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him more. I didn't know what to do. Shae would have, had she been here, but I wasn't Shae and I didn't have the answers. My hair, short and blonde, fell into my eyes to brush against the floor. I was momentarily distracted by how brittle it was, how frail the dull yellow strands were, before I felt the floor below my fingertips vibrate as he stepped forward, his heavy boots carrying him toward me. I held still, knowing that if I shrank away when he was this close and could see me doing so that it would mean trouble for me. And my back had only just finished healing from my last punishment when I'd washed a dry clean-only dress belonging to one of the girls in the pack.
    But I also didn't just want to sit there, to welcome his touch even while I secretly reviled it. But inaction was the same as allowing it. Or so I'd always thought. I didn't want him that close to me, and the thought of being touched by him made me want to spill what little breakfast I'd been able to manage up until then onto the floor. It was hard enough being in the same room, the same house, as him, and having him this close was nearly unbearable.
    His smell, his touch; they brought back memories that I didn't want to remember. Things I'd been trying to block away since I was a child. But they were too many to count, and his proximity made them come close to the surface, back to where they could be seen again, to be relived in a way I never wanted to again. I'd barely survived them once—I couldn't do it again. I didn't have the strength to weather them a second time around. There was a distant rumble in the back of my mind, something wanting to be remembered but too long ignored and forgotten to bring back so easily. My nightmare memories took energy and time I didn't have to spare, and so I fought them even as I saw him reach toward me, his old, withered fingertips like claws coming at me.
    His rough, calloused fingers landed on the back of my neck, just below the line of my short hair, and my breath caught in that moment between life and what could certainly be a quick death, if that was what my alpha wanted from me. His fingers tightened on the fine hairs at my nape, and I closed my eyes, squinting against the fear, the pain, and everything I imagined death to be. I only wished that my son wasn't in the same room to see his mother die. No child should ever have to see such a thing, and I wondered who would raise him in my absence. But in the silence of the room, where the only one daring to breathe was myself, I knew the answer well enough—his father. I didn't want to die, but I knew that I had welcomed death's sweet release at times, many of them spent in my alpha's bed. I hadn’t thought about death so much since Gavin's birth, but I remembered those dark moments clearly, and the scars on my arms bore witness to what I'd been thinking at those times.
    "You'll tell me this dream, seer," he told me, no trace of comfort in his words or tone. Someone put Gavin down on the floor near me, and tears filled my eyes as I met his wide, frightened gaze. I didn't want to tell him, but I wouldn't look in my son's eyes and wish for death either. And so I complied, giving into my alpha's commands and the momentary peace that came from obeying him.
    "The pack was dead," I whispered, closing my eyes to remember the details though I wished I hadn't. He would want to know them though. He always did. "There was fire and death. Screams all around me. And so much blood. There was pain too. I don't think I was hurt, but others were."
    There were whispers and frightened murmurs. I closed my eyes against them. There would be more questions for me, there always were, but that was enough for now.

Chapter Four
    Shae
    It was nearly sunset when the farmer came into the barn to find me. The wind had picked up along with the storm, coating everything outside in another thick layer of the icy stuff. The horses had started coming in, though their loud snorts told me that they