Braely was born the bastard daughter of her Alpha father Mahlon and a traveler, Berna, whom he'd taken in for the winter. With numerous legitimate half-siblings, Brae ought to have never needed concern herself with the pack's many alliances and feuds. When the time came for a truce between the neighboring Snake River Clan and her own Moonstone Peak, who had feuded for many years over hunting grounds in the foothills, Brae should have been far removed from such dealings. She was a yearling who enjoyed roughhousing and learning to fight with her brothers, and learning starlore from the pack's elders, and seeing her mother upon Berna's return each season. And Brae was in love, deeply infatuated with Yvaine, the Beta's beautiful daughter, with whom she spent every possible moment, making wild plans for the future, and dabbling in the physicalities of love.

Yet when the time came and Snake River's haughty prince Basile came to choose his betrothed from among Mahlon's seven daughters, he found in each of them some flaw or ugliness. It seemed that no mateship would cement the truce between the pacts--until he caught sight of Braely. Mahlon protested Basile's choice, first denying Brae's paternity, but there were those from both packs who knew her to be his bastard daughter, whom he had never before rejected. Then Mahlon protested on the basis of Brae's age, for Basile was several years her senior and Brae had more than a few half-sisters who were a closer age-match for the male. Basile only smiled wickedly, and held to his choice, citing that Braely's youth was favorable for she could care for him in the autumn of his life, and bear him that many more children.

All of Mahlon's protests went unheeded, and so it was that Brae was sent to Snake River, accompanied by a guard that was as much to keep her from fleeing as to keep her safe from harm. Basile was a power-hungry male who was persistently plotting to dethrone or kill his own father, and had a number of failed attempts to speak of; yet the Alpha Male tolerated his unsuccessful antics and even encouraged them, for he felt that when Basile was successfully able to usurp him, then the younger wolf would be deserving of the position. Inbetween times, Basile's other passion in life was to sire children that would be the fastest, the strongest, the largest, the best. His appetite for Brae seemed insatiable, but she was bitter at having been forced into mateship, and whenever she came into heat, she denied him. More than once, she made herself sick with plants from the forest; as Basile grew bolder and could not be denied despite her illness, she began to physically fight him off. She was smaller, quicker, and smarter than he, and Basile narrowly avoided castration with each attempt to get her with child.

Angry at one of her most vicious attempts to emasculate him, Basile finally cast Braely out, though not without new scars to bear and a permanently twisted left foreleg. The two-year-old attempted to return to Moonstone Peak, but found her father was exasperated and upset with her inability to cement the bond between the two packs. "Now for your refusal to open your legs, more Moonstone wolves will be injured and killed when the Snake River Clan returns to attacking us again," he snapped, and Brae found no more shelter at Moonstone Peak than a mouse in a snake's den. She tried to coax Yvaine to leave with her, but her once-love had found a mate of her own in one of Brae's half-brothers, Charl, and was herself big with a litter of new princes and princesses for the Peak. Yvaine was sorry and felt wretched, but was unwilling to desert her home and stability for lands unknown and no safe place to bear her children.

Reluctantly, Brae fled her valley birthplace and made her way to the northwest. She traded her fighting skills for food and shelter, serving in turns as soldier, guardian, or trainer of youths, depending on the needs of each pack. Some weeks in, it became evident that her attempts to foil Basile's plans for children had been unsuccessful; her belly swelled, though not as hugely as Yvaine, and Brae eventually bore a single scrawny pup. She refused to name the whelp, and gave him milk for as short a time as possible before leaving him to foster at the breast of another young mother in an alpine meadow pack called Sweetgrass. He looked far too much like his hated father, and besides, she couldn't take the boy on her travels and did not wish to remain in any one place for very long. Braely left Sweetgrass in haste, and moved quickly across the mountain range in search of a pack that was free from any squirming, squalling, unwanted puppies.