LOGIN(Rene)"Bring her up. Just her."Cole's quiet on the line a second too long."The Myr are going to be furious if you do this in private. Maliyah wants witnesses and a public spectacle. She wants everyone to bear witness to you choosing her daughter and rejecting Angelique.""Maliyah can want whatever she wants, I’m under no obligation to dance to her tune. I'm not standing in that hall again until it's already done."I hang up before he can keep arguing.Cole is the best Beta I could ever ask for.Calm under pressure, a great advisor, and he always has my back.But I’m not attempting this in front of a crowd again, and while I trust him more than anyone else, I’m not telling him why.The pack will be able to feel the mate-bond severing, that will be enough proof that it’s been done.Once was enough.I stood in front of my whole pack with the words held prisoner by my wolf.Parker walked in, and everyone agreed to call it an interruption, because the other story is that their Alpha cou
(Angelique)I’m expecting a servant with a tray when there’s a knock at the door, Brynn and Rene don’t knock.I crack the door and it gets shoved the rest of the way open."Move."She's inside before I can do a thing about it, and the floor drops out from under all the years at once.Tova.Eyes narrowed angrily. Jaw set like she came up here looking for a fight."Tova, I-""Don't."She holds a flat hand, up between us. "Don't say my name like we get to be fine after what you did."She circles me, checking I'm solid. Doesn't touch me."I spoke at your funeral. Got up in front of the whole pack and eulogized my best friend while crying so hard I could barely speak.""I know, I’m sorry, I-""You don't know. You weren't there. That's the whole point of it."Her eyes are wet and furious, and she'd bite me before she let a single tear fall."You were off somewhere breathing and living your best life while I learned how to carry on without you."Nothing I say is going to appease her, except
(Rene)"He's still not eating."Cole's been on the spare-room door for two days and it's wearing on him."Doesn't pace. Doesn't ask for anything. Just sits there like he's already won the part he came for.""He has."I don't look up from the documents I'm not reading."He stopped the rejection ceremony and told everyone Angelique and the brat are his. I’m not sure what else he wants, but he succeeded at sowing those seeds.""So we make him talk.""You want to torture a consecrated Alpha under my roof?"I let that sit. Because god knows, I want that too, but I know the consequences."Tell me how that goes, Cole. Walk me through the morning after."He doesn't. He knows the shape of it as well as I do."Then what?" he says, frustration plain in his voice.“He can’t stay down there forever. I’m sick of waiting outside his door, and the Myr are circling him like he’s a stain they haven’t decided how to scrub out.”“They are. Maliyah’s a houseguest who behaves like she owns the walls.”“So
(Brynn)"I had to learn about the boy’s parentage from a stranger's mouth. In a hall full of people. While I sat there like a fool who doesn't know what’s happening around her."My mother doesn't knock. She never has. The door just opens and the temperature drops.I don't turn from the mirror. Turning is losing. She taught me that before I could read."I told you there was a child.""You told me there was a bastard."She crosses the room, and in the glass she's still beautiful.Beautiful and cold all the way through.I notice again that we have exactly the same mouth.I've hated it my whole life."You told me the father was some random human, not that a fugitive Alpha would walk into Rene's hall and lay claim to Angelique and the brat.""Because I didn't know he would. I would have stopped him from interrupting if I’d been expecting him."True, for once."I'm not responsible for every stray Angelique left behind in whatever truck stop she was rotting in.""Parker Frey."My mother says
(Angelique)The herbs go in his juice before he's fully awake.Crushed fine, an extra pinch today, just in case."Tastes yucky," Zack says, same as every morning of his life, and drinks it anyway."I know, bug. Big gulps."He drains the cup and I finally let myself breathe.One more day bought.My body's still sulking about last night.Sore where his hands were, wound tight where he made sure not to finish me.The bond still humming a low note I can't shut off.I shove it down with everything else and get up.The house woke up wrong.I felt it before I even opened my eyes.The air's gone thick with wolves who don't belong here, a dozen new scents stacked over the ones I'd learned to live around.The Myr stayed.All of them, Brynn hissed through my door last night, like it’s my fault.I had no idea Parker was coming, and naming him as Zack’s father was Brynn’s idea.She can’t lay any of it at my door.It doesn’t change the fact that I'm a mouse in a house that went from one cat to twen
(Rene)"He’s not asking for anything."Cole stands in my doorway like he'd rather be down a mineshaft."No food. No demands. We put an Alpha in a bare bedroom and he's sitting on the cot like he's waiting to be called to dinner.""His scent?""Still banked. He’s caged, cornered, and we can't get a clean read off him. I've never seen control hold like that."Of course it holds.Parker Frey spent years pretending to be nobody.A cell doesn't rattle a man who made himself vanish.What I need to find out is why.And where he’s originally from.The answer to the second question should answer the first as well."Leave him there," I say."If he doesn’t want to eat that’s his business, but make sure there’s bread and water available. Aside from that don't touch him, don't talk to him, and make sure he stays put."Cole's gone before I finish.I didn't sleep.I tell myself it's the houseful of Myr wolves and the Alpha under my roof.It isn't.It's the bond, scraping me raw, chafing at me to go
(Rene)"You scowl like your mother. She scowled at me daily, near the end."My father doesn't rise when I come in.He stopped rising for people around the time they stopped rising for him."Father."I take the chair across from him, because standing over him reads as a challenge, and we don't chall
(Angelique)"Sit. I made tea."Brynn's got two cups poured on the little table like we're girls catching up, and the wrongness of it crawls up my neck.We’ve never sat down to tea together in all the years we shared a house."What do you want?""I said sit."She doesn’t raise her voice.Brynn never
(Rene)Cole's been in the doorway ten seconds working up to something, which is nine longer than I've got patience for tonight."What?""Our lookout in the town. The one keeping eyes on the roadhouse."He picks each word like giving me the wrong one could explode in his face."The owner's been aski
(Angelique)"This floor's yours. Don't go near the west doors, don't go in the war room, don't talk to anyone who doesn't talk to you first. And don’t even think about going outside alone."Cole hands me a bucket like he's apologizing for it."And Zack?""He’s with the doctor's wife. She likes kids







