Novels by Philamyde

And something heavy sat in it. Something that was not mine. Restless, pacing.“Lean on me,” Myra said, arm tighter. “We are almost at the old trapper cabin past the second creek. You need to rest, love. You lost so much blood at the border. And you used too much black root, your lips are blue. I wonder why Marcus wasn’t at the post. He promised. Did something go wrong?”“Someone paid him to be late,” I said. “Or scared him off the road. East does not want a witness at that creek.”“I took it,” I whispered. Wind took my words and made them thin.Myra looked at me, snow in her eyebrows, in her gray hair, melting. “You took what, love?”“His soul,” I said, my voice cracked on the second word. “When I rejected him, I felt it snap and then it didn’t leave. It didn’t go back to him. It came into me. I felt him. His anger. His wolf crying. It’s too loud. I can’t make it quiet.”Myra stopped walking. Right there in the snow, both of us breathing hard. Her hand went to my chest, palm flat over

KAELMy office did not survive her.I flipped my desk first. I didn’t think about it. I just grabbed the edge of the solid oak, the one my father had made for me when I became Alpha at nineteen, and threw it.It hit the stone wall and split down the middle with a crack that hurt my teeth. Drawers spilled open. Patrol reports, border maps, the Luna Fund ledgers Jace begged me to sign every week scattered across the floor like dead leaves after a storm. Ink bottles shattered, black bleeding into the rug. One of those ledgers was the book Tomas had locked in the chest downstairs. The copy on my floor was useless now. The real pages were the problem. East already knew it.I saw her face on every paper.I, Lily of Bloodmoon, reject you, Alpha Prince Kael of Bloodmoon, as my mate.And my own words. The ones I only ever thought, never said out loud, that she stole from my mouth and used against me in front of two hundred wolves. No omega had ever done that. No omega had ever dared to stand i

My wolf panicked in those three seconds, whining high, pacing, Gone, gone, gone, scrambling at the inside of my skull. That root cost her, it made her dizzy, made her wolf sleepy, but it made me blind. She accepted that price just to get past me.She looked at the creek one more time. That clean water, that clean air on the other side, ten feet of freedom. No Alpha, no Sienna, no council whispering about weak bloodline. I saw her throat move when she swallowed. I saw her fingers tighten on her backpack strap until knuckles went white. For a second I thought she would go. My chest locked, waiting for the snap of the last thread.Then she looked back at me. The hatred didn’t move. It stayed. Steady.“You’ll find out tomorrow,” she said. Voice flat. Bored. Same flat I used when I was done with someone, when I dismissed a warrior from my office for failing patrol, when I didn’t even look up from papers. She copied it perfectly. Used it on me like a weapon.“You’ll find out tomorrow, Alpha

KAELI had never slept well. Not really slept. I dozed. One eye open since I became Alpha at nineteen.Warriors on rotation outside my door, council papers on my desk, my cousin in High Hill writing letters to my elders about my bloodline being weak, Sienna’s father counting his east funds. You don’t sleep when everyone wants your chair and everyone is counting your mistakes.The bleeding had stopped. Jace gave me a calming tonic after the Hall. Bitter, mint and something earthy that coated my tongue. It knocked me out for maybe an hour, black and heavy, no dreams.Then my wolf ripped me awake.One second I was out. The next my chest was on fire. Like someone grabbed the bond inside me, that thin stretched rope that should have snapped clean after a rejection, and yanked it hard north. Under the yank, the cold missing piece pulled with it. The thing that had gone out of me when she spoke.I sat up. Sheets stuck to my back with sweat. Heart hammering too loud, wrong rhythm, fast and un

LILY The doors shut behind me and the cold hit the cut on my lip. It stung. I let it. Clean pain was easier to carry than the Hall.I did not run. Myra had taught me that when I was ten and Sienna’s friends cornered me behind the kitchen. Wolves chase what runs. They hesitate when a thing walks as if it has already been allowed to leave.So I walked. Boots on stone. The backpack thumping my spine. Yarrow rattling against the paper Marcus had given me. My knees wanted to fold. The crack in my chest burned like a wire left hot. Every breath scraped.Then he howled.Not a crown howl. Not an order. The sound a wolf makes when it has lost something in deep snow and already knows the night will take it. It tore out of the Hall, crossed the courtyard, and rattled the shutters on the omega wing. Two houses down, pups started crying.Inside, Sienna’s voice cracked down the middle.“Close the gates. Do not let her leave. She stole the Fund and forged the pages. She attacked the Prince. Council

LILY I died on his floor.Not in a fight. Not with teeth in someone’s throat. I died on the cold stone of his bedroom, bleeding between my legs, one hand shoved against my belly as if pressure alone could keep something inside that was already leaving.Kael stood over me.Alpha Prince of Bloodmoon. My mate. The crown was not on his head yet, but his shadow already filled the room.He did not kneel. He did not call for the healers.He looked at the brown stain spreading into the edge of his rug and spoke to his Beta as if I were a task on a list.“Take her away. She was just a vessel. The pup is gone anyway. I have no use for her anymore.”Flat. Bored. The voice he used when a report was late.I remembered begging. I remembered the door staying open after they dragged me out, so the Hall could hear that an omega had been removed and the Prince had not been inconvenienced.I also remembered the winter before any of that.I was sixteen. He was twenty-two and already sitting in his fathe