson on wolf communication is led by Gamma Samson Whyte, who explains that the strongest psychic links are filtered ones that both rider and wolf can regulate. The session ends with a meditation exercise to practice opening and closing those pathways. Meryn gets nowhere with Anassa, but before the day is out, she sends a silent promise through the bond that she isn’t stopping until the wolf lets her in.
Chapter 20
Meryn and Henrey attend a private session with Aldrich covering pack hierarchy and wartime strategy. Meryn learns Stark is the Sovereign Alpha’s son, making him heir to the highest Bonded position. Aldrich also tells them a broken bond is almost always fatal, but mated wolf pairs can communicate across pack lines.
Something Henrey says unsettles Meryn afterward. The Nabber kidnappings tormenting Sturmfrost are unheard of in his home territory, despite it being closer to the front.
During a mounted sword drill, Anassa refuses to cooperate, and Perielle lands a punishing blow to Meryn’s ribs. Stark prods the injury in front of everyone to make a point. Meryn strikes back, but Stark is unmoved, and Anassa still won’t heal her.
Meryn returns to her quarters, battered, and finds Killian waiting.
Chapter 21
Killian treats Meryn’s wounds and, despite her initial resistance, she lets him stay. He admits he pulled strings to get her a private room, wanting to keep her safe from the increasingly cutthroat Rawbonds. The tension between them peaks when he reaffirms how much she means to him, but he respects her need for distance.
Before leaving, Killian shows Meryn a hidden corridor connecting their rooms, an open invitation with no pressure attached. He also promises that finding her missing sister remains his top priority, regardless of where things stand between them.
Realizing she’s not ready for what’s ahead, Meryn swallows her pride and asks the twins for help. They bring in Tomison, who gives a blunt, clinical breakdown of her combat flaws but backs it up with structured drills to improve her mounted stability. Venna also offers to teach her sign language to help them communicate.
By the end of the day, Meryn feels a renewed sense of purpose and begins to warm up to her peers, though Killian’s warning that the other Bonded can’t be trusted still lingers in the back of her mind.
Chapter 22
The night before the Voice Trial, Meryn is jolted awake by a nightmare where her mother appears bloodied and crowned, speaking in a voice that feels deeply wrong. She enters the next morning’s trial exhausted and on edge.
The trial is a dangerous navigational maze. Things go wrong early. Several teams crash, and at least one recruit doesn’t survive.
When Meryn’s turn comes, the mental wall between her and Anassa turns out to be thinner than usual. They don’t exactly talk, but Anassa sends her fragments, brief sensory nudges about where to go and where to land. It’s just enough to finish with the third-fastest time. Then, the moment it’s over, Anassa slams the barrier back up.
The sudden silence hits Meryn harder than she expected. She looks up at Killian in the stands, and a thought creeps in that she can’t shake. What if the distance between them isn’t coming from him?
Chapter 23
Fresh off her Voice Trial success, Meryn lets loose at a rowdy celebration and drops hints to Izabel and Venna about an old heartbreak now living somewhere in the castle. The night ends on a sour note when Stark corners Meryn with a veiled threat, making it clear that surviving this long has put a target on her back.
The next morning, Beta Egith offers no congratulations. She calls Meryn’s third-place finish a failure because relying on a wolf’s mercy isn’t the same as earning it. Egith opens up about her own commoner roots, then cuts to the point. Meryn should bond with Anassa fully, or die. That warning lands even harder during a lecture on Siphon capabilities, where Meryn realizes Anassa is her only real shot at getting Saela back.
That evening, Meryn brings Anassa an herbal peace offering on the terraces. The mental wall softens slightly, but what comes through isn’t warmth. Anassa projects pure indignation, a reminder of how Meryn has treated the bond from the start.
Chapter 24
On the terrace, Meryn finally drops her guard and lets Anassa in for the first time. The wolf lays out every rejection, every wall Meryn has thrown up, but admits that Meryn’s stubbornness is the only reason she never walked away. They reach an uneasy agreement, though Anassa makes it clear her patience isn’t endless.
The shift shows the next morning. Meryn stops trying to control everything and just moves on instinct, and the result unsettles the other recruits. She and Anassa move with a precision no one expected. Anassa even heals Meryn’s injuries without being asked, a quiet but significant sign of growing trust.
Later, Killian leaves a message with an update on the Nabbers. Meryn takes the secret corridor to reach him, but intense auditory hallucinations stop her cold. The fear that follows is familiar and crushing. She’s losing her mind, just like her mother.
A wrong turn leads Meryn to an ancient carving of a woman in a wolf-themed crown hidden in the walls. The moment she touches it, the noise in her head explodes, and everything goes dark.