LOGINSarah was in the kitchen slicing apples for her grandfather’s pie when Mara’s voice carried down the hallway.“Sarah… Lucas is here.”The knife paused mid-cut. She carefully put the chopped apples in a bowl and back into the fridge before going to meet him.When she saw him standing there, for a second, she couldn’t breathe. Not because she feared him — but because she never once let herself imagine she might see him alive and safe again. She wiped her palms on her jeans, smoothed her hair, and stepped into the living room.Lucas stood there, still in his football uniform, helmet tucked under one arm. Grass stains marked one knee of his pants, and his jersey was damp from practice. He looked out of place in the old house — young and golden.And yet… He fit.He turned when he heard her footsteps.For a moment, they both just stared. All those months of searching, all that panic in his voice the night she reached for him — relief hit him like a punch. Those amber-brown eyes went soft.
Chapter 106 Quiet Before the StormWeeks had passed….Not peacefully — but steadily. The mountain stayed quiet. The wards held. Thorn’s shield now covered the entire mountain, both of them like a second sky. Whatever waited beneath the earth had not tested it again.Life — strangely — resumed.Classes started back up, and campus felt… almost normal. The illusion of normal was its own kind of blessing.I pulled my bike into my usual spot and killed the engine. For a moment, I just sat there, helmet still on, hands resting on my thighs. The morning had that strange, too-still feeling — not bad, not threatening — just aware. Like the world had inhaled and was waiting to exhale.Beth pulled in right beside me, parking in her usual spot.She grabbed her helmet from her back seat and grinned. “Dad’s taking my car to the shop at noon. Can I ride home with you?”She held up her own helmet by the chin strap like proof she fully intended to claim a spot behind me, whether I said yes or no.I
A few days had passed, and the house had begun to feel like something new — not just safe, alive. Home. Storm had adjusted the fastest of us all. He toddled through hallways as if he had always belonged there, his favorite toy wolf clenched in his little fist, chasing light beams across polished floors.He was mid-sprint when he stopped dead in the wide doorway of the sitting room.Not frozen like a startled child. Froze like a sentinel.His head turned toward the windows — slow, deliberate — eyes unfocused, pupils wide.Storm lifted his arm and pointed.“Bad man is here.” Not frightened.Stated.Thorn appeared in front of him in an instant, dark wings half-unfurled in instinctive guard posture, ready for a fight. The shift in his aura was violent, one heartbeat calm, the next a silent, deadly weapon made of shadow and ancient vow.Kira materialized a breath later, robes still trailing residual silver sparks; they had been scrying him from the far wing, sensing the shift through St
The escort stopped at the edge of the warded property line and would go no farther. Sarah crossed the threshold alone.She expected silence. She expected emptiness. She expected the slow rot of a man dying without dignity.She did not expect flashing lights.An ambulance sat in the gravel drive with the back doors open. Two medics carried equipment from the front porch into the house. Sarah broke into a run, panic and disbelief cracking through her chest. She burst through the doorway——and stopped short.Her grandfather wasn’t in a hospital. The hospital had been brought to him.A hospital bed had been placed in the sunlit room just inside the front window. Monitors were already wired. An IV drip hung beside him. Two large oxygen tanks sat ready. The old man looked thin — frail — but alive. But color was back in his cheeks, and his eyes were open.And he wasn’t alone.Mara stood beside his bed, helping support him while Cline adjusted the lines and positioned the pillows with the
His Hummer hummed low against the mountain. Pine shadow slid over the glass. Kira and Thorn stayed with the warriors to sweep the site. Blaise drove. Blaise watched the rearview mirror. I cradled Storm across my lap, his fingers curled around the moonstone at his throat. Lyra lay beneath Ryker’s jacket, wrapped in the smell of leather, smoke, and the man who had never stopped loving her.She turned her face toward the window for a long minute, as if teaching her lungs the shape of clean air again. When she spoke, her voice was thin but steady.“It was winter. Your hair still smelled like the fir tree,” she said, eyes on me. “You were five. We had just left the lights in town. The road iced over at the ridge. We were singing.”“Wait, I was with you?“Yes, but before the man came and you disappeared, I could not find you.”Blaise’s hands tightened their grip on the wheel.“The first impact was not the truck behind us. Something hit the inside of the car first. The lights went blindingly
The storm wind eased. Ash thinned in the air and curled away into the trees. The mountain held its breath like it remembered what silence was supposed to feel like.The cellar doors stood open.Sarah climbed first, one hand white on the jamb. She looked bone tired and stubborn. Behind her, a second figure rose slowly from the dark. The hood hid everything but the line of a mouth and a throat too thin for any winter. Chains scraped the step. The sound made every wolf and lycan in the ring flinch.Ryker did not look away.Kira lifted one palm. Thorn lowered his staff. Warriors eased their stance but did not break the circle. Blaise shifted closer to me without thinking. Storm stirred in my arms, sleepy and warm, cheek pressed to my collarbone.Sarah guided the prisoner into the clearing. The woman moved like a candle that had burned down to its last light. Her cloak fell in heavy folds. The cuffs at her wrists glowed with the dull shine of old spellmetal. She lifted her head just enough







