LOGINWhat happens when you discover you come from a bloodline powerful enough to make entire kingdoms whisper its name in fear, only to learn you were born without a single trace of the power everyone expected you to carry? What happens when the very people who should have loved you unconditionally decide instead that your existence itself was a mistake requiring correction? They call me the Bloodless. Not because I am weak. Not because I am powerless. I am neither of those pitiful things. I have simply never carried the particular gift my bloodline was supposed to pass down through my own veins. And somehow, in the cruelest joke this realm has ever played on a newborn child, that absence has made people fear me more than the power itself ever could have. Because The Bloodless was never supposed to exist at all. They look at you the way you look at spilled milk. Something gone wrong the moment it happened, something that never should have been allowed to happen in the first place. And
💫RAYNE💫 It was my first kiss. And I was being kissed by an Alpha. Not just any Alpha. But THE Alpha Prince Warren, taking my mouth in the middle of wanting to kill a man standing only feet away from us both. In front of Ronan, who I could not see but could absolutely feel watching every single second of it unfold. His mouth crashed against mine before my own mind had finished processing that it was even happening at all. I did not know if I meant to push him away or pull him closer. My hands hovered somewhere between his chest and my own sides, frozen, useless, while the rest of my body simply stopped listening to whatever logic still tried functioning inside my own skull. His lips moved slow and deliberate against mine at first, testing, like he expected me to fight him, and when I didn't, when my whole body simply went soft and pliant against his instead, something in the kiss shifted entirely. He bit down gently against my bottom lip, and a soft gasp tore loose from my own
🩸WARREN🩸Heat crawled up the back of my neck, sudden and total, my whole spine locking rigid where I stood at the treeline. My fingers curled hard enough into my palm that the torn scrap of her dress crumpled fully inside my fist, forgotten entirely.I could not tell anymore whether the fury climbing violent through my own chest belonged to me or to Kian pacing wild beneath the surface. It did not matter. Both of us wanted exactly the same thing in that single, blinding moment.I crossed the distance faster than conscious thought could properly track, closing the space in one motion and yanking the bastard clean away from her, hard enough that he stumbled off his feet and hit the ground rolling through wet leaves.Rayne's eyes went wide. "Mal!"She screamed his name in genuine terror and scrambled up, running straight toward him.Toward him?!"Are you okay?" Her voice cracked with real fear, both hands already reaching fast for his face, tilting his chin, checking him over like his
🩸WARREN🩸Her torn piece of cloth stayed clenched tight in my fist the entire walk toward the eastern border, the burgundy fabric already gone stiff with dried blood I had refused to let a single soul touch since I picked it up off that forest floor.I hated being wrong.I hated the particular flavor of it, bitter and permanent, settling low in my chest whenever the Moon Goddess decided this was the week to remind me exactly how little control I actually held over my own life despite twenty-four years of pretending otherwise. I hated it even more knowing she had likely orchestrated every single piece of tonight, down to the last drop of blood soaked into this scrap of cloth, purely for the pleasure of watching me squirm beneath a prophecy I had sworn, repeatedly, to defy.And still, walking through this particular stretch of border with her scent clinging faint and stubborn to fabric pressed hard into my own palm, some small, furious part of me wanted, desperately, to be wrong about
💫RAYNE💫When I opened my eyes again, I was cold.Not the ordinary cold of stone and thin fabric. This cold had settled deep inside my own bones, a chill that felt like it had been placed there deliberately rather than simply accumulated from the room around me.I curled into myself immediately, my teeth already beginning to chatter.Where am I?I tried to sit up. My body felt heavier than it had before, every limb sluggish and slow to respond. I looked around, and the room stared back the same as always. Same stone. Same narrow window. Same locked door.But something felt different.I looked down at my own hands, and my breath caught hard in my throat.Blood.My palm was bleeding. I stared at it in confusion, turning my hand slowly over to examine it properly. A fresh knife mark cut clean across the center of my palm, the edges still raw and weeping.My heart began hammering faster."No."I touched the cut carefully, wincing at the fresh sting of it. It hurt, sharp and immediate.Th
💫RAYNE💫I stared at him through the narrow opening between our cells, barely believing what my own eyes were showing me."Mal?"His face softened with something close to relief, the same warmth I remembered from that courtyard, from oranges scattered across stone and a laugh that had nothing calculated behind it. "Rapunzel."Neither of us said anything for several long seconds. I pressed my fingers against the cold stone beside the opening, testing the width of it, trying to close whatever distance still separated us without knowing whether the wall itself would allow anything more than sight to pass between."What are you doing here?"Mal glanced toward the corridor behind him before answering, his eyes flicking quick and careful. "I got captured too."My brows pulled together, confusion tangling fast with the relief still flooding through my chest. "You?"He nodded. "There was a war at Shadow Pack."My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "A war?""Last night."Warren.The







