At her wedding in the werewolf kingdom of Valmere, Mara Vale is framed for infidelity on her wedding night while Prince Rowan dotes on her sister Celeste, his mistress. She collapses—and awakens inhabited by a modern scientist who has read her story. The new Mara stops begging for belief, using her knowledge to reinvent alchemy and rune-craft, building a small business into leverage for independence and divorce. Exiled to a forest lodge, she saves Lucian, the Northern black-wolf commander, a man who respects her gifts and hears her refusals; she chooses freedom before love. Back at court, she ends her marriage and reconciles with her father. As Celeste's conspiracies unravel—treason, stolen military grain, a stolen child's lineage—the truth of the wedding-night frame-up emerges. Rowan takes a silver-poisoned arrow for her, but sacrifice cannot buy back her love. Mara saves him, says goodbye, and rides north with Lucian, her future hers alone to decide.
