"We're wolves! You're my father, you're the Beta, you aren't going to do anything? You aren't going to make Alpha Jermain fight?"

My father shook his head. "Gianna, there's a great deal you don't know, that we've kept from you."

"I know we're wolves. That means we don't let other wolves take what's ours without a fight. I'm an Oracle, and I'm telling a warrior this?" Shadowless wasn't a tiny pack. We were a large pack, a strong pack, and we didn't tuck our tails because another Alpha growled at us.

"Mind your mouth, Gianna," he snapped.

His authority as First Beta meant nothing now. He was a warrior who wouldn't fight. He was a male who'd tuck his tail and cower, and worse, he'd let his Alpha cower. This brief exchange dissolved all his power and prestige over me. He should have been growling a challenge at his Alpha. Instead he turned his snarl on me.

Alpha Gabel of IronMoon. Angry or not, the name still sent cold shivers through me.

Three years ago the IronMoon had been a small pack living in the cold, northern forests. Nothing but a bunch of punks who fought amongst themselves and usually killed each other before they hurt anyone else. Then Alpha Gabel had appeared. He trained his warriors to be brutal and fierce. Under his leadership IronMoon had consumed all the small packs in the region, then moved on to bigger and bigger prey.

He didn't kill the packs he conquered.

The IronMoon tortured their victims.

The IronMoon broke their victims.

But Alpha Gabel made it easy to avoid his wrath, and the inevitable indignity of begging for mercy. Surrender, swear allegiance, and pay annual tribute to the IronMoon. That was all he seemed to want, and he otherwise left his liege-packs to rule themselves and manage their own affairs. It wasn't such a bad deal if you could get past being leashed like a dog.

Now the weakest packs surrendered before Gabel got around to menacing them. Shadowless had become one of those packs. There would be no fight. Alpha Jermain of Shadowless would surrender to Alpha Gabel of IronMoon without so much as a growl.

Gabel had never explained why he collected packs like hunters collected trophies. The rumor was he intended to crown himself King Alpha. In public people scoffed at the idea, and Gabel didn't do much to support the rumors. He didn't maintain any kind of court, he didn't dissolve and annex the packs he conquered, he didn't even style himself as Lord-Alpha. His IronMoon stormed out of their heart in the north like locusts every few weeks, swept over their target, Gabel got his promise of tribute, and they went home. Not very much the conquering monarch.

The last of the King-Alphas had killed themselves off five hundred years earlier. The war had shattered our culture and almost extinguished our species. The kings had died, their kingdoms had fallen, and werewolves had moved on. Monarchies were dead in the modern, human-dominated world.

King-Alpha ambitions or just collecting packs to be a herd of milk-cows, Gabel's IronMoon had graduated to devouring packs Shadowless' size in the past year. He had already taken GleamingFang to our south and MarchMoon to our east. A fight with IronMoon had been inevitable.

At least that's what I had thought until this evening.

"Gianna." My father tried to take a stern tone with me. "This is how it's going to be. You don't know as much as you think you do."

"I am not a child," I snapped. "I stopped being a child four years ago." Other twenty yearold females struggled for respect and position within a pack and were excluded from much of the pack's management, but I was a Seer: a female wolf blessed with visions and whispers from the Moon. I had finished my training at sixteen and graduated to adulthood as an Oracle. Shadowless' concerns and business weren't much of a mystery to me, no matter how hard my father tried to keep me in the dark. No one expects Oracles to be courageous in the face of battle. We aren't warriors. But weak, timid Oracles are get lost on the Tides, drown in the Moon's Eye, go insane from the whispers and visions. I also came from a long line of warriors, and courage had been bred into my bones. I couldn't accept Alpha Jermain kneeling in front of Alpha Gabel unless—and until—Gabel ripped out his hamstrings.

Before a fight my father was all jumping muscle and fire, barking orders at the pack. Now he sighed, and all the fight and strength fled from him. "I'm sorry, Gianna."

"Don't be sorry, just fight him. If Shadowless doesn't fight, it'll just embolden him! We have a responsibility! Even GleamingFang and MarchMoon fought him!" The MarchMoon had fought until Gabel's forces had eviscerated most of their warriors. The GleamingFang had fought, but with a little less gusto after seeing how MarchMoon had fared, and Alpha Anders had not tried to hold out.

Anders was sort of gutless. He was more politician than warrior. But even he had fought!

"Gabel has sent his demands. He'll be here in the morning. He wants all the young, unmated she-wolves presented—"

I gasped.

"Gabel is unmated. He's been doing this with all the other packs. It's part of our deal with him."

"Part of the deal!" I exclaimed. "You're trading in females now?"

He kept talking like he didn't hear me. "Gia, he didn't ask about you. He's interested in Amber. I hope you can understand this is for the good of the pack."

The good of the pack! No, I didn't understand. We didn't just let other wolves take what was ours without a fight, especially not our packmates and kin. We didn't just line up females for perusal because another Alpha demanded it.

Not a single growl or drop of blood before surrender. Tears welled up as the betrayal sank into me. "We aren't worth fighting for? You aren't even going to make him pay a drop of blood for us?"

He gripped my arm. "Gianna, listen to me. This is the deal we have. You don't know everything. Jermain hasn't told you everything. We've seen how fighting IronMoon has gone for GleamingFang, MarchMoon, and the others. They end up broken and bloody. It doesn't work. We have to be smarter."

"Smarter sounds a lot like cowardice," I spat. "What are you going to do if he chooses one of us?"

"I don't think he will, and if he does," a long pause, "casualties are inevitable."

The one for the many... So instead of asking the warriors to bleed, the pack would surrender. Gabel would waltz in, humiliate us all, and then we'd go back to our normal lives trying to pretend it hadn't happened.

"If you're going to trade a female, offer me to him as an Oracle. The IronMoon doesn't have one. Don't line up everyone else to be humiliated by him," I said.

"That's not what he wants. Be ready at ten, Gianna."

This was what Gabel did to those who even considered opposing him.

He destroyed them on promise alone.

* * * * *

Romero shifted, sniffing the air drifting from the house five miles in the distance. He waited on a small hill just level with the treeline. The hill provided a clear vantage of the house, brightly illuminated by the swelling moon overhead, and the lights framing each of the doors. How nice of the Shadowless to make it easy to find the points of entry. "They do not even realize we are here."

"They do," Alpha Gabel answered, "but Jermain has already agreed to greet me on his knees."

Romero growled deep in his throat. "We should kill him for that alone."

"No. Surrender is surrender. If they show us their throats and swear fealty, the matter is concluded."

"Without bloodshed?" Romero snarled. "There is no honor in that. There is no honor in becoming King without conquest."

Gabel snarled back, the moon reflecting off the dilated pupils that nearly engulfed his ocean-blue eyes. Only a faint ring of blue remained, as if the Moon Herself clutched the blackness to constrain it.

Romero growled to himself and backed up a step, head bowed to his left shoulder. "You temper yourself. We used to descend onto these miserable packs like Hounds and tear into them, and the stink of fear and blood and death until they wailed for surrender, but now! Now it is politics and phone calls."

Gabel ran his tongue over his front teeth as the blackness twinged in his blood and the teeth sharpened a touch. He poked one then the other until his tongue bled just a drop. Romero was right. He had not had to sink his claws into more than the occasional defiant IronMoon recruit for a while now. Packs dropped to their knees when he glanced their way. Their pathetic warriors, fat and happy and fed a diet of easy prestige and good manners, dissolved like cotton candy on the tongue.

Cotton candy. Spun sugar. Such a strange thing. Not nearly as magical as it looked. Disappointing in every possible way.

"Let's make them bleed," Romero urged.

The other warriors didn't dare speak but shifted to show their approval.

Gabel rubbed the dents on his tongue, driving one a little deeper on the hungry tip of his elongated tooth. "No. That is not the agreement."

"Bah!" Romero threw up his hands. "We are warriors. We fight. We hunger for death and blood."

"Then you will remain hungry a while longer." Gabel flexed his left hand. The wind shifted directions. He inhaled, and his senses focused, sharp and perked. "Females."

"No shit. That's what you ordered," Romero said sourly.

"And you don't think it will gall them to have to line up their women for me to inspect? You are a fine warrior, Romero, but you still don't grasp that the most violent attacks are against the soul. That is pain. It is disgusting that they would surrender their women without so much as a drop of blood shed."

"And you won't demand they do so?"

"Why should I? They can live with the dishonor and shame. It will hurt that much more." He inhaled again.

"So that's why you do this?"

"I don't have any use for a mate right now," Gabel said. "One day I will. One day I will need heirs. But for now it terrifies the packs to think what I might do to one of their beloved daughters."

He inhaled again and walked forward a few steps, senses straining. There were two scents that played over his nerves and down the veins of his neck, strummed his spinal cord inside its bone armor. Like the scent of blood it excited his instincts, ignited his nerves, made his lips curl back over his teeth. The scent. He had caught those scents before. They all varied, but each one carried the same shock, more or less. The scent of a potential mate, a female with a soul compatible with his own.

Now there were two lure-scents at Shadowless. One reminded him of pine needles and autumn, the other of the Moon, and under that, something fainter and more exotic: the night-blooming cereus, a flower that bloomed for a single night once a year

The Moon sailed overhead, silent, observing. He had never smelled the Moon before, never really thought of the Moon as having a scent, but he could smell the Moon on the wind. It was faint, weaker than the one of pine and autumn, which was richer, stronger. How intriguing.

And distracting.

The wind shifted, this time blowing toward the house.

"But you never choose one. There are other things we could do that are less... permanent. For us," Romero said.

Gabel focused on him. "No. No rape, Second Beta."

"That would put terror in them."

"A female is no match for any of us. There is no good use in defiling a female, just like there's no purpose in killing pups. It breeds needless hatred."

Romero grumbled. Gabel ignored him. The Second Beta was violent and depraved, and left to his own devices, would have devolved into a hulking, stupid monstrosity who couldn't see beyond the end of his claws. Skin got numb after it was hit often enough. Pain was an art. Fear was an art. Cruelty was an art. Pushing a wolf beyond caring was failure. Once they stopped caring, and either died inside, or rebelled since no fate was worse than the one they currently endured, was when control was lost. It all had to be just within the limits of endurance. Just enough to keep them disarmed. Just enough to keep them focused on the glimmer of light. Pain without the promise of relief was pointless. A battle without the risk of loss was nothing.

Which was exactly why Romero was, and would remain, Second Beta. Just a cudgel. First Beta Hix had better understanding.

The scent from the house teased Gabel again. The Moon's scent had changed, carrying with it fear and anticipation and resolve.

The one who smelled like night-blooming cereus had smelled him.

She knew he was coming.

Gabel grinned.