Novel-novel oleh Nana Aisha

TRICIAWho? Who was the note talking about?Voss? Odalys? I read the torn note three times before the meaning settled into my chest like a stone."The woman who taught her to trust the wrong people first," I said out loud, and the second I said it, one name rose up before I could stop it."Charlotte," I said almost instinctively then.It was her. It had to be!Blake's eyes darkened the moment I said that, but he did not dismiss it. That told me he had already been circling the same thought. His grey eyes were cold, calculating, the way they got when he was about to confront someone."She came back to warn us," he said slowly. "She brought us the information about Selene. She told us about the Council's plan.""Which is exactly what someone who wanted to look helpful would do," I said. "Especially if they were still working for the other side."“We need to find her. Now.” Rector nodded and led us to the guest wing section of the estate.“This is hers.” We stopped in front of the doo

Chapter Forty NineBLAKEI found Tricia in the hallway still holding the exemption paper.She was standing motionless, her eyes fixed on the words, her expression unreadable.I could already tell the contents of that paper were…big to say the least.I moved past Voss and didn’t bother asking her what the document said.Instead I moved to Tricia and asked.I guess I had decided I was done learning things about her secondhand. She deserved better than that."Tricia," I said quietly, stepping closer. "What does it say?"She looked up at me, her expression grim."Voss said there is another option," she began, her voice careful. "A formal Council exemption. It recognizes me as Blackwood's Luna, protected under pack law rather than Council custody."I felt a flicker of relief, though I didn’t give too much into it…I could smell a catch coming. "That sounds like what we wanted, right?”She shook her head slowly. "There is a condition to it."Of course there was…with the Council there always

Chapter Forty EightTRICIAIt didn’t take a genius to see that Voss didn’t trust Blake one bit. A common case of the sins of the father passing to the son.If I needed to really break something here, I needed to talk to Voss alone…I stepped forward then to her and leaned over. “Magistrate Selene, can we talk?”“Just us.” My tone was soft and light. Her eyes stayed on me for a beat long, then she nodded.“No.” Blake’s cold voice cut in then. “Whatever you need to talk…it should be said here.”I turned to him and walked forward. “I need to speak with her.” My tone was low so that only he could hear.“I will not leave you only with her..” he shot back, his tone low as well.“Do you trust me?” That question made me pause. He froze for a breath, then nodded.“I do.”“Then trust that I’ll handle this.”I could see the conflict in his eyes…the battle raging on there. He glanced back at Voss behind me, then back to me. Then he sighed.“Fine..”And so, myself and Voss walked through the ga

BLAKE Magistrate Selene Voss….she indeed was her. “She hates waiting..” Petra the maid added that last part. I wasn’t looking at her anymore, my eyes were fixed on only Selene now… “Blake.” A soft voice came beside me. Tricia. I turned partly to her then. “What now?” The question beckoned at me..truly. All eyes were on me now. Waiting for my decision. “Tricia, come with me. We’ll see at the gate first.” “Alpha.” Rector called and stepped beside me, his tone low. “She is a threat…a foreign one. It is in your right to shut the gates on her.” “And risk making enemies of the entire Council?” I shot back. “It’s too risky..” I stepped away and out of the laundry room, Tricia behind me. And so…I met Selene at the gate, the way an Alpha was supposed to meet a Council envoy. Standing tall, giving nothing away, though every part of me wanted to slam the gate shut instead. The torches flickered, casting dancing shadows across her face, and I forced myself to remain still. Selene

TRICIAEveryone froze for a long while. I did for sure…. She was here?! The Council lady was here?!! How and why?The moment the token that Charlotte placed down stopped humming and silence fell—Blake didn’t let it last long. He snapped to Rector at once. “Tell the guards...all entries and exits should be sealed up. Now!”Rector nodded sharply and stepped away. Odalys and Xavier arrived just as Rector walked away then. “What’s happening?”Xavier asked sharply.Blake turned to Xavier at once. “With me now.” And just like that, the two of them stepped away.And so…that tense silence fell again in the estate. The type of quiet I have learned to hate so damn much… the kind that meant something bad was coming but no one knew exactly when or where.I sat with Charlotte while Blake and Xavier organized the search, going room by room, corridor by corridor, checking every face against every name on the household roster.Odalys who stood by the doorway and observing the search happening, tu

BLAKEWhen the guard broke the news, the entire yard went dead silent.Charlotte was here, huh…Finally, I moved to the guard and spoke. “Take me to her. Now.”He nodded as we turned to walk away when Tricia stepped forward as well.“I’m coming too.”I glanced back then, our eyes fixed on each other for a while. Then I sighed.“Fine. Let’s go.”And so, I moved to see Charlotte at the gates, Tricia right beside me. Both of us were still carrying the glow of the Vault on our skin, the gold light fading slowly from our palms and faces. The Blood Moon was still up there in the sky..glowing down brightly on us.When we arrived there, we saw her…Charlotte looked…well, different, atleast more than she had at the Tribunal. She wasn’t wearing a dress that cost more than a house for one. There was no stylish hair or her excessive make up…She was wearing simple clothes, her hair pulled back in a messy knot, her face pale and her eyes looked tired out. Well, I suppose trying to be blunt—sh

Timothy's POV My phone rang at 2 AM.I was not fully asleep so the phone's vibration on the nightstand pulled me the rest of the way up before the second ring.It was an unknown number.Without thinking, I answered.The voice that came through was distorted. Digitally processed into something flat and genderless, the voice of someone who understood that anonymity was its own kind of power."Mr. Chase," it said. "We thought it was time to speak directly."I immediately sat up. But I did not turn on the light."I've been expecting this," I replied."We know." There was a pause that was too comfortable to be accidental. "That is one of the things we appreciate about you. You are rarely surprised. It makes conversations like this more efficient.""Then be efficient.""The three children," the voice started. "Kasey, Kylie, and Kai. We want them delivered to our research facility within thirty days. All three. Together. The arrangement will be comfortable, Mr. Chase. They will be treated a

Timothy's POV The encrypted message arrived at 3 AM on a Tuesday.I was already awake. I had been awake for most of the night, sitting at the desk in the hospital's private office that the administration had made available to me, working through security reports that Carson had sent over at midnight with a note that just said: Read these before morning.And I had read them.Then I had sat with them for two hours and thought about what they meant and what they required and what the appropriate response was to a situation that was escalating in ways I had hoped, until recently, I had successfully prevented.The encrypted channel was one I had closed four years ago. Or believed I had closed. The message that came through it was short and exact in the way that messages from people who did not need to explain themselves tended to be.“The children. All three. Final request before we proceed.”I read it once before I closed the channel, picked up my phone, and called Carson.He answered on

Teresa's POV The first thing Kai asked for when he was fully awake was water.The second thing he asked for was me.Mei had told me once, in the early months when I had first left him in the village and driven back to Dhuran with my chest hollowed out, that he always asked for me first thing in the morning before he was fully awake. Before his eyes opened, before the day had fully arrived. Her name for it was his checking call. He still did it two weeks after surgery.Every morning his eyes would open and find the chair beside his bed where I had slept, and he would look at me for a moment with that quiet, checking attention, and then something in his small body would settle and he would be ready for the day.And I was not going anywhere.I had slept in that chair for fourteen nights. My back had opinions about this that I was choosing to ignore. The nursing staff had twice offered me the family rest room down the corridor and twice I had thanked them and stayed where I was.Kai's r

Kylie's POV I had known before she said it.I had known the moment I walked through the door and saw his face against the white pillow, pale and still and surrounded by machines. I had known the way I knew things sometimes before I had the words for them.But hearing Teresa say it out loud was different from knowing it silently.It made it real in a way that settled into my chest and stayed there.Kasey was already moving towards the bed slowly. The way he moved when he was going to something he wanted to examine without disturbing. He stopped at the side rail and looked at the boy in the bed for a long moment without speaking.I moved to stand beside him.Up close, the similarities were not… small. They were not the kind of thing you could dismiss as coincidence or explain away as people just looking alike. They were specific and detailed and undeniable in the way that facts were undeniable when you looked at them directly.His nose. The exact curve of it at the tip.The line of his

Teresa's POV The surgery started at six in the morning.By six fifteen I had already walked the length of the waiting room four times and memorized every detail of it without meaning to. The arrangement of the chairs. The pattern on the floor. The quality of the light coming through the window at the far end.Timothy was already there when I arrived. Standing near the window with his hands in his pockets and his back partially turned, the way he stood when he was thinking something through and didn't want his face read while he did it.He heard me come in. I knew because his shoulders shifted slightly. But he didn't turn around immediately.We had not spoken since the transfer, so there was nothing comfortable about sharing this room with him. But Kai was in surgery.And that made everything else secondary in a way that required no discussion.I sat down, while Timothy remained at the window, and we waited.An hour passed. Then two. Then three.Somewhere during the fourth hour Timot

Timothy's POV "We are taking him to Dhuran," I said. "Today."Teresa looked up at me from across the bed. Her eyes were still red at the edges from the yard. But her hands were steady and her voice, when she spoke, was the controlled voice of a woman who had learned to function through things that should have stopped her completely."He doesn't travel well," she whispered. "His heart rate destabilizes with stress and unfamiliar environments trigger…""I have a medical transport vehicle. Equipped. Dr. Green can ride with him. You can ride with him." I held her gaze. "He will be monitored every minute of the journey. I will make sure of it."She looked at me for a moment before she nodded once and turned back to Kai.I stepped out and called Carson.Within twenty minutes the calls were made. The pediatric cardiac center in Dhuran had been notified. The department head, a man who understood that a call from my office meant everything stopped and reorganized immediately, had already begu