Novels by Rita writes

Sleep did not come easily.Selena lay on the narrow but clean bed in the commander's quarters, staring at the low wooden ceiling while the outpost settled into night sounds around her. Distant footsteps on stone. The soft clink of armor as the watch changed. A low murmur of voices speaking in the deeper, more guttural cadence of the Lycan tongue. None of it was familiar. All of it felt safer than the silence of the forest or the false warmth of Silver Claw.Her body ached. The cuts on her feet throbbed beneath fresh bandages a silent healer had applied without comment or judgment. The rejection wound in her chest pulsed in slow, stubborn waves. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the hooded woman's yellow gaze and heard the words that had followed her across the border.Fat little orphan.Vanessa had not even needed to come herself. She had simply pointed, and someone had obeyed.Selena turned onto her side and pressed her palm flat against the hollow place behind her ribs. The moo

The first bolt of corrupted magic screamed through the air like a living thing.Kael moved faster than Selena's eyes could follow. One moment his hand was still locked around her arm; the next he had spun, shoving her hard enough that she stumbled several paces toward the gate while his body took the place where hers had been. The green light struck him squarely in the chest with a sound like wet cloth tearing. The impact forced him back a step, boots carving shallow grooves in the dirt, but he did not fall.A low, resonant growl rolled out of him, deeper and more primal than any sound she had heard from a southern wolf.The hooded figure raised both hands. More of the sickly green energy gathered between their palms, swirling and spitting sparks that smelled of burnt herbs and spoiled blood. Vanessa's messenger. Or the Dark Witch's. The distinction no longer mattered. Someone from her old life had followed her into the one place she had begun to believe might be safe.Selena's wolf f

The deeper they walked, the less the Forbidden Forest resembled anything Selena had known.Silver Claw territory had been ordered, marked trails, cleared hunting grounds, the careful management of an Alpha who wanted every inch of land to reflect strength. Here the trees grew as they pleased. Massive trunks rose like the pillars of a ruined temple, their bark nearly black and scored with age. Roots twisted across the ground in thick, knotted ridges that forced careful footing. The canopy overhead was so dense that daylight arrived only as a soft, green-filtered gloom. Sound behaved strangely. Her own footsteps seemed swallowed within a few paces, yet the occasional distant crack of a branch carried with unnatural clarity.Kael moved through it as though the forest itself adjusted around him.Selena kept close, the borrowed cloak drawn tight against the deepening chill. The boots he had given her protected her feet far better than her own bare skin had, but every step still reminded he

Selena woke to the smell of woodsmoke and something warm cooking.For a moment she did not remember where she was. The narrow cot beneath her was harder than the thin mattress she had shared in the Silver Claw living quarters, and the air carried none of the familiar scents of pack, no lingering grease from the kitchens, no perfume Vanessa favored, no damp wool of warriors' cloaks. Instead there was cedar, clean stone, and the faint metallic edge of the forest itself.Then the hollow place in her chest pulsed, and everything returned.The ceremony. The silver light. Ryker's voice cutting the bond with six cold words. The long walk into darkness. Crimson eyes. A Lycan named Kael who had cleaned her feet and given her a tunic that still smelled faintly of him.She opened her eyes.Daylight filtered through the small, high window of the stone shelter in thin gray shafts. The fire had been rebuilt and burned steadily. Kael sat on a low stool near the hearth, sleeves rolled to the elbows,

Kael returned sooner than Selena expected. The wooden door opened without sound, and the cool night air swept in behind him, carrying the scent of damp moss and distant water. He carried a shallow stone bowl in one hand and a small leather satchel in the other. The firelight caught the edges of his face as he stepped inside, turning the crimson of his eyes momentarily brighter before they settled again into that banked-ember glow. Selena remained on the edge of the cot, arms still wrapped around her middle. She had not moved since he left. Part of her had expected him not to return at all. Another part had expected something worse, some test, some demand, some reminder that she was a soft southern wolf bleeding on land that did not belong to her. Instead he set the bowl on the small table and opened the satchel with practiced efficiency. "Drink first," he said. The water was cold and clean, tasting of stone and deep springs. Selena drank carefully, afraid that greed would make he

The Forbidden Northern Forest did not welcome her.Selena's bare feet sank into cold, damp earth the moment she crossed the invisible boundary. The trees here were older, their trunks thicker and blacker, their branches knitted so tightly overhead that the moonlight struggled to reach the ground. What little silver light managed to filter through fell in broken shards, never enough to fully illuminate the path. The air smelled different, sharper, older, laced with something metallic and wild that made the fine hairs on her arms rise.She kept walking anyway.Every step sent a fresh pulse of pain through the empty place where the mate bond had briefly lived. The rejection still burned like a brand behind her ribs. She could feel the exact shape of the absence, the place where Ryker's presence had flooded her for those few luminous seconds before he cut it away with six cold words. I reject the bond. The memory replayed without mercy. The way his eyes had hardened. The way the pack's co