Novels by Leela Wrights

***THIRD POV***The grandfather clock in the corner of the study ticked loudly. It was past midnight yet here they were.King Aldric stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, his back to his sons. Even with silver threading his dark hair, his silhouette remained imposing, a mountain of hard-won muscle and unyielding authority.Behind him, Kaelan and Lucian stood like twin pillars of stone, almost identical in height and build, yet completely polarized in their energy.Kaelan had his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He kept his gaze fixed on the map of the territory spread across the desk, though his mind was miles away, tracking a different kind of boundary altogether.Lucian leaned against the bookshelf in the darkest corner of the room. He looked entirely detached, head tilted back, eyes half-closed as if bored.Kaelan knew. He could feel the high-voltage tension radiating off Lucian’s skin, an agitation that mirrored his own.The mate bond they shared — the one they were currently

I was not looking at anything in particular.My eyes were open, fixed on the cold, soot-stained hearth of the fireplace, but my mind was miles away.I did not hear the first knock. I did not hear the heavy iron latch lift, or the soft creak of the oak door pivoting on its hinges."Ophelia."My lips stayed still."My lady."I blinked, and the blurred lines of the cold stone fireplace snapped back into sharp focus.Gertha stood a few feet away, her hands clasped tightly in front of her apron. She was watching me with a look that hovered dangerously close to pity."You were somewhere else," she said softly, her voice barely carrying over the draft whistling through the window pane."I was.""You have a visitor," she informed, her eyes darting toward the door. "Elder Maris."I looked down at my hands. The rough, dark stone Elara had given me was still pressed against my palm. It was warm -unnaturally so - retaining a steady, pulse-like heat that felt like a quiet heart beating against my s

***THIRD POV***The blade caught the lantern light as he turned it over in his hands.Kaelan sat on the steps leading up to the palace's Southern gate, his sword resting across his thighs, his back against the iron railing. The night air was clean, carrying the scent of frost. He had been sitting here for hours, watching the shadows stretch and shrink across the courtyard, thinking.Lucian had always been the one their father looked at first. The one who was measured, who was dutiful, who was found acceptable before Kaelan ever opened his mouth.He remembered standing in the doorway of their father's study, watching Lucian recite the names of the old kings, watching their father nod with approval.He had never gotten that nod. Not once in all his years.He remembered the day their father took them to the border for the first time. They had been twelve. Their father had pointed to the treeline and asked what they saw. Lucian had answered immediately, his voice clear and certain: "The n

She had my face. My hair. My eyes. But something in her expression was different.I touched my cheek. The girl in the glass touched hers too.I had kissed Kaelan. I had let him hold me. I had let him almost mark me. And the craziest part, I had not pulled away.I looked at my neck. The skin was still whole. No mark. No claim. Yet I could still feel the ghost of his teeth grazing my throat, the heat of his breath against my skin. I pressed my fingers to the spot and held them there. The memory of his mouth on my skin lingered like a brand I could not see yet could not forget.I thought about Lucian then, and I hated it, but he always hovered in the back of my mind no matter how hard I tried to block him out.I turned away from the mirror; the scroll from the Council still lay on the table. I had read it over and over again. The full moon. A few nights. The GreeveWood. You will enter the forest at dusk. You will emerge at dawn on the third day, or you will not emerge at all.I did not w

The moment felt like it might shatter if either of us breathed too hard.His hands were still on my face, his palms rough against my cheeks. His amber eyes held mine, and in them I saw something I had not expected. Hunger. Possession.But my mind was not entirely on him in this moment. My mind was on the other brother. The one who looked at me like I was a literally mistake in flesh."What if Lucian does not accept it?" I asked.A muscle flickered in Kaelan's jaw. However, his hands remained on my face."Then he is a dumb fuck," he said.I laughed. The first real laughter that had left my lips in days. "He is your brother, Kaelan.""I know." There was a slight undertone of exhaustion in his voice. "We are not the same person. We are twins, yes. But we are still two separate beings with the ability to make different choices... And I have made mine."I stepped closer. I did not know why. I only knew that the space between us felt wrong. Too much air.He looked down at me. His eyes had go

I found Kaelan in the training yard, just as he had promised. He stood with a sword in each hand, waiting."You're late," he said when I came into view."I'm here, aren't I?"He tossed me a sword. I caught it. The grip was familiar now. I had held it enough times that my fingers remembered the shape of it."Show me what you remember," he said.I swung. The blade cut through the air in a clean motion. He nodded once."Better. Again."I swung again. I focused on the motion. The way the blade moved through the air. I tried to empty my mind.But my mind was not in the yard. My mind was in the Council chamber. My mind dwelled on the unanswered question. The way they had looked at me like I was already dead.I swung again. The blade was off.Kaelan stepped forward. "Stop."I lowered the sword. He walked toward me, his eyes searching my face."Your form is off," he said. "Your mind is somewhere else."My lips stayed shut."What is wrong with you?"I looked down at the sword in my hands. The

Six guards formed the phalanx, three ahead and three behind, their shoulders broad as wood trunks.They kept a meticulous distance for obvious reasons.I kept my chin level, my eyes fixed on the center of the lead guard’s neck-guard. Beside me, Naya’s fingers were tucked into the rough fold of my skirt.The corridor grew wider, the air changing its flavor with every ten paces we took.We were leaving the western tunnels behind, ascending the grand central stair. Down below, the air had tasted of turnips and lard. Here, it was thick with the suffocating sweetness of imported cloves, beeswax, and the sharp, resinous tang of polished oil.The transition was beautiful. The rough-hewn granite walls gave way to smooth blocks of white marble, fitted together so tightly that not even a pine needle could be driven between the joints.High above our heads, the rafters were hidden behind gold-threaded tapestries that unspooled the ancient history of the Blood Moon line: great white wolves with ey

Naya did not flinch. She stood like a small stone statue, her eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at the weapon in the Head Elder's hand.The heavy wool of her dark tunic, stripped of any royal pretense, felt stiff under my palm. I kept my hand pressed firmly against her shoulder, absorbing the slight, rapid flutter of her heartbeat.'Don't look at Zarek,' I told myself, locking my jaw until the bone ached. Do not look at him.But my gaze betrayed me. My eyes drifted up to the dais, finding Zarek.The Alpha of the Blood Moon was half-risen from his throne, his massive shoulders tense under his dark commander's coat. His knuckles were stark white where they gripped the carved armrests.He was waiting. He was waiting for me to break and look at him with a mother's desperation so he could step down and play the savior. He wanted us indebted to him. He wanted to bind us to his throne with the chains of gratitude.I tore my eyes away, focusing on the withered, ancient hand of the He

The pale dawn did not break the cold inside the Blood Moon palace; it merely turned the shadows a sterile grey.In the center of the guest chamber, my fingers worked the small hooks along the front of Naya’s dark wool tunic.The fabric was coarse, stripped of any royal pretense, but I had meticulously brushed every stray speck from it before the guards arrived.We were not entering that chamber as beggars looking for crumbs, nor as petitioners pleading for a place at a table that had already rejected us."Will it take long?" Naya murmured, her small face completely unreadable as she looked down at her own boots. "The trial.""No," I replied. "It will be over quickly. And when we are finished, we will go back to the room and have hot broth. Just you and me.""With the bread from yesterday?" she asked, her eyes lifting to mine."With the bread from yesterday," I promised, offering her a faint smile that felt foreign on my face. "But for now, you must remember what we practiced. You look

For a long time, I had imagined this confrontation, rehearsing lines of venom and indifference in the quiet hours of the dead zone, wondering if the sight of him would make my wolf howl with the agony of the rejection or tear itself apart for a second chance.Instead, looking at him now, I felt an icy clarity."You look at me as if I am the one who poisoned him," Zarek said. "Theron was the closest thing I had to a father after the winter wars, Rya. If I thought for a fraction of a second that his death was orchestrated within these walls—""You would what?" I interrupted, cutting through his rising Alpha authority without a single tremor. "Deploy the guards? Hold an inquiry? You did not even notice when your own mate was hunted out of your territory by the omegas you command. Do not play the vigilant protector now. It doesn't suit the color of your coat."Zarek’s jaw tightened, a sharp pulse jumping at the base of his throat. He took a step forward.The scent of him surged over me, th

The quiet inside the study did not just deepen; it pulled the remaining warmth straight out of the air.On the terrace, my palms remained pressed flat against the stone rail. I did not move. I simply listened to the sudden, uneven hitch in Zarek’s chest - the distinct sound of an Alpha completely stripped of his royal armor by a single question from a seven-year-old child.When Zarek finally spoke, the roughness in his voice surprised me. It was ungrounded. Raw."I made a mistake, Naya," he said quietly."Grandfather said dropping a porcelain plate is a mistake," Naya replied, her voice holding that flat, factual, completely unbothered rhythm she had learned from Theron. "Leaving people in the freezing woods is a choice. Why did you choose it?""I was blind," he murmured, and the admission sounded like it had been dragged from his throat. "I listened to council advisors who cared far more for bloodlines and territory distribution than the truth. I believed things that were systematica

I felt him as a change in the room - the way the sea pulls back before a wave, gathering itself.Yet, I stayed rooted to my spot, my hands remained on the cold stone of the terrace rail, my eyes on the mountains that had stood here long before the first wolf built the first hall, that would stand here long after the last wolf was dust.His footsteps crossed the stone behind me. I braced for his voice - my name, a command, the cold formality of his.He gave me none of it. The footsteps passed behind me and kept going, toward the hearth, toward the chair where Naya sat with her feet dangling far above the floor.The leather of his tunic creaked. He was kneeling. I had heard that sound before, in the cottage, when he first met her and did not know what to do with his hands - this man who had commanded armies and broken alliances and thrown me away like a thing of no value, brought to his knees by a child."Naya."His voice came out differently than I had ever heard it. This was something