로그인(Brynn)Nobody sends for me anymore.That's the first thing about being free.Twenty-one years of sent for, countless hours spent in her sitting room, running her errands, learning her scripts, and now whole mornings go by where no one requires me at all.I sit in my room like a phone with no signal, and apparently this is what I fought for.My mother's buried.My father's been buried ten years, and I spent every one of them believing a rogue did it.His love for me was the purest thing I’d known in my life and he was taken when I was so young.Last week I sat in a hall and learned she held the knife herself.She murdered my father.Then she raised me to poison his other daughter.That's my inheritance.I renounced the rest on paper.By noon I can't stand my own company anymore, so I walk aimlessly.Nobody stops me.Nobody follows me anymore either.Freedom's mostly a list of things that stopped it seems.Out the side window, on the drive, I see Tova, one-armed, trying to wrestle a fe
(Rene)Knox reads the ruling at nine and it takes him under a minute."For colluding with Maliyah Pruitt. For the murder of Beta Theodore Pruitt. For ten years of concealment. For a killing done in Warden's custody, before this council's eyes."He doesn't raise his voice."Death. And by the law of this pack, the sentence belongs to the Alpha's hand. Dusk today."The hall empties quietly.Nobody looks at me on the way out.Cole stays."I can find precedent for a proxy," he says. "Old cases. Nobody would blame you-""No.""Rene-""He’s my father. He doesn't get a stranger."Cole nods once and goes to build a dusk I don't want to arrive.The cell is clean and my father is sitting on the cot like a man waiting for a train.He looks old.He's looked old for years and I called it grief and age, and now I know it was neither, it was a woman avenging his refusal to crown her.And he brought it on himself. I don't know where to put that so I push it aside."You came," he says. "Good. Sit down,
(Rene)They draw the circle in the same hall where Maliyah died yesterday, because Knox says the law doesn't care about ghosts.Chalk on stone.Valeria in the center, unchained.Brynn at the edge with a paper in her fist.Knox presiding, and me on the mark they told me to stand on, over a stain nobody's managed to scrub out.My father is in a cell under this floor. Sentence comes tomorrow.That's all the room I'm giving that tonight."Beneficiary," Knox says.Brynn steps up.She reads it fast and flat, like ripping tape off."I, Brynn Pruitt, named beneficiary, renounce the claim purchased in my name. Crown, standing, inheritance. Unmake it.""Caster."Valeria kneels at the chalk and puts both palms flat on the stone.No drama.A woman letting herself into a house she built."Alpha," Knox says to me. "You'll feel it."I feel it.It starts as the old pressure I always put down to pain over losing my fated mate.Then it turns into a vice.A fist that closes on my heart four times, and I
(Cole)By nine the hall that held a crowning holds a court, and I've got wolves on every door and a bad feeling I can't assign a post to.Twelve council seats.Knox presiding.Two prisoners' chairs, set apart.Maliyah takes hers like it's the head of a table.Valeria takes hers like it's a bus seat.Rene stands at the rail with Angelique.Brynn sits alone in the second row, and I sent Tova to sit behind her, because somebody should, and Tova's the only one who'd agree.Victor sits with the pack.Not accused yet.Confessed, but not yet charged.Levi Know runs his floor in a particular order, and I've stopped trying to predict it."This council convenes on three matters," Knox says.No gavel. His voice just makes the room go quiet on its own."A capital working purchased against Alpha Beck. The murder of Beta Theodore Pruitt, ten years past. And collusion with the circle that conducted both."The morning goes the way evidence goes.Slow, then all at once.Marta's page from Theodore Prui
(Angelique)Rene shuts the bedroom door and says, "Before the council sits, I need to give you something. It's ugly.""More ugly than this week?""Different ugly. Mine."He stays standing, which is how I know he’s worried."The restaurant. When I told you Brynn tastes sweeter."My stomach drops the way it dropped then.Stupid, that a few words can still do that after everything that’s happened between us."It was a lie. All of it. I never touched her. Not once. Not before you left, not in the five years I thought you were dead, not after."His jaw works."I wanted to hurt you the exact way you'd hurt me, and I aimed for the one place I knew you couldn't armor. So I invented it, and I watched it cause you pain, and I enjoyed it."I already suspected as much, but couldn’t be sure."Why tell me now?""Because in three days I stand in front of a council and swear to tell the truth, and I'm not walking in there with a lie still living in my own house. And because you cringe when she walks
(Brynn)They send for me before I've finished my coffee, which tells me everything about my standing in this house now.Not invited.Sent for.The study's crowded.Rene behind the desk.Angelique by the window, keeping her face neutral in a way that must take effort.The Warden in the good chair, and Cole by the door like furniture with opinions."Sit," Rene says."I'll stand. Whatever this is, I’m sure it won’t take long."Levi Knox smiles like I've said something pleasant.I hate that about him.You can't land anything on the man.It all just sinks in and disappears, and he looks at you like he saw where it came from."Your mother made the Alpha an offer," he says."Her life for the unbinding of the working. She believes she's the only door out.""She usually is.""Not this time."And then he lays it out, plain, the way you'd explain a recipe.Capital workings fall under Warden's law.The unbinding takes the hand that cast it, and they have that hand, sitting in a cell, already trad
(Angelique)Gold.His eyes have gone gold.Wolf-gold, the color the eye turns when the animal comes up to the surface to look out.The exact thing I've spent years making sure mine never do where a human can see.So either Parker isn't human.Or I've finally lost it."Quiet," he says, before I can
(Angelique)The bell over the door is still swinging when my knees give out.I catch the edge of the booth before I hit the floor.There's broken glass and debris everywhere.The pitcher, two plates, the tray. Damaged stock comes out of my wages. That's the thought my brain hands me.Not he's here.
(Rene)The Murphys are already on their feet when I close the distance to her."Get out," I say without turning my head. "Now."The bell rings, leaving us alone in the room.She is shaking.Mine. Protect. Claim. Take her. Mark her.I push my wolf down, warning him to be quiet. Angelique is shaking
(Angelique) Five years ago, I ran away from my mate.I was pregnant, terrified, and convinced leaving was the only way to protect my child.Now I'm twenty-six years old, living in a rundown trailer in a human town that doesn't know werewolves exist. I work double shifts at a diner, hide my scent w







