Dire Bound

Meryn's sister vanishes while she stands just outside

Meryn Cooper earns her keep in underground fighting pits in Sturmfrost's slums, funding her mentally ill mother's medicine with each bruised victory.

Meryn's sister vanishes while she stands just outside

Meryn Cooper earns her keep in underground fighting pits in Sturmfrost's slums, funding her mentally ill mother's medicine with each bruised victory. Her boyfriend Lee tends her wounds afterward, her neighbor Igor trains her, and her ten-year-old sister Saela is the quiet center of everything. When news spreads that another child has been snatched by the mysterious Nabbers—kidnappers believed to serve the blood-drinking Siphons across the border—Meryn races home in terror. The victim is Saela's classmate, not Saela. But the reprieve is brief. Days later, after kissing Lee goodnight steps from her front door, Meryn returns to find Saela's window wrenched open, a scrap of nightgown snagged on the frame, and her sister's bed cold and empty. The Nabbers have taken the one person Meryn cannot lose.

Enlisting means facing the deadly Bonding Trials first

After days of catatonic grief, Meryn drags herself to the army recruitment center and volunteers for the front lines, believing the Nabbers carry children across the border to Siphon territory. Lee, horrified, reveals a secret he learned as a palace messenger: Bonding Trials are imminent, and every new recruit must attempt the lethal climb up Mount Wolfsbane to bond with a direwolf. He cannot stop her, so he equips her instead—new boots, crampons, a leather jacket lined with fur—spending more money in an afternoon than Meryn has seen in a year. Their farewell tastes like goodbye. Meryn makes her rounds: the women at the laundry, Igor in his yard. Her mother offers an ancient opal necklace, a family heirloom, but Meryn insists she keep it safe until her return.

A thousand recruits climb; hundreds fall to their deaths

At the base of Mount Wolfsbane, Stark Therion—the terrifying Alpha of the Daemos pack, covered in kill tattoos—announces that the first recruits to the top will bond with direwolves. Those who refuse to climb will be hunted. Meryn rescues Izabel, a twin from a Bonded family, from being strangled by a vicious recruit named Jonah. Izabel and her sister Venna repay the debt by guiding Meryn up the treacherous ice face, teaching her techniques commoner recruits were never given. Bodies fall past them the entire climb—broken on rocks, shredded by ice. A group tries to steal their gear; all three attackers tumble off the mountain. Near the summit, Jonah ambushes Meryn again. She fights him off in a blinding storm, uncertain whether he survived the fall.