Mag-log inI saw a collection of new shorts in one of the drawers, black and gray and I took a pair and quickly put them on. The shorts were short, too short, and they rode up my thighs as I walked. But they fit and they were clean and they were better than standing in his closet naked, thinking about his hands on my body.I walked into the room and saw food already on his table. I did not even wait for an invitation before I started eating. I was starving. My stomach had been empty for seven days, surviving on whatever Asher had managed to get into me while I was unconscious, and the food tasted delicious.The door opened and Adrian walked inside. He had already changed out of whatever he had been wearing. He was carrying reports and files in his hands, stacks of paper that looked like they had been waiting for him for days.I could not help but watch him. I could not help but wonder if he was okay. He was not acting like someone who had been shot with three wolfsbane arrows. He was not grimaci
He was carrying me. Just walking through the hallway with me wrapped around him like I weighed nothing at all, like I belonged there, like this was something we did every day. His hands were under my thighs now, holding me steady, and I could feel the muscles in his back move as he walked. He did not flinch. He did not stumble. He did not show any sign that he had been shot three times less than two weeks ago.I should have been paying attention to that. I should have been cataloging every detail, filing away every piece of evidence, building my case in my head. But all I could think about was the warmth of his body against mine and the way his scent wrapped around me and the fact that I did not want him to put me down."I have questions." I said, and I hated how breathless I sounded. I sniffed his scent without meaning to, deep and greedy, like I was trying to memorize it. Forest rain and dark musk, the same smell that had been on his pillows, the same smell that had wrapped around m
🪷ISORA🪷I did not feel complete without the bond. That was the strangest part of all of this, because I had been the one fighting it from the beginning. I had spent every waking moment since I stepped into this pack pushing it away, ignoring the pull, pretending that my heart did not skip every time he walked into a room. I had cursed the Moon Goddess for tying me to a murderer, had begged Kira to stop reacting to him, had told myself over and over that the bond did not mean anything and I would kill him and I would walk away and I would never think about him again.But sitting on the floor of his study, with the memory of three arrows leaving my bow still fresh in my hands, I felt empty. Hollow. Like someone had reached inside my chest and scooped out everything that made me who I was. There was nothing there. No pull, no tug, no warmth. Just cold, dead silence where the bond used to hum.And I hated how much I missed it.I did not keep track of time when Garrick ran out. I did not
🐺ADRIAN🐺The specific tiredness that moved through me at that sentence was not physical.I felt my mood darken. The last thing I wanted to think about was Esmeralda and her scheming parents and a contract I had never agreed to. My father had made arrangements for me without my consent, had promised me to a woman I did not want, had bound me to a family that only cared about power and status.They thought because we'd been best friends since childhood they could strengthen the family bond by…"Don't ruin what's left of my mood," I said. "Get me out of this room.""You're not healed," he said."Garrick.""The wounds aren't fully closed and the wolfsbane residue is still—""Then I'll heal in my own quarters," I said. "Get me out of this room."He looked at me for a long moment with the expression of a man performing a rapid internal calculation about which argument was worth having and which ones were not, and he arrived at his conclusion the way he usually arrived at it when I used th
🐺ADRIAN🐺She actually shot me.I had known she would, I had counted on her obeying the instruction, had told her not to hesitate and aim for the left chest and fight whatever pull she felt, and she had done all of it with the clean, precise execution of someone who had been training for exactly this kind of moment for years. Three shots. One motion flowing into the next, the specific economy of movement that comes from genuine skill rather than performance. I had watched her through Killian's eyes and seen her pull the arrow and release it and pull the next one before the first had landed, and I had felt all three hit and gone down with the weight of them.What I had not accounted for was the wolfsbane.Feisty little flower.She had coated the arrows. Of course she had. She had come into this pack to kill me and she had maintained the operational details of that objective through everything that had happened between arrival and Winterfell, had kept the wolfsbane on her person throug
⚡GARRICK⚡I knew before the guards finished their report.I knew the moment I counted them coming through the gate and came up one short, and not just any one… the one that mattered, the one whose absence changed everything about what the next days were going to look like for this pack. Ten guards returning without their Alpha, and one servant unaccounted for, and the head guard standing in my study telling me what had happened in Winterfell with the careful, measured delivery of a man who understood that the information he was carrying was significant and was trying not to drop it.I let him finish.I thanked him and dismissed him and waited until the door closed before I sat down behind the desk and pressed both hands flat against the surface and breathed through the specific, cold weight of being the only person in Shadow Pack who understood the full picture of what Adrian walking into Winterfell actually meant.I had grown up with them.Both of them… Adrian and Azrian, the twins,
🪷ISORA🪷I waited thirty more minutes before making my move.My mind kept circling back to what I'd heard Beta Garrick say earlier.Medicine...full moon. Adrian is sick?What kind of sickness required medicine and had something to do with the full moon?I filed it awa
🐺ADRIAN🐺It wasn't that I wanted to protect Isora from Damon.I didn't care, actually.Damon used females as sex slaves, everyone knew that. His pack was notorious for it. And if he wanted to proposition one of my servants, that was his problem, not mine.Except it wasn't me
🪷ISORA🪷I finished making the cookies and juice exactly as ordered—perfectly golden cookies arranged on a silver tray, fresh orange juice in a crystal pitcher. My hands moved mechanically, but my mind was somewhere else entirely.It was like he read my thoughts.How did h
🪷 ISORA 🪷I struggled for air, my hands clawing desperately at his wrist, but Adrian's grip was iron.Unyielding. Merciless.Black spots danced at the edges of my vision. My lungs screamed. My body thrashed uselessly, my feet kicking at nothing but air.But what made it wo







