Novels by Mubarak Kamarudeen

The ceremony ground was carved stone, open to the sky, and the entire pack was there. Aria stood at the back, flanked by guards who’d loosened their grip just enough to let her see. Nora was somewhere in the crowd, watching. Selene sat in a raised position, her weathered face betraying nothing but her hands gripping the stone armrest with visible force. Liam was there too, she could feel his presence before she saw him, his small form rigid with a tension no five-year-old should carry. Xavier came first. He was stripped to the waist, his skin marked with pack sigils in ash and clay. The marks told a story, Alpha bloodline, warrior lineage, the weight of seven generations. He looked like a different person stripped of his formal authority, harder and more feral, less human. He looked like what he actually was underneath all the control: a predator who’d learned to wear a suit. His eyes found Aria’s across the courtyard. For one moment, just one, the mask slipped. She saw it,

The Council chamber was stone and torchlight and the weight of thirty years of pack law bearing down from every surface. Aria stood in the center, not bound, but with guards on either side of her. She could see Xavier at the far end, standing, not sitting. That was significant. An Alpha who sat was secure. An Alpha who stood was prepared for violence. Killian walked in like he owned the room, and the pack made space for him the way water parts for a stone. “I bring formal challenge,” he said, his voice carrying effortlessly through the chamber. “I challenge Alpha Xavier Thorne for his position on the grounds of emotional compromise and security breach.” The words landed like an earthquake. Around the chamber, she heard the collective intake of breath, not loud, but palpable. Every wolf understood what this meant. Everything that had been held in careful balance was about to shatter. “The Alpha,” Killian continued, moving through the chamber with practiced grace, “has allow

The isolation cells were worse than she’d expected, and she’d expected the worst. The glass walls meant everyone could see inside. The pack walked past and some of them looked and some of them didn’t, but the ones who didn’t look, those were worse. Those were the ones who’d already decided what she was and didn’t need to confirm it with a glance. The first night, she didn’t sleep. The second night, Selene came. The old woman moved slowly, deliberately, a cup of tea in her weathered hands. She set it on the small table inside the cell and sat down on the bench across from Aria and simply looked at her for a very long time. “I came to see if you would break,” Selene said finally. “I haven’t.” Selene studied her. The old woman’s eyes were sharp, missing nothing. “In my day,” she said, “a woman who came back to a pack she’d fled, carrying a child whose father was the Alpha, and lied about it, she would break. By day three, at latest. She would beg. She would cry. She would

The paper in Xavier’s hand was old. The edges were soft from handling, or from age, or both. Aria could see the gala seal at the top Bloodmoon’s sigil, carved in faded ink. She could see her name underneath it. Not the name she’d given him. The real one. “My study,” Xavier said. Not a request. She followed him because not following would be worse. The corridor was empty but she could feel the weight of pack attention anyway, the way attention moved through stone like cold water, the way it followed them both. His study was exactly as she’d organized it that morning. Files in perfect order. The desk clear except for what he was currently working on. He’d noticed her system. He’d never said anything, which meant he’d been watching everything she did. He set the registry on the desk between them. “Aria Morgan,” he said, reading it aloud. “Low-ranking omega. Assigned to evening service. Gala six years ago.” He looked up. “You were there.” “I was.” “You were there that

Killian found her at the edge of the forest. She’d taken to walking the outer path during the hour after the council session, when her work as Xavier’s aide was technically complete for the day and Liam was in the medical wing for his early afternoon treatment. The path ran along the tree line, where the pine resin was strongest and the noise of the pack faded to a low murmur, and she walked it because she needed the thirty minutes more than she needed anything else. She heard his footsteps before he spoke. Unhurried. Deliberate. The footsteps of someone who wanted to be heard coming. “I thought I’d find you here,” Killian said. She kept walking. “Am I so predictable?” “Everyone has a pattern. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” He fell into step beside her, hands in his pockets, at ease in the way expensive things were at ease, a settled confidence that came from never having doubted his own standing. “You needed air. Understandable. It’s a lot to take in, coming into a

The second time Liam escaped, nobody found him at the training ground. A junior warrior checked there first, then the kitchens, he’d been there once and spent twenty minutes interrogating the cook about why wolves ate more red meat than humans, and then the long corridor of the main hall, and then the outer courtyard. It was Nora who thought to look outside the Alpha’s study. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the stone wall beside the door, knees drawn up, hands loose in his lap. The hallway was empty except for him and a torch burning in its iron bracket ten feet away, and he looked so small in the stone corridor, so entirely untroubled by his own smallness, that Nora stopped and simply looked at him for a moment. “Liam,” she said. “I’m waiting,” he said. “For what?” He considered this. “For him to come back.” Nora looked at the door. The Alpha’s study was empty, Xavier was at the afternoon patrol review until at least four. She knew Liam cou