Novels by lisawrites25

Lyra's pov The car finally stops after what feels like hours of driving through increasingly dense forest, and when the gates swing open to let us through, all I can do is stare with my mouth hanging open like some country fool who's never seen anything grander than a wooden shack.The Greystone pack house is massive.Not just big—massive, easily five times the size of the Silverpine pack house I grew up in, all dark stone and towering windows that catch the afternoon light and throw it back like thousands of watchful eyes. The main building sprawls across what must be acres of land, with smaller buildings clustered around it and everywhere I look there are wolves moving around with an ease and freedom I've never seen in my own pack. No one looks nervous or afraid, no one is keeping their head down or hurrying to get out of sight—they just... exist, comfortably and confidently, like they belong here and know no one will question their right to that belonging.It makes something twi

Lyra's pov I wake up to the sound of footsteps, not the usual heavy, bored tread of the guard who brings water once a day and doesn't bother checking if I'm still breathing, but multiple sets of footsteps echoing down the stone corridor with purpose and urgency that makes my heart start hammering against my ribs before I'm even fully conscious. I scramble backward instinctively, pressing myself against the cold wall at the far corner of my cell, making myself as small as possible in the darkness that's been my only companion for, how long? Days? A week? I've lost track of time down here where there's no sunlight to mark the passage of hours, just endless black punctuated by brief moments of torchlight when the guard remembers I exist.The footsteps stop outside my cell and I can make out shapes through the bars—six people standing in the flickering torchlight, three of them wearing the leather and metal of pack guards and three in the formal robes that mark them as Elders. My stoma

Matthias's povI'm three pages deep into a supply requisition report that makes absolutely no sense—someone's trying to justify why they need twice the usual amount of building materials when we're not in construction season—when I feel them arrive.My wolf, Knox, stirs in the back of my mind with a growl that feels like rocks grinding together.'Elders. Multiple. The old one who smells like lies.'I don't look up from the paperwork, just make a noncommittal sound that Knox interprets correctly as 'I know, I felt them too, and I'm not happy about it either.' He's been more present lately, more vocal, ever since the nightmares started getting worse again around the three-year anniversary of the fire. Before Elise and Finn died, Knox was steady and calm, the kind of Alpha wolf who led with quiet authority instead of rage. Now he's all sharp edges and barely contained fury, grieving his mate and pup in the way wolves do—with violence simmering just beneath the surface, waiting for an ac

Lyra's pov I wake up in darkness and for a long moment I don't remember where I am or what happened, and then I try to swallow and the pain hits me like lightning, so intense I curl in on myself and make a sound that would be a scream if I could scream but nothing comes out except a horrible rasping wheeze.I'm in a cell, small and dark and smelling like old stone and despair. My mouth is bandaged with something that tastes bitter, some kind of healing poultice, but underneath it everything is raw and wrong and gone.I try to speak—just a word, just a sound, anything—but my tongue won't move the way it should and the only thing that comes out is blood and a wet clicking noise that doesn't sound human.They took it.They actually took my tongue.I curl up on the cold floor and try to cry, but even that makes my throat hurt so badly I have to stop, and so I just lie there in the dark with silent tears running down my face and blood still seeping through the bandages. The stone floor is

Lyra's pov My hands are trembling so badly I can barely hold the parchment steady enough to read from it, but I force myself to stand anyway because staying on my knees feels like I've already admitted defeat before I've even spoken. The stone floor has left my legs numb and tingling, and when I finally get upright my vision swims for a second before it clears and I can see the entire hall stretching out before me—hundreds of wolves packed into the gallery seats, all of them watching me with varying degrees of curiosity and contempt and eager anticipation like they're waiting for a show to start.And I'm the show.I clear my throat once, then again, because my mouth has gone dry and my tongue feels thick and clumsy. I've practiced this moment a hundred times in my room, speaking these words to my cracked mirror until I could say them without my voice breaking, but standing here under the weight of all these stares is nothing like practicing alone in the dark.My voice comes out stron

Lyra's pov Three weeks ago, I was invisible, or so I thought, because that's the safest way to be when you're an orphan Omega living on pack charity, which is what I've been since I was twelve years old and a rogue attack took my parents, which left me with nothing except the clothes I was wearing and a pack that took me in because Moon Law says they have to. I learned early that keeping your head down and your mouth shut is how you survive when you have no family to protect you and no status to shield you from the wolves who think being powerless means you're fair game for whatever they want to take.So I kept to myself, worked hard in the healing ward where they placed me as an apprentice, and made myself useful enough that no one questioned whether I deserved the small room above the clinic and the meals I took in the kitchen after everyone else had finished. I ground herbs and mixed poultices and learned which plants stopped bleeding and which ones brought down fevers, and I was