LOGINLiz’s POVEveryone else had gone, but I stayed there, my eyes still on the place Lumian had just been. Guilt resting in my heart. I could stop all of this…I gasped, my hand flying to my heart as pain flashed through me so suddenly I stumbled back. The pain held me there, my hand pressed hard against my chest as I tried to understand what had just happened.It felt like a bond.Not a wound or magic burning through me. A bond.My eyes shot towards where Arthur had gone.‘Arthur?’ I called through the mind link. My hand is still gripping my chest.Nothing.My heart slammed against my ribs.‘Arthur, answer me.’Still nothing.Panic rushed up so fast it stole the air from my lungs.I didn’t think.I moved.My feet carried me across the courtyard, past guards and parents and Alphas shouting orders I couldn’t hear. My hand stayed pressed to my chest like I could hold whatever had just snapped inside me together.‘Arthur.’Nothing.My breath came faster.‘Arthur, please answer me.’Still no
Robert’s POVI kept my eyes on Lumian, not the hybrids around me. They were close enough that I could hear the wet sound of their breathing, but I didn’t look. If I looked, I would look scared, and my chance to do something good would be over before it started.Lumian’s eyes burned into mine.“Why are you here?”I took a step forward. The hybrids growled, the sound rolling around me so loud it nearly swallowed my words. “I came to see you.”His head tilted to one side as he studied me.I breathed in through my nose, trying to find the scent of the children, but there was nothing. No crying. No small bodies hidden close by. Nothing for my wolf to grab onto and follow.Lumian’s eyes dropped to my neck for a second.Then he nodded.Dust lifted around us as the hybrids vanished, leaving me alone with him.That should have made me feel better.It didn’t.His eyes were darker now, the veins in them shifting under the skin. Hunger crossed his face, quick and ugly. I stayed where I was.“They’
Frank’s POVI stared at the photo until the edges bent under my fingers. I could feel Melissa next to me, but I didn’t look at her. Every inch of me focused on the photo, trying to remember, but the harder I tried, the more something inside my head pushed back.A dull pain started behind my eyes.I ignored it.My eyes stayed on the younger version of myself, on Angelica’s hand wrapped around my arm, on Melissa standing on the other side of me with a look on her face I did not understand but felt somewhere deep in my chest.Why didn’t I remember this?The pain began to burn.My fingers dug harder into the photo as I tried to focus the memory to come. Pain tore through my skull so fast everything around me began to spin.“Frank,” Melissa said beside me.I barely heard her.The photo blurred in front of me, but I kept staring, trying to force the memory open. There was something there. Something hidden behind a wall I could feel but could not break through. My wolf clawed at it from the
Frank’s POVThe courtyard was still full of noise, but none of it stayed with me.Orders were being shouted. Warriors were moving. Parents were crying into each other while guards tried to clear a path through the mess Lumian had left behind, and I was meant to be helping. I was meant to be thinking about the army, the gates, the children, the hour we had been given before another life was ripped apart.But all I could see was gold.Liz’s hands glowing as that light poured out of her.I’d seen that magic before my heart knew that magic because it belonged to my bloodline.To my pack.The Sun Wolves.The noise in the courtyard disappeared completely, and I was no longer standing in the middle of a kingdom preparing for war. I was a boy again, watching my mother stand beneath the morning light with gold burning around her hands.She used to tell me our magic was not like witchcraft. It was not taken from the world. It was born from it. From the sun, from the wolf, from the blood that ran
Lumian’s POVI paced along the broken edge of the old watchtower, the horn still in my hand, my eyes locked on the courtyard below. Guards rushed through the royal city like ants, small and useless from where I stood, but Arthur was nowhere to be seen.Neither was Liz.My grip tightened around the horn.She should have been coming by now.I had seen her face when the boy changed. I had felt the way her horror reached across the distance and fed something deep inside me. But most of all, I saw the longing in her eyes when she looked at me. “I told you it wouldn’t work,” I snapped, turning as Angelica stepped into the doorway.“It will,” she said.Her calm voice scraped against the hunger moving under my skin. The part of me that wanted to go back down there, tear through the gates and drag Liz out myself. The part that wanted Arthur’s blood.Angelica walked towards me.“You know she won’t be able to sit there and do nothing,” she said. “And once she is away from Arthur…” She stopped b
Robert’s POVThe second the words left my mouth, every eye in the courtyard turned on me. I had known they would.I had stepped out of the shadows, knowing exactly what they would see when they looked at me. Not a man trying to help or someone who had once tried to protect Liz in the only weak, useless ways I had known how.They saw Blackthorn.They saw Lumian.They saw the Beta who had stood beside him for years.I would have hated me too. Arthur's eyes filled with rage the second they saw me, his wolf flashing through them. I swallowed deep, forcing my heart to stay steady. I looked past Arthur, seeing Liz standing there, pale and shaking, her eyes locked on me like she didn’t understand how I could be here. Or maybe she did. Maybe she had already guessed the army had dragged me back from the punishment barracks, the second Lumian showed his face.“Robert,” Hearing her say my name still hurt.Not because there was hope in it.There wasn’t.It hurt because I remembered every time s







