Novels by Miley Gretchen

Roman rode with me to the cliffs himself, which surprised me more than it should have. An Alpha who'd just claimed a mate bond in a room full of witnesses had no obligation to chase down an old sentinel's secrets in person — and yet he didn't send guards ahead, didn't delegate it to anyone else. He rode beside me in near silence, and every time I glanced over, his jaw was set like a man bracing for a wound he already knew was coming.Odessa was waiting on the porch before we'd even cleared the tree line. Sentinels always know when something's coming for them long before it arrives."You brought him," she said, eyes flicking from me to Roman and staying there a beat too long — recognition, not surprise."You know who he is," I said. It wasn't a question anymore."I know who his mother was." Odessa's voice had gone careful in a way I'd never heard from her. "Elara Vayle. We trained together before the massacre. Before I changed my name and buried everything that came with the old one."

The room went utterly silent."Say that again," Roman said, low and dangerous, without ever looking away from my daughter. "What bloodline did you just name?""The Vayle line," Callum said, barely above a whisper. "My father used to tell stories. A pack from the northern peaks wiped out three generations back in a massacre, so brutal the survivors scattered and changed their names. He kept an old portrait. Golden eyes, exactly like—""The Vayle line was my mother's line," Roman said quietly, each word costing him something visible. "The massacre that wiped it out is the same massacre that killed my family and made me the last survivor of my birth pack. I've spent twenty years being told there was no one left."I stared at Skye's eyes — eyes I'd told myself for three years were simply a quirk from some ancestor too far back to trace — and felt my entire understanding of my own daughter collapse and rebuild itself in the space of a single breath."That's not possible," I said, voice sha

I found Callum two days later in the western hold — thinner, harder around the eyes, pacing a small guarded room like an animal that hadn't accepted its cage yet."Wren." His voice cracked on my name. "You're here. You actually came.""For my mother's funeral," I said flatly. "Not for you.""Wren, please. You have to understand what happened. Blackwood's forces were too strong, I never meant for anyone to—""You provoked a fight you couldn't win," I said, "and then you ran and let other people pay for it. My mother paid for it, Callum."His face went pale. "I know. I'll carry that the rest of my life. But Wren — seeing you now, I understand how wrong I was. I should have handled you better.""You should have. Four years too late to matter.""It's not too late," he said, stepping closer, desperation in his voice I'd never once heard from him. "Selene and I — it's strained, since I lost my title. I've had time to think about everything I threw away. Maybe there's a way to—""Callum." I

I stood at the border of Ravenhollow three days later, Skye's hand wrapped tight in mine."Mama," Skye said, tugging my hand. "Why does it feel scary here?""Because it belongs to someone new now, baby. But we don't get scared of new things. We get ready for them."My mother's funeral was somber and sparse. I stood at her graveside with Skye pressed to my side, forcing myself to stay standing exactly the way four years of Odessa's training had prepared me to.An old sentinel two rows back — one of my mother's contemporaries, a woman I only half remembered from childhood — went rigid when her gaze landed on Skye. She didn't say anything, not then, but I caught her elbowing the woman beside her, both of them staring at my daughter with an intensity that had nothing to do with grief. I told myself it was only curiosity about a child nobody recognized. I would learn later that it was something closer to disbelief — the specific disbelief of someone seeing a color they'd been taught belong

"You're carrying," Odessa Ashby said the moment I stepped through her door. "How could you possibly already know that?" "A sentinel spends forty years learning to smell fear, grief, and new life on the wind, girl. Yours is practically shouting." She set down her whetstone. "Callum's, I assume." "He doesn't know," I said quickly. "And he's not going to." Odessa went quiet, measuring me. "That's a hard road. Raising a pup alone." "He didn't just reject me, Grandma. He humiliated me in front of the whole pack and didn't have the decency to look ashamed. I won't hand him a child to use as an excuse to feel less like the coward he is." "Alright," she said. "Then we don't waste a single day feeling sorry for ourselves. You're going to need to be strong, Wren. It's stronger than you've ever had to imagine." She wasn't gentle about it. More than once, I broke down mid-drill, furious at my own slower reflexes, and Odessa let me be furious without letting me quit. "You're angry at the w

"Callum Draystone accepts the mate the Moon Goddess has given him."I was still smiling when the words left the elder's mouth because for six years, I had practiced hearing that sentence with my own name folded quietly inside it.I was three steps from him when the bond took hold. I watched his whole body jolt, watched his head turn — not toward me, but toward Selene Marsh, standing at the edge of the firelight, looking as stunned as I felt."Selene," Callum said, soft and hungry and immediate, and the way he said her name told me everything before he ever looked back at me at all."Callum." My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Callum, please."He looked at me then, finally, with nothing behind his eyes but mild, distracted apology. "Wren. You understand. Fate doesn't ask permission. I can't exactly argue with the Goddess.""You could act as if it costs you something," I said, voice cracking despite everything I did to hold it.He didn't answer. He was already crossing the fireli