Relief coursed through the white dove like cool water down a parched throat. She inhaled Kahlan’s earthy perfume, drinking it as if it were wine, intoxicating her senses. Perhaps everything will be fine after all . . . perhaps they can pick up where they left off, as if nothing ever happened . . .

But then Kahlan spoke.

Then she said something that cracked the bridge between them like a sledgehammer.

Kira’s visage lost all expression, emotions wiped so cleanly and so abruptly they might have been slapped from her face. Indeed, the den seemed to ring with the fading vibrations of a harsh strike, the electric click of teeth or hard thump of bone against bone, a void of sound and action with pain traveling swiftly on its heels. A pain that, for Kirastasia, arrived with crushing swiftness—stabbed directly into the atrial dome of her heart. It stunned her. Horrified her. Because as quickly as she experienced this agony she was trying in vain to make it go away, to banish it to the hole in her soul where everything else leaked out, only the ache was so huge and so much that instead of being buried it snagged in her ribcage and tore everything it touched, and the snowbird was bleeding, bleeding, bleeding behind her flawless mask and her blank maple windows.

“Kah . . . I don’t understand.”

And the shock of hearing a wobble in her quiet voice was so novel and astonishing that Kira began to smile, amused by the sheer ridiculousness of her hurt. A giggle shook its way into her throat, gently bouncing her shoulders even while tears she did not conjure shimmered in her vision; she reached for one of Kahlan’s paws with one of her own, feeling the sturdy bones of the healer’s phalanges beneath her pads, wanting to anchor herself to a reality that wanted to spin away from her grasp. “Why would you say such a thing, my pretty Kah? ‘Sullied’ . . . ‘ravaged’ . . . what kind of language is that for my mature, beautiful darling?” The ice princess found herself growing breathless as her lungs hitched, vocal chords tightening with a sob or a snarl. Her claws tipped forward, digging slightly into the fur of Kahlan’s wrist. She swiveled her head side to side in a slow, admonishing arc, feeling the pain swirl inside of her like bleach—burning away her insides without numbing what it destroyed. Impossible. I’m not supposed to feel like this. KAH should feel like this. I’m in control. I am in control.

“You wouldn’t do that to me.” This declaration crept as a whisper between Kirastasia’s trembling lips . . . though she knew, she knew precisely what her ex-lover meant, and she knew EXACTLY whom her ex-lover meant. And now a thick worm of revulsion coiled itself in the dissolved acid pool of her guts so that her incredulous smile stretched into a bitter grin, teeth clenched as if to hold back vomit, the shudders in her frame coming more violently with each breath she struggled to inhale. The tears perched in her lanterns finally fell. They singed tracks down her face. “My father, Kahlan? My bastard carcass-fucking father?”

The pallid punkette shrieked the last word, springing up on her paws as tall as the cramped den would allow, every inch of her mud-spattered pelt bristled with wounded fury. “I loved you! I loved you so hard, and you—you—” A wordless animal growl shredded past her daggers. It was one thing to learn that your favorite toy had been played with without your explicit permission—but it was quite another to discover your toy had been TAINTED by one of the wolves you loathed the most. Her sire might as well have pissed in her den. Stolen her food right from under her nose. Fucked Kahlan in front of her. “What did I do wrong?” Kirastasia demanded, weeping uncontrollably and screeching like a thing possessed. “Why don’t you love me anymore? Why doesn’t anyone love me?!”