He came to the gate at noon, and Aria knew him before the guard announced him.
She felt it through the bond first. Not her bond with Kael, the warm steady one, but the old dead thing in her chest that had snapped the day Damon Kane stood in the Blackmoon great hall and told her she was not enough to be his Luna. That thread had gone cold years ago. She had thought it was gone for good.
It was not gone. It twitched now, faint and sour, the way an old scar aches before rain.
"My queen." The guard was young, one of the new pack-children who had come to Ashenveil in the rebuilding. "There is an Alpha at the gate. He says he knew you. He says his name is Damon Kane."
Aria set down the cup she was holding.
Beside her, Kael went very still. He knew the name. She had told him years ago, on th
