Novels by Leela Wrights

The silver light faded slowly, like dawn creeping over a dark horizon. The warmth remained, settled deep in my chest, a steady pulse that matched the rhythm of my heart. I looked down at my hands. The glow was gone, but I could still feel it, coiled beneath my skin like something alive. Something that had been sleeping for a very long time.Maris was watching me. Her grey eyes were wet, but her face was composed. She had been waiting for this moment for years, I realized. She had been carrying this secret, this burden, and she had been waiting for me to be ready to carry it too."How do you feel?" she asked.I did not know how to answer. I felt the same. I felt different. I felt like I had been walking through a fog my entire life, and now it had lifted, and I could see the world clearly for the first time. I could see the threads that connected everything, the old blood that ran through me, t

The night was cold and still when Maris came to my room.I had not been sleeping. I had been sitting by the window, the stone cold in my palm, the leather pouch heavy in my pocket. The moon was full, pale and watchful, casting silver light across the courtyard below. I had been thinking about the watchers. The ones who had been reporting on me since the day I arrived. The ones who would come for me when the full moon rose. I had been thinking about Gertha's face, the way her hands had shaken, the way her voice had cracked when she said she did not know. I had been thinking about her husband, the hollow man who had been watching me from the shadows, feeding information to the enemies of my bloodline.A knock came at the door. Soft. Deliberate.I did not turn. "Come in."The door opened. Maris stepped inside. She was not wearing her Council robes. Her grey hair was loose around her face, her clothes si

The air in the palace had changed.It was not something I could see, but I could feel it, a weight pressing down on the stone walls, a stillness that had settled into the corridors like dust. The servants moved faster, their eyes lowered, their voices quieter. The guards stood straighter, their hands resting on their swords, their gazes scanning the shadows. Everyone knew something was coming. No one spoke of it aloud.I walked through the halls, my footsteps echoing in the silence. The portraits on the walls watched me pass, their painted eyes following my movements. I had walked these corridors before, trembling and uncertain. I walked differently now. My spine was straight. My hands were loose at my sides. I did not flinch when I saw him.He was standing near the window at the end of the corridor, his back to me, his hands clasped behind him. He was tall, lean, and familiar. I had seen him in passing, always at a dist

The days that followed were strange and quiet.I trained with Kaelan every morning, the weight of the sword familiar in my hands, the rhythm of the blade cutting through the air like a second heartbeat. He did not speak much. He did not need to.His presence was enough, steady and warm, like the bond that hummed between us when he stood close. The sun rose and fell over the training yard, and I moved through the motions he taught me, my body learning what my mind already knew. I grew stronger. I grew faster. I grew quieter.I did not see Lucian. I felt him through the bond, a distant warmth at the edge of my awareness, but he did not come to me. He did not seek me out. I did not know if he was avoiding me or if he simply did not know what to say. The bond pulsed between us, a thread of connection that neither of us could sever, but it felt thinner now, stretched across the silence we had built between us.

The night did not bring sleep.I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, the stone Elara had given me cold in my palm. The warmth that had pulsed through it in the forest had faded, leaving only the familiar weight of stone against my skin. I turned it over and over, feeling its smooth surface, its quiet presence.I thought about Gertha's face. The way her hands had shaken. The way her voice had cracked when she said, "I did not know." I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe that she had been deceived, that she had been used, that she had not willingly fed information to the man who had been watching me since the day I arrived.But I had seen his face. I had heard his voice. I had looked into the eyes of the man who had been reporting on me, and I knew that he was not the kind of man who acted alone.Someone was behind him. Someone was pulling the strings. Someone wanted me dead.

The corridors were empty when I left the Council chamber.That was unusual. At this hour, servants should have been moving between the wings, carrying linens and trays, their footsteps soft against the stone. Guards should have been stationed at intervals, their hands resting on their swords, their eyes scanning the shadows. But the halls were silent, the torches burning low, the portraits on the walls watching me with painted eyes that seemed to hold more judgment than they had before.I walked slowly, my footsteps echoing in the stillness. The weight of the Council's words still pressed against my shoulders, heavy and cold. They had not accepted me. They had not rejected me. They had simply watched, waiting for me to reveal something they could use against me. I had given them nothing.But the silence in the corridors felt wrong. It was not the silence of a palace at rest. It was the silence of something waiting.

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