Novels by S.D Rae

Bella’s POVBy the time I escaped the Moonstone sanctuary, I could still feel the mark burning beneath my sleeve.Not painfully. That would have been easier. Pain was familiar enough to ignore, but this was a steady warmth that seemed determined to remind me of what had happened every time I moved my wrist.Chosen by the goddess.The words had followed me all the way down the mountain, carried in the whispers of elders and warriors who had spent months questioning whether a human belonged beside their Alpha. Some had bowed when I passed. Others simply stared, their faces caught somewhere between wonder and disbelief, as if I might suddenly grow claws and make the whole thing easier for them to understand.I wanted none of it tonight

Lucian’s POVBy dawn, three warriors were still fighting for their lives, and Kael was one of them. I stood outside the healers’ chamber with blood drying beneath my nails, listening to Mara issue clipped orders behind the closed door while bowls scraped, glass clinked, and Kael fought for every breath as though his own body had turned against him. The poison had spread quickly, dark veins crawling beneath his skin before Mara forced enough antidote into him to slow its progress.Slow it.Not stop it.Bella stood farther down the corridor in a dark cloak thrown over the clothes she had slept in, her hair loose around her shoulders and exhaustion shadowing her eyes. She had ignored every attempt to send her back to her room, which I understood because I had ignored the same orders.

Lilith’s POVBy the time word reached me that Stormfang had uncovered one of the traitors inside its council, I was already standing beneath the pines beyond the northern ridge.So Varick had finally been caught.I stared through the mist at the fortress carved into the mountain, its watchtowers glowing beneath scattered torchlight. From this distance, Stormfang looked almost peaceful. Repairs had begun along the damaged walls, wolves moved in pairs along the battlements, and somewhere behind all that black stone, Lucian was probably turning Varick’s betrayal inside out until every secret fell from him.Finding one traitor had a way of making people believe they had found the only one.Cold wind slipped beneath my cloak as two patrol w

Bella’s POVLucian did not wake when we carried him back through Stormfang’s gates. I walked beside the stretcher with blood dried between my fingers and more soaked into the front of my dress, most of it his. That fact followed me through the entire ride home no matter how hard I tried to focus on the wounded warriors around us, the exhausted horses, or the wolves limping behind the column. The dagger was still buried beneath his ribs, exactly where Lilith had driven it.Mara had sent instructions the moment Tomas dispatched a rider ahead: do not remove the blade, keep pressure around the wound, keep Lucian warm, and for the love of the goddess, stop letting the Alpha collect knives in his body. The last part sounded suspiciously like Mara rather than medical advice. I agreed with it wholeheartedly.“Move!” Tomas

Bella’s POVBy midday, everyone in Stormfang knew the poison had been meant for me.I discovered that before anyone bothered to tell me the news had spread. The healers had finally forced me out of Lucian’s chamber so he could sleep, and I had crossed barely half the lower courtyard when conversation began dying around me. Wolves who had once stared openly suddenly found fascinating things to examine—their boots, the walls, the baskets in their hands—while others watched me with an intensity that made the back of my neck prickle.The strangest part was that not all of those looks held hatred anymore. An older warrior near the armory bowed his head when I passed, his fist touching his chest in the traditional Stormfang salute. A woman carrying folded linen did the same, followed awkwardly by the young girl beside h

Bella’s POVBy evening, Stormfang had begun locking itself against its own people.The surviving raider had been moved somewhere beneath the council wing, and Kael had doubled the guards at every entrance before ordering the drainage passage sealed. No one was allowed beyond the inner grounds without permission. Servants who had worked near the nursery were being questioned, warriors were checking storerooms and tunnels, and every familiar face seemed to be studying the next with new suspicion.I hated what it did to the packhouse. Stormfang had never felt like home to me, but I had never seen its wolves afraid of one another.I escaped to Lucian’s chamber partly because it was quieter there and partly because Mara had cornered me in the corridor and informed me that her patient w

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 now

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