Novels by Free writes

"Please, Liora. Please open the door."Vivienne's voice slid through the wood, thin and trembling, a little girl's voice. It was barely dawn.I lay still on the narrow bed in the rented room above the bakery. Yesterday's hearing had ended with the elders in shock, Odalys screaming in the corridor, and Cassian staring at me as if I were a stranger who had stolen his face. The council had adjourned "for review." I had walked out with Quill at my side and not looked back.Now my half-sister was knocking at my door.The bakery smelled of yeast and butter. My stomach growled. My body ached from the mountain climb, and a pale scab crossed my palm where the gate had bitten me.I opened the door.Vivienne stood in the hallway in a white wool coat, her golden hair loose, her eyes swollen and red. She clutched a handkerchief in one hand and pressed the other against her stomach.She looked like every man's idea of a wronged angel."Thank you," she whispered. "I didn't know if you would."I did

"Swear it again, Madam Hale. Slowly, for the record."Elder Harlan Grey's voice creaked across the council chamber. Odalys lifted her chin, laid a trembling hand on the silver moon-disk, and smiled at the room like a woman who had already won."I swear by the Moon Goddess," she said, "that my stepdaughter Liora owns nothing. No land. No savings. No property. Everything she has ever eaten, worn, or slept on was paid for by my family and by the Rourke pack."I sat at the far end of the bench with my hands folded in my lap and my face perfectly blank.Keep going, I thought. Say more.A night and a morning had passed since the vault.I had slept on a cot in Moonhollow's servant quarters, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of cedar and dust. The crate had stayed in my palm all night, tiny as a grain of rice, humming against my skin. By dawn I had learned how to put it down and pick it up again. Not well. Each time, a dull ache pulsed behind my eyes. But it worked.The ledger had listed an e

"Have you thought about your apology?"Odalys's voice slid through the attic door at dawn, thin and brittle, the voice of a woman who had not slept.I was already dressed. Boots laced. Tamsin's letter folded inside my bra. The moon-silver key hung on a cord against my collarbone, cool and strangely heavy, as if it had a heartbeat of its own."Yes," I said. "I have."A long pause. Then the lock clicked halfway."Good." Relief crept into her tone. "Then say it."I looked at the window."I'm sorry," I said, "that you ever thought I belonged to you."The lock stopped. Her breath hissed through the wood.I did not wait for her answer. I pushed the window wide, swung one leg over the sill, and dropped onto the shed roof. Wet slate shifted under my boots. Fear licked up my spine, and I bit down on it. Behind me, Odalys began to scream my name, high and shrill, pounding on the door.Six feet to the woodpile. Three to the fence. I counted them as I moved.A young wolf in a Blackthorn jacket le

"Take it back."Cassian's voice cracked down the middle of the sentence.I could not answer. I was on my knees on the stone floor, and I did not remember falling. Pain ripped through my chest in long, burning strokes, as if someone had reached inside and pulled a rope out of my ribs hand over hand. My lungs would not work. My fingers dug into the cold flagstones until the nails bent."Liora. Take it back. Now."He crouched in front of me. Close. His hand closed around my jaw and forced my face up.I expected grief.I had spent six years imagining what Cassian would look like if he ever lost me. In my dreams, his eyes filled with tears. His voice broke. He begged.His eyes were black.Not sad. Not shocked. Black from rim to rim, the wolf swallowing the man, his lip curled back from his teeth. Rage rolled off him in waves, hot and suffocating."You do not get to leave me," he said, and spit flecked my cheek. "You are mine. You were born to be mine."I understood then, clear as a bell.H

"Fetch Vivienne's medicine, Liora. Now."Cassian did not look at me when he said it. He looked at his cuffs. He tugged the left one straight, then the right, the way he did when he wanted a room to know who owned it.A pin bit into my ribs.I stood on a wooden stool in the middle of the Moon Hall with my arms held out like a scarecrow. Three seamstresses circled me. Cream silk hung off my shoulders. Cedar and beeswax filled the air, thick and sweet, and the smell hit the back of my throat like a fist.I knew that smell. I had smelled it once before, right before I died.Snow. White, endless, roaring snow.I blinked. The hall came back. Candles. Carved beams. The long banner over the dais with the Blackthorn crest stitched in silver thread."Liora." Cassian's voice dropped lower. "The Alpha gave you an order."The Alpha. He always said it that way. Not I. The Alpha.My heart slammed once, hard, against the pinned silk.A steel gate. Iron bars slick with ice. My fingernails scraping dow