Prologue: The World Before

Aldrath is an old world — older than anyone living in it can remember. It has shifter clans in the hundreds, each with an alpha, each with a territory, each with borders that are really just politics with better manners. In the free towns at the crossroads, wolves and great cats and bears share tables and trade gossip. Tonight the talk is about Aldric of Ashfang — the steadiest alpha on the northern borders for thirty years — and what happens when his seat goes empty. His heir is ready. Everyone who has dealt with her says so. The question is what comes at her the moment the seat is empty. Aldrath had been turning for a very long time. It did not know it was about to be seen from somewhere else entirely.