The Dance of Shadows

The Sangue Negro training ground was a circle of packed earth and dried blood.

At its center, chaos: dozens of wolves clashing, testing the strength of their jaws and the speed of their paws.

I was the only blemish in that landscape of beasts.

"What's wrong, little wolf?" snarled Thorin, a young, arrogant Beta who loved using me as a punching bag. "Forget how to run, or are you waiting for someone to lick your wounds?"

The other wolves stopped, forming a ring.

I caught the gleam of amusement in their eyes.

To the pack, I was the morning's entertainment.

I didn't answer.

I just adjusted my stance, feeling the cutting cold of the morning and the sting of my scraped knees.

Thorin charged.

He was fast — a gray blur that intended to flatten me with the impact of his shoulder alone.

But I'd been watching him for months.

I knew he always shifted his weight to his left paw before leaping.

At the last second, I didn't retreat.

I dropped low.

I used his own momentum against him, grabbing a fistful of dirt and flinging it into his eyes as I spun aside.

Thorin stumbled on his own force, tumbling through the filth in a pathetic roll.

The silence that followed was absolute.

A failure wasn't supposed to be able to bring down a Sangue Negro wolf.

I felt a crushing weight fall over my shoulders before I even heard the sound.

I looked up at the rocky ledge surrounding the field.

Vane was there.

His hybrid form seemed to absorb what little sunlight remained.

He didn't move, but his golden eyes were locked on me — narrow and dangerous.

"Survival tricks don't replace instinct, Lyra,"* his voice vibrated in my mind, cold as a razor. "You play at being a warrior, but deep down, you're still just prey waiting for the slaughter."*

"Prey don't take down Betas, Alpha," I shot back, wiping the sweat from my forehead. "Maybe your instinct is going blind from your own pride."

The growl that echoed from the ledge made the other wolves shrink back.

Vane leaped from the outcrop, landing with lethal grace a few yards from me.

He shifted back to his human form — bare-chested, his skin rising and falling with each breath, scarred from battles I could only imagine.

He closed the distance, and the scent of oak and storm wrapped around me like a trap.

Vane seized my chin with bruising force, making me meet his gaze.

"Pride is what keeps this pack alive," he hissed, his eyes still blazing with the wolf's gold. "And your defiance is what's going to get you killed."

He released my face with a sharp jerk and brushed past me, but not before I felt something strange.

A tingling where his fingers had touched my skin.

It wasn't fear.

It was as if an electric current were trying to link our blood.

In the distance, near the tree line, I saw Mara watching me.