Chapter 10 The morning After

Odessa

I woke up warm, and for a few perfect seconds, I forgot everything.

Then I felt the weight of an arm around my waist, and the slow breathing against the back of my neck, and the memory of last night hit me all at once. My cheeks went hot. I buried my face in the pillow.

"I can feel you being embarrassed," Evan mumbled into my hair.

"I'm not embarrassed."

"Odessa. I can literally feel it." His arm tightened. I felt him smile against my shoulder, right over the fresh mark, and a shiver ran down my whole body. "It's very cute."

"Stop feeling things."

"Not possible. You're loud."

I rolled over to glare at him and immediately lost the argument. His hair was a mess, his eyes were soft and half-closed, and in the morning light, the color was back in his face. He looked like a man who had slept for the first time in a week. He looked like a man who was happy.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"How do you feel?"

I thought about it. "Strange. Good. Like someone turned the volume up on the whole world."

His brow creased. "Louder how?"

I opened my mouth to answer, and then I heard it.

A door closing on the floor below. A woman humming in the kitchen. Two guards arguing in low voices at the east gate, half a mile away, about who had to take the next shift. A bird on the roof. A heartbeat in the hallway, slow and tired and unmistakably my brother's.

I sat straight up, clutching the sheet. "Evan, I can hear everything."

"Breathe."

"I can hear the kitchen."

"Little wolf, look at me." He sat up too, and his hands came up to frame my face. "Focus on my voice. Just mine. Let the rest go quiet."

I tried. I really did. His voice was warm and steady, and slowly, like water settling, the noise dropped away until there was only his heartbeat, matching mine.

"That's it," he said softly. "You're doing it."

"This is what the sealing did?"

"I think it's what you are." He brushed a thumb along my cheekbone. "It was always there. The bond just woke it up."

A quiet knock landed on the door. Mia's voice came through, careful and dry.

"If you two are decent, Alpha Grayson would like to see you in the war room. Now. Please. Before Josh goes to wake you himself."

Evan winced. "He's not still angry, is he?"

"He's been up since dawn punching a training dummy," Mia said. "I'd say yes."

Evan

The war room was a long stone chamber at the back of the estate, with a table that could seat thirty and maps pinned to every wall. My father stood at the head of it, looking like he'd aged five years overnight. Josh sat at the far end with his arms crossed and a split knuckle he was refusing to acknowledge. Mia stood by the window. And Odessa's father, John, was pacing.

All of them stopped when we walked in.

My father's eyes went to my shoulder, to the mark, and something crossed his face. Relief, mostly. Under it, grief.

"It worked," he said quietly.

"It worked."

"Thank the Goddess."

John crossed the room in four strides and stopped in front of his daughter. He looked at her for a long moment. Then he pulled her into his arms without a word, and I saw her shoulders shake.

I looked away to give them privacy, and caught Josh watching me.

He didn't look angry. That was what surprised me. He looked tired, and a little lost, and he gave a short nod, the tiniest one, before he turned back to the table.

It wasn't forgiveness. But it was a start.

"We have a problem," my father said, once everyone had settled. "Several, actually. First, the Priestess's real reading."

"Mia's grandmother's scrolls," I said.

"I've been through them." Mia spread her fingers across a stack of brown parchment. "There's more than the birth blessing. There's a full account of what happened to the last Lunara, and a line I think we should all hear." She read in a low voice. "The seal protects the thread. But the thread, once woken, calls every wolf that carries moon in its blood."

"What does that mean?" Odessa asked.

"It means," my father said heavily, "that last night's sealing sent out a call. Every moon-blooded wolf in the territory felt it. Every Alpha with a drop of old blood in their line is awake this morning, and wondering where it came from."

"Draven knew before it happened," Josh said. "He said three days. He wasn't lying about that. He was counting on us being too scared to wait."

"He didn't need the three days," John muttered. "He needed us to panic."

"And we did." Odessa's voice was dry. "Beautifully."

I might have laughed, but then the war room doors slammed open, and a young guard stumbled in, wild-eyed and out of breath, with blood on his sleeve.

"Alpha Sorrel. The northern border. They're crossing."

My father went rigid. "How many?"

"All of them, sir. Draven's entire pack. And..." The boy swallowed. "He's carrying a white flag. He says he's coming to negotiate. But he brought the Priestess."

The room went completely silent.

"The Priestess died," my father said slowly. "Eleven years ago."

"Sir," the boy whispered. "That's what I said. But she's alive. And she's walking beside him."

I felt Odessa's fingers close around mine. Her whole body had gone cold.

"Evan," she whispered. "Something's wrong. I can feel her from here, and it's not..."

She stopped.

Her eyes were glowing silver again. When she spoke, her voice had changed, deeper, layered, like two people talking at once.

"That isn't the Priestess."

Every wolf in the room turned to look at her.

"It's wearing her face," Odessa said, "but it isn't her. And it's coming for the bond.”