Novels by Souldraft

Ava’s POVOne week until Christmas Eve, and Jamie showed up with a tree strapped to the roof of a borrowed car.It wasn’t a massive one, just a modest little fir that fit snugly in the corner of the library without demanding we rearrange the furniture. She hauled it through the front door herself, pine needles scattering across the floor, her cheeks flushed from the cold and her eyes bright with that particular ferocity she got when she'd decided something was happening and heaven help whoever stood in her way.Luca opened the door for her. He looked at the tree then at Jamie. Something flickered across his usually impassive face which disappeared as soon as it came and he stepped aside without a word.She set it up in the library corner with the same efficient competence she used for display arrangements at Petals. Stepped back. Cocked her head. Found the angles. Nodded once, satisfied."Good," she declared."It's a tree," Theo said from the hallway, blinking at it."It's a Christmas

Damian’s POVCeleste called back within an hour.I didn’t hear the words because I was in the study, pretending to read…but I felt the conversation through the bond like a change in barometric pressure. Ava’s frequency shifted from steady to sharp. The call lasted forty minutes. When she walked into the study, her face had that look and something heavy had landed, and she was still figuring out where to put it.“Sit down,” I said.She sat.“The winter gathering isn’t what I thought.” She tucked her feet up under her, a habit she’d developef. “It’s not a ceremony. There’s no performance. No formal role for the Ashmoon heir to play.”“Then what is it?”“A remembering.” She looked at me, her green eyes darker than usual. “Celeste described it as the one night the elder council holds the wolf world’s memory in common. Every significant event of the year. Every loss. Every restoration. Every pack that answered the mountain sends a representative. Every elder who was alive when the Ashmoon

Ava’s POVChristmas was three weeks away.Jamie told me because she knew I hadn’t been tracking it. The weeks since the garden had blurred into each other with that thick, full quality time gets when every day carries enough weight to matter. Nothing had slid past without texture. Every sunrise had registered. Every quiet coffee on the veranda, every evening in the piano room, every Thursday morning phone call from Marcus that ended before it got awkward, all of it had stacked up into something that felt less like survival and more like living.The wolf world was still reorganizing. Formal acknowledgments kept trickling through Luca's monitoring system, pack after pack finding its footing relative to the Ashmoon claim. Some were gracious. Some were cautious. A few read like they'd been drafted through gritted teeth but they came. That was the point.Celeste called twice a week. Celeste had been in regular contact since the pack reckoning, the elder wolf taking an active interest in th

Damian’s POVThe folder landed on my desk on a Tuesday, and just stared at it. Clean white paper, Harold’s neat practiced signature at the bottom. Thirty-seven pages of legal language that boiled down to one simple thing…the contract was dead. The arrangement that had started in a high-rise office with a deadline of end of business today, the one Ava signed at her kitchen counter with shaking hands and nothing left to lose…was officially, irrevocably over.Luca set it down without a word. He didn’t need to say anything. The weight of it already filled the study.I picked up my phone and called Harold. He answered halfway through the first ring.“It arrived,” he said, before I could get a syllable out.“Yes.”“Everything’s in order. The dissolution is complete from a legal standpoint. Nothing remains of the original terms.” he paused. His voice less the corporate attorney and more the man who’d watched three generations of my family stumble and rise and stumble again. “Damian. It’s be

Ava’s POVThree days was how long it took for the wolf world to feel the shift and start rearranging itself around it. Three days of pack communication channels lighting up like circuits that had been dark for eleven years. Three days of formal acknowledgments filtering in through Luca’s monitoring with some cautious and carefully worded, some almost giddy with relief, a few carrying the unmistakable hum of wolves who’d been holding their breath and finally got to exhale.I spent most of those three days at Petals.Formal responses Damian helped me draft in the careful language of wolf governance, a two-hour call with Celeste that dug deeper into the Ashmoon history than Elena had ever been able to give me, a brief conversation with Marcus that felt like two people nodding across a battlefield, acknowledging they’d both made it through. I did those things. But in the hours between, I went back to the shop.Petals was where I’d always gone to remember the shape of myself, and it turned

Damian’s POVJamie made breakfast and I had already realized that she wakes up by six in the morning and decide that the only sane response to a supernatural standoff at three a.m. was eggs, coffee, and the stubborn normalcy of food appearing on a kitchen table. I came downstairs to the smell of butter sizzling and the sight of her at the stove, spatula in hand, looking for all the world like someone who hadn’t spent the night waiting to hear if her best friend was going to survive.Theo sat at the kitchen table with the expression of a someone who’d been awake running perimeter checks all night and had recently been told to sit down. Jamie had handed him a cup of coffee, and the combination of exhaustion and caffeine had apparently made compliance the path of resistance. He blinked at me when I walked in, gave me a nod, and went back to staring at his mug.Jamie glanced over her shoulder. “Eggs are ready”I sat.She set a plate in front of me like someone who’d been feeding people th