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I woke the next morning in Darius's arms, his chest broad and burning warm against my back.We had stopped pretending about what we were to each other.Darius held a steaming bowl of meat broth and fed me himself, spoon by spoon, eyes fixed and fervent.Running footsteps broke the moment.Arthur shoved the door open. His face was iron."The Shadow Order used last night's attack on the council to mass their forces. They're hitting the Royal City borders. Hard."I set the bowl down without a second thought and got ready to fight.Darius caught my hand and went with me to the front line.The battlefield reeked of blood.The Order's leader stood on a high outcrop, pointing at me, laughing."A she-wolf and a half-dead cripple. Came all this way to die?"Darius laughed back. Quiet and cold.Thanks to my mark, his wounds weren't just healed. His strength had jumped past anything he'd had before.He charged into their lines.Limbs and torn pieces went flying. The rebel front line broke open li
The moment the marking was complete, he could draw on my power.Pure, overwhelming life force flooded into him. His fading wolf steadied just enough to hold.The mind-link snapped fully open between us.Ten years of his feelings—everything held back, everything obsessive, every burning, hopeless ache—crashed into my soul in a single rush.I saw the boy of twelve hiding in the snow, watching me bandage his wounds, the first light coming alive in his eyes.I saw him in a hellish training camp, dragging himself out of his own blood, over and over, just to be strong enough to one day stand beside me.I saw him alone in the dark, tracing my face onto paper, whispering my name like a prayer.I'd been living in him for ten years.My eyes burned.I looked down at the broken man in my arms and lost the last of my restraint.I went through the rest of the Shadow assassins like a god of slaughter back from hell. One after another. I tore them apart.Blood and pieces of them coated the floor.The
The peace didn't last.Logan and Delilah, exiled and eaten alive by their own hatred, were found by a hidden group calling itself the Shadow Order.The Order handed them a vial of refined wolfsbane gas and made a promise: cause chaos at the next royal banquet, and they'd be given back their power and their station.Cornered, with nothing left to lose, they agreed without thinking.The night of the banquet, Logan and Delilah slipped in disguised. The vial was tucked inside the cabinet behind the main bar.The banquet was in full motion.Darius hadn't left my side once.His unconcealed possessiveness made the other Alphas circling for an introduction think twice and walk away.I was listening to Arthur deliver his speech when Nyx stirred inside me, sharp and uneasy.A wave of warning ran through me."Something's wrong," I murmured to Darius.The vial detonated almost on cue.A hiss—Wolfsbane gas filled the hall in seconds.Ordinary wolves with no defenses inhaled it and dropped, screami
To celebrate my return, my people threw a grand banquet in the Royal City.I was the center of it all, and bored out of my mind.After fending off another wave of nobles trying to attach themselves to me, I slipped out alone onto the terrace.The night air was cool. It pulled the heaviness off my chest.Then a tall figure stepped onto the terrace and started toward me.The Alpha of the strongest pack in the north. The infamous war god—violent, bloodthirsty, decisive. Darius.He wore a sharp black suit. The golden wolf-head crest of a war chief sat on his shoulder. His eyes were a rare, deep crimson.The proud nobles inside, the same ones who'd been preening minutes ago, couldn't stand his aura. They lowered their heads as he passed and didn't dare breathe loudly.Darius ignored every one of them.He walked straight onto the terrace. His eyes locked on me.It was the look of a wolf who had spotted his prey and starved for ten years to find it.I tensed.What he did next stopped me cold.
The whole square went dead silent.The smug satisfaction on Logan and Delilah's faces froze and cracked.The Werewolf King had just called this lowly pack-doctor… his sister?"No. No, that's not—"Delilah crumpled to the ground, mumbling to herself.I watched her face twist in pure terror, and felt nothing."Arthur." I said it quietly. "Someone here threatened to strip me and throw me into the cells with the rogues in heat."Arthur's eyes turned to ice as he looked at her."Her?"I nodded.Delilah broke. She crawled forward and slammed her forehead into the dirt at my feet, sobbing."Mercy, my lord! Princess, mercy!"Logan finally understood. The woman he'd discarded—the woman he'd let his new toy humiliate—was something far above him."Seraphina! I was blind! It's you I love! Have you forgotten the three years we had together? For the sake of what we had—give me one more chance!"Trying to stir up old feelings.Disgusting.I drove my heel into him."You weren't thinking about old feel
A pathetic frame-up.But wolves drowning in fear and rage don't think.Logan flew into a rage at her words, storming forward and roaring."Vicious bitch! Poisoning your own pack's warriors! I will not let this go!"The crowd, already worked up, started baying for my blood.Delilah waved a hand. A dozen massive wolf guards closed around me in a tight ring.She and Logan stood above the crowd, watching me like I was already dead. Their smug little smiles came back.Logan let out a fake, pitying sigh."Seraphina, I'll let you live. Just kneel here, sign the slave-blood pact, serve Delilah for the rest of your life, and hand over every notebook and recipe you own."He thought I had no choice but to break.I looked at his oily, righteous face—and laughed out loud."A slave-blood pact? You?"My eyes went to ice.Three years ago, I'd grown sick of the cold knife-fights inside the royal court. I wanted something simple. A love untouched by power.So I'd put on a Soul-Binding Necklace—an artifa







