Novels by Marcee

NASH POVThe world swung in a nauseating rhythm.Up, down, bump, sway.I wasn't walking. I was cargo. I was a sack of grain being hauled to market. The rough bark of the stretcher dug into my spine, and through the canvas, I could feel the uneven strain of Jace and Torin’s muscles as they navigated the root-choked forest floor.Every step they took was a punch to my pride.I closed my eyes, but the darkness offered no relief. It only amplified the sensory details of my humiliation. I could smell the sweat of the young wolves carrying me—not the clean sweat of exertion, but the sour tang of anxiety. They were afraid. They weren't afraid of the enemy; they were afraid of breaking the merchandise. They were treating me like fine china, like a fragile relic of a bygone era.I was the Dire Wolf. I was the monster who cracked ribs and snapped necks. I wasn't supposed to be carried.I opened my eyes.Remy

REMY POVThe forest didn't feel like home anymore.It felt like a mouth waiting to close.The canopy overhead was a suffocating blanket of grey moss and pine needles, blocking out the bruised purple sky of the clearing we had escaped from, but letting in the damp, biting chill of the coming winter. The silence here wasn't the heavy, magical silence of the Deadlands; it was a tense, watchful quiet. The birds weren't singing. The squirrels were frozen in the bark of the oaks.I moved through the underbrush, my boots sinking soundlessly into the moss. I hadn't gone far—just to the ridge line to scan the horizon for Marcus’s cabin. I hadn't found it. The woods had shifted in the years I was gone, or maybe the Deadlands had distorted my internal compass.I was turning back, the cold knot of anxiety in my chest tightening with every step, when the wind shifted.It carried a scent that froze the blood in my veins.

NASH POVThe return to consciousness wasn't a gentle rising tide; it was a violent shipwreck against a jagged shore.The first sensation was the smell—pine needles, damp earth, and the faint, acrid tang of woodsmoke. It wasn't the sterile, metallic smell of the Deadlands, nor the cloying rot of Morana’s temple. It was the scent of home, twisted into something cruel by the context of the cold hard surface beneath my back.I forced my eyes open.The world was a blur of grey and shadow, slowly resolving into rough, hewn stone blocks. A ceiling blackened by centuries of soot loomed above me, arching high like the ribcage of a great beast. I wasn't on the muddy riverbank. I wasn't in the open air where the drones hunted.I was lying on a narrow cot, a crude frame of rough-hewn timber draped with a wool blanket that smelled of must and old cedar. A fire crackled in a pit at the center of the room, the only source of light in

REMY POVThe rain didn't feel like water here; it felt like judgment.It wasn't the cleansing, purifying rain of the Silver Creek forests that smelled of pine and damp earth. This was a cold, stinging deluge that carried the metallic tang of the Deadlands on the wind, a persistent reminder of the void we had just crawled out of. It washed the grey ash from our skin, leaving rivers of muddy sludge running down our arms and legs, but it couldn't wash away the memory of the silence.I dragged him.My boots sank inches into the mud with every step, the suction trying to claim me, trying to pull me back down into the earth. Nash was dead weight. He was six feet three inches of pure muscle, even in his wasted state, a heavy, dead anchor I refused to let go of.I had his arm draped over my shoulders, my hand gripped tight around his wrist. His head lolled against my collarbone, his dark hair plastering to my face, mingling with my own. I could feel the fever radiating off him even through th

NASH POVMy left leg was a dead weight strapped to my hip, a throbbing anchor of agony that dragged behind me like an unwanted chain. The Star-Fang Dagger had burned away the infection, cauterizing the flesh and sealing the wound, but the surgery had been crude. The nerves were angry, screaming with every step I took on the makeshift crutch. Every impact of the wood against the ground sent a jolt of white-hot lightning up my spine, causing my vision to swim in a haze of red and black.We had walked for four hours.Four hours of dragging, stumbling, and sweating. The rain had started an hour ago, a cold, relentless drizzle that soaked through the torn fabric of my clothes and chilled the fever that still raged beneath my skin. It wasn't the fever of illness, but the fever of trauma. My body was rejecting the reality of what I had become. I was the Alpha of Silver Creek. I was the Dire Wolf, the descendant of the First Alpha. I had led armies into

REMY POVThe transition from the Deadlands to the mortal world wasn't a sudden burst of color or a triumphant fanfare; it was a slow, suffocating bleed of atmosphere. The heavy, purple pressure that had crushed our lungs for days simply evaporated, replaced by a damp, biting cold that smelled of pine needles, wet earth, and the metallic tang of ozone. My lungs seized, eager for the moisture, greedy for the oxygen that the void had starved them of.But the air tasted like ash.We were standing on the edge of a ridge, looking down into the valley that should have felt like home. The Silver Creek territory. Trails I had run, mountains I had howled at under the full moon. It looked like a graveyard. The sky above us was a churning mass of charcoal-grey clouds, mirroring the desolation we had just escaped. The forest below was silent—not the peaceful silence of nature, but the silence of a place holding its breath.Nash swayed beside me.

The silence in the converted storage room wasn't peaceful. It was heavy. It had weight, pressing against my eardrums like deep ocean water, drowning out everything except the rhythmic, high-pitched beep of the heart monitor.It was a torturous sound, a metronome counting down the seconds of a life that hung suspended in the balance.Dr. Vose and her team had left an hour ago, exhausted after three hours of surgery. They had stabilized him, they said. They had stopped the bleeding, removed the bullet fragments, and patched the hole in his lung. But they had also given me a prognosis that sat in my stomach like a stone: he was in a coma. A deep, protective slumber while his body tried to knit itself back together.He might wake up in an hour. He might wake up in a week.Or he might never wake up.I sat on a rickety metal stool that had been scavenged from the mining equipment depot. I hadn’t moved since the doctors walked out. I hadn’t slept. I hadn’

The dinner table was set for thirty. It was a grotesque display of luxury in a time of siege.We were using the remaining stock of the Royal Cellars—crystal goblets that had survived the Coup, plates of gold-rimmed porcelain, and enough silverware to melt down and forge a tank. But the food... the food was the tragedy.We were serving roasted root vegetables, salted fish, and a very dense, very dry loaf of black bread. It was peasant food served on King's china."Positively rustic, Your Majesty," Colonel Jefferson said, slicing into the tough bread with a serrated steak knife. He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed."We call it 'The Resistance Stew'," I said, taking a sip of water. "Because it resists being chewed."Jefferson didn't smile. He didn't even blink. He had eyes like a shark—grey, flat, and dead. He sat at my right hand. Armano stood behind my chair, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. Every time Jefferson moved, Armano shifted his weight, a subtle, pred

The document looked innocent enough. It was a single sheet of paper, transmitted via a burst signal that barely pierced the American jamming, picked up by a radio hobbyist in the Northern Highlands who thought he was tracking aliens.It wasn't aliens. It was worse.Stark slammed the paper down on the table in front of me. The War Room was lit by the harsh, white light of the emergency LEDs, casting everyone in a ghastly pallor."Executive Order 14029," Stark said, his voice trembling so hard his monocle jumped. "Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organization."I looked at the paper. At the signature.Dexter Forbes."Well," I said, staring at my father’s familiar, sharp cursive. "I knew he was disappointed in my career choice, but this seems a bit extreme. Usually, parents just threaten to cut you off, not label you a threat to national security.""It gets worse," Stark said, pressing a hand to his chest. "It authorizes t

The silence didn’t arrive gradually. It didn’t fade in like a sunset or taper off like a dying battery. It was murdered.One second, the War Room was a symphony of chaos—shouting aides, clacking keyboards, the hum of the ventilation system. The next, it was a tomb.The monitors died, snapping to black simultaneously. The overhead lights gave a final, electrical gasp and extinguished, plunging us into a darkness so absolute it felt heavy, like physical weight pressing against my eyes.For a heartbeat, no one moved. We were frozen in the void.Then, the red emergency lights kicked in.They weren't comforting. They were low-wattage, rotating beacons that bathed the room in a blood-red strobe effect, turning Stark into a devil and Lord Thayes into a corpse."The cooling systems," Stark gasped, his voice echoing strangely in the unnatural quiet. "The main servers... they're dead.""Is it the grid?" General Richards asked,

The hangover from the gold rush didn't involve headaches or nausea; it involved a terrifying, echoing silence.It started two days after the Great Distribution. The streets were full of Crown Coins. The soldiers were paid. The bakeries were open. But the city felt... wrong. It felt like a clock that had been wound too tight, gears grinding against each other, waiting for a spring to snap.I was in the War Room, staring at a board that Stark had covered in red string. It looked like a conspiracy theorist’s basement."We have a liquidity crisis," Stark announced, throwing a stack of reports onto the table. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. His monocle was crooked, and his usually pristine suit was wrinkled."Liquidity?" I asked, tracing a red string from the Port to the Castle. "I just gave away two tons of gold, Stark. How can we have a liquidity problem?""Because you can't eat gold, Marigold!" Stark yelled. He was losing his composure, a b

The Royal Mint didn't smell like money. It smelled like fear, ozone, and burning metal.It was located in the deepest sub-basement of the castle, a room that had originally been designed for torturing heretics or storing seasonal decorations. Now, it housed three industrial-grade smelters and a crew of terrified jewelers who were currently working double shifts under the watchful eye of the Iron Guard.I stood in front of a crucible, watching molten gold bubble like lava in a witch's cauldron. The heat was blistering, sticking my hair to the back of my neck, but I didn't move. I couldn't. If I moved, I might explode."Your Majesty," the Master Mint said, wiping sweat from his brow with a rag that was already black with soot. "The pressure... it is too high. The stamping mechanism... the die is cracking. If we rush this, the coins will be malformed. They will look like play money.""I don't care if they look like chocolate coins," I snapped, my voice cutti