The wolf court ended Wren Ashford's bloodline two generations ago. They missed one. When the new Alpha of the northern pack claims her as tribute, she goes expecting a collar - and gets a locked room only she has a key to. Rurik Halloran doesn't touch her, doesn't name her, doesn't explain. He needs her blood to hold a pack that's already fraying, and she needs his archives to prove her family was framed for the murder that started a war. They strike a bargain and keep striking them, one favor at a time, until the mate bond neither of them asked for gets named out loud. The councilor who framed her grandmother is still in the pack. The winter moot is coming. And the only way out for both of them is going to cost one of them the pack.

Elspeth Roslin has one thing her betrothed wants: her father's ledgers, and the proof in them that he has been robbing his own tenants blind. She rides into the glen with them strapped under her skirts and no idea that the road belongs to an outlaw. Caelan MacRae was raised to a chieftain's seat and thrown off it. He runs the glen now with thirty riders and a grudge, and when a lowland bride turns up on his road talking about ledgers, he decides she is either useful or lying. Possibly both. He keeps her close. She keeps her reasons. By the time the laird rides in with forty men and a warrant, Elspeth has already chosen which side of that fire she is standing on - and it is not the side that pays.