The Iron Veil

"I stand there for one moment longer than I need to."

Sera Voss is a Warden — a soldier trained to find Ashborn wolf people crossing the salt-and-ash border called the Ironveil and send them back. She is also, without knowing it, the reason the border exists. When her commanding officer sends her across the border on an intelligence mission, she discovers she is Veilborn — half-Ashborn, half-human, bred into the corps so that one day she will channel a rewritten treaty and give her kingdom permanent control of wolf territory.

She is not going to do that.

The Scarmark forms the moment she crosses into their territory — a bond of instinct, not choice, between her and the wolf called Reth, who said no before she did. In accordance with pack law, it cannot be dissolved without cost to both. She catches herself watching him for longer than operational assessment requires. She does not do anything about it.

Her commanding officer arrives with twenty-six soldiers and the expectation that she will open a door she was built to open. There is an ancient treaty inside the Life Grimoire — the real one, written before her kingdom's lawyers changed the terms. Equal land. Equal sovereignty. The north belongs to the Ashborn.

She knows which treaty to channel. Her commanding officer does not yet know she knows.

If she can get there first.
If she can choose herself, not the weapon they made.
If she can survive the choosing.