Years Claimed, Never Once Marked

In the healing halls, they teach you there's no such thing as poison and no such thing as cure. There is only the dose.

For five years, Rue Ashcroft was the envy of Nightfall Pack. Her mate, Damon Kestrel, the Alpha heir, gave her a grand ceremony, lilies every anniversary and a tenderness so flawless no one ever doubted it.

He never once marked her.

Then Rue finds her sister's name carved into the bracelet Damon has never taken off. Lilies were always Dahlia's favorite, not hers. And at Dahlia's banquet, Rue watches her sister claim the Chief Healer title with a wolfsbane antidote that Rue spent two years building in secret, for Damon.

So on their anniversary night, Rue takes a yacht out into a storm, releases the proof of the theft, and vanishes beneath the waves.

At the edge of the Umbral Forest, a new healer opens a cabin, trains the pups of small packs, and meets a quiet hunter who didn't come for her by accident. Because a young warrior is carried to her door rising red with the same poison that broke her husband, and Rue is about to learn that her marriage was never about love or even her sister.

She was never his wife. She was his cure.