Novels by S.D Rae

ZoeyThe bell’s echo still sat in my bones like leftover thunder. Elena’s talk of mates and pups hadn’t helped. My brain was running the hamster-wheel Olympics and the hamster was losing.Alexander had left without a defense or denial—just… gone—like a storm corked in a bottle. Embarrassment and nerves simmered under my skin until Elena, saint of good timing, nudged me into her garden.It was another world tucked inside stone—rows of herbs glowing under rune-light, beds edged with carved spirals that pulsed like quiet heartbeats. Bees drifted as if time had softened for them alone; the air smelled like rosemary, cedar, and something sweet-bitter that tasted like secrets when I breathed too deeply.“Gardens,” Elena said, brushing silvery leaves, “are the only kingdoms I still trust. They don’t lie. They only grow.”Hard to argue with truth that smelled this good.She slipped a sprig of something cool and sharp into my palm. “Courage. If it won’t answer, chew. The taste alone will distr

ZoeyThe bell’s toll faded, but it lingered in my chest like the aftershock of thunder. I kept my palm pressed to the spiral in the wall until its pulse steadied again. A soft hum, almost a reassurance: you’re still here, still in, still breathing.Kaia coaxed me into another sip of her mint-and-courage tea. Milo sprawled on the rug, whistling tunelessly. Jarek, silent and immovable, stood at the door like the world had carved him out of granite for that purpose alone.But the walls already felt restless. Nytherra itself seemed to be leaning closer, listening. Waiting.It didn’t take long.The door sigil glowed, and Alexander’s voice rumbled through: “Prepare her.”My heart slammed once. Prepare me for what?Milo bounced to his feet. “Field trip, round two.”“Not a dungeon,” Kaia murmured, slipping her hand under my elbow. “Better.”“Define better,” I muttered, but no one did.Guards gathered outside, their presence heavy as storm clouds. No chains, no ropes. Just an unspoken truth—r

ZoeyThe bell kept tolling—low, deliberate, like the palace had a heartbeat and wanted everyone to feel it.Kaia’s hand hovered near the spiral in my wall. Jarek had gone statue-still at the door. Milo’s grin dialed down to “I’m listening,” which I was learning was his version of serious.“That’s the Council bell,” Kaia said. “They’re already talking about you.”“Great,” I said. “Love being agenda item one.”Cold slipped under the threshold. Not a draft—a presence. Frost webbed out along the stone like lace deciding it was dangerous. The runes brightened, then flattened to a wary glow.Jarek’s shoulders angled, subtle but lethal. “Hold,” he said to the wall, and the spiral warmed beneath my palm, as if the den slid its weight to brace us.A second later, the sigil flared. The door didn’t open.But the temperature dropped anyway.She arrived like winter changing its mind—no squeak of hinge, no jostle of boot. One heartbeat the air was ours; the next it was threaded with snow and high-a

ZoeyI sipped what was left in Kaia’s cup—mint and something that pretended to be bravery. The tremor in my hand eased until it was just a line under the skin.“What now?” I asked.“Now you breathe,” Kaia said. “And you let the insult pass without letting it become a truth.”“On it,” I said, then added, because my mouth never misses a party, “Do we think she moisturizes with crushed icicles or just pure malice?”Milo’s grin returned, wide. “Both. Whipped together with a hint of elderberry.”Jarek’s mouth almost—almost—curved. “Rest,” he said. “We’ll rotate the watch.”I wanted to protest. To stand at the door like a second guard and glare the air into better choices. Instead I lay back, hands folded over the blanket, staring at the rune-thread that blinked like a very chill nightlight.The den dimmed a fraction. Not sleep-dark, just safe-dark.I didn’t drift so much as float—half in the room, half in the idea of the room. Voices came and went beyond the threshold—boots I recognized no

ZoeyWe found a rhythm. Milo sat on the floor and drilled the knock like a secret handshake. Jarek listened to the world with the whole line of his body. When footsteps passed—light, heavy, hesitant—he named them. “Kitchen carriers.” “Outer rotation.” “Messenger running fast.” When I guessed right, one nod—gold star.Milo tried to fix my dead phone by whistling scales at it until the screen flickered an offended gray. “See? Progress.”“It thinks you’re a flute,” I said.“It’s not wrong,” he trilled. The wall purred. My phone did not.“In Nytherra,” he added, “if you call a device a familiar, it gets ideas.”“Noted. This is not my familiar. It is a brick.”“Sturdy brick,” Jarek offered.“Tell me about you,” I blurted. “When you’re not guarding and juggling and insulting my technology?”“Gambling,” Milo said. “Stealing hearts. Occasionally bread.”“Training,” Jarek said. “Repairing what Milo breaks.”“I improve vibes,” Milo protested. “Also teach pups to howl in harmony.”“You teach the

ZoeyWaking up in someone else’s bed was never on my bucket list—especially not a bed that felt like cloud contracts and blackmail against mattress companies. Especially not with a man who looked like he could ruin me with a glance—and not in the paperback way.I surfaced to the same rune-lit ceiling, the same cool-linen air, the same steady hum of stone. And him.Alexander Veylor—Big Wolf Energy—still there. He sat in a chair carved from the wall itself, too still to be human, too contained to be safe. Those eyes—blue like bottled lightning—fixed on me the way a hawk studies a rabbit debating its life choices.I groaned and pushed upright. “You’re still here? Don’t kings have errands? Crown-polishing? Wolf PTA?”“I do,” he said evenly. “They can wait.”“Well,” I muttered, dragging the blanket up, “nothing says VIP like being babysat by a glacier wrestler.”The corner of his mouth twitched. Barely.“So.” I gathered the blanket like a shield. “Do I keep calling you Tall, Dark, and Mena

Bella’s POVThey dragged me from the cell by the chain between my cuffs, not by my arms. It was a small cruelty and an effective one—the link hauled my shoulders forward and down so I staggered, breath snatching, toes scuffing stone. The corridor widened, swallowing the torchlight into a vaulted chamber whose cold reached marrow. Smoke crawled along the ceiling in sluggish veins; damp gathered in the cracks like sweat.They fixed me to a pillar at the room’s center—a round spine of rock banded with old iron. The shackle ring was set at the height of a wolf’s shoulders, forcing my arms overhead until the sockets ached and went from fire to numb to fire again. When the guard let the chain fall, the weight of it pulled a soft clank out of the metal, a sound that seemed too small for a hall this size.Rogues crowded the perimeter like carrion birds waiting for meat to stop twitching. Their armor was a patchwork of scavenged plates, dented greaves, leather stiff with old blood. Torchlight

Bella’s POVThe panic was a live thing in my chest, sharp-clawed and desperate, raking from the inside out.I forced it down. Forced myself to breathe shallow and steady, to keep the sound of air moving in and out of me quieter than the rattling of the chains. Fear, if I let it rule me, would turn me into exactly what Lilith wanted—a trembling little human waiting to be broken.So I studied.So I listened.The dungeon had its own language if I stayed still enough to hear it.A steady drip of water echoed from somewhere far away, slow and rhythmic: one, two, three, pause, repeat. If I ever lost the thread of time, I could count by the drops. To my left, boots scuffed the stone at intervals. The guard there dragged his foot slightly on the third step each time—an old injury, maybe, or just habit. To my right, another man cleared his throat every so often, a phlegmy sound that spoke of boredom. He cracked his knuckles between stretches of silence.Two of them, then. At least two I could

Bella’s POVThe world came back in pieces.Cold first—stone biting through thin fabric, seeping into my skin like water through cracks. Then the ache in my arms, shoulders stretched cruelly above my head. My wrists burned, raw under iron shackles that clinked with every twitch.Then sound—water dripping steadily somewhere beyond sight. A chain scraping as I shifted. Breathing that wasn’t mine, low and steady, patient as a predator.When my eyes opened, darkness swam before them. Torchlight guttered in brackets along a wall, too far for warmth, only enough to sketch jagged shadows across damp stone.And in those shadows, a shape I knew too well.Lilith.She lounged in a carved chair like it was a throne, crimson silk pooling around her legs, dark hair tumbling down her shoulders. Her pale fingers toyed lazily with the hilt of a dagger resting against her thigh. Her icy-blue eyes gleamed in the firelight as her mouth curved into a smile sharp enough to bleed.“Finally awake.”I swallowe

Bella’s POVThe fog pressed thicker than usual that night, curling against the windows like smoke searching for a way inside. I sat at my desk, thread between my fingers, shawl draped across my shoulders. The small lamp threw a pale circle of light over the worn wood, but everything beyond it felt smudged and waiting.Mae had warned me to bar the shutters. I had. I’d barred the door too. Still, unease slithered under the cracks. I kept glancing at the corner where Lucian’s coat still hung from the night I’d mended it, as if the fabric itself might bristle at danger before I did.I told myself I was safe. I told myself Kael’s words were only meant to frighten me into returning. But deep down, my bones knew otherwise. The city no longer felt like mine.A sound snapped me alert.Not the groan of pipes. Not the shuffle of a drunk in the lane. A deliberate scrape, like metal dragged across stone.My breath caught.I rose quietly, candle flame trembling with me, and crossed to the window. T

Bella’s POVThe candle had burned itself into a puddle by the time I finally rose from the chair. My back ached, my eyes felt bruised from holding tears too long, and Kael’s words still circled like wolves scenting weakness: Decide soon. Because others already have.I tucked the shawl around my shoulders and stood at the window. The street outside was dark, shuttered tight, fog draping the stones like burial cloth. Somewhere beyond the wharf, gulls wheeled sleepless, their cries thin against the tide. The city was never silent, but tonight it felt watchful.And I felt caged in a place I had chosen for its freedom.By morning, routine tried to smooth me over. The café’s bell rang and Mae bustled in, setting her basket on the counter with a grunt. “Market’s gone dear again,” she muttered, pulling out a string of onions. “War’s always blamed. Never mind there hasn’t been a proper war in years.”Her words barely reached me. I tied my apron, moved to the shelves, began filling jars without

Lilith’s POVThe night was her confidante.It slipped down the mountain slopes and pooled like black wine across the valley, filling every hollow and clinging to every tree. Fog crawled with it, wrapping the world in a shroud that felt less like weather and more like waiting.Lilith Duskbane welcomed it.She always had.The road to Magnus’s stronghold wound like a serpent through the forest. Torches burned at intervals along the path, their flames choking on damp air, doing little more than sketching out how deep the shadows went. Her crimson cloak dragged over mud and leaves, the hood low, concealing the sharp line of her mouth.Behind her, a handful of loyalists followed—wolves who still bent knee to her even after Stormfang had thrown her in the dungeons for a year. They were lean and hungry now, eyes glinting, more shade than flesh. Desperation made for obedience. And obedience made for tools.At the final turn, the trees gave way to a clearing. Stone walls rose from the earth like