This chapter arrives Friday. Until then, a taste of what is coming:

The knock comes at midnight, and Wrenna must decide whether it is terror or invitation. She opens the door on her own terms — negotiating what the Wolf may do inside her cottage, inside her body, inside the life the village mapped out for her — and the first full surrender happens in firelight and lamplight, with the red cloak spread under them and the chapel bells far away.

But Kael reveals the older rule of the Blackpine: a wolf who is let in once will come whenever she calls. And a huntsman who finds wolf tracks at a woman's door will call it corruption. The chapter ends with Tomas Beck's lantern moving through the trees, Kael gone from her bed, and one black claw-mark left on her windowsill.