LOGINKieran's jaw flexed. "And if he's behind it?""Then I'll make sure he can't wriggle out of it." Her voice didn't waver. "I want proof, Kieran. Real proof. Not a copied sigil on a tree. If I move against him without it, he becomes a martyr, and half the Court that voted for me turns around and asks why I hunted a man who was following the terms I agreed to.""He doesn't deserve....""I know what he deserves." She crossed the room and stopped in front of him, resting both hands on his chest. "I know exactly what he deserves. But I'm not the girl who gets handed a verdict anymore. I'm the one who makes it. And I'm going to make it with my eyes open."Kieran stared down at her for a long moment. She could feel his anger through the bond, hot and wild, fighting against the one thing that had always tamed it.His voice dropped. "He tested the wards that protect you. And them.""I know.""I can't stand it.""I know." She slid her hands up to his face. "That's why I need you at my side and no
The wards screamed before Marcus did.Elara felt it in the study, her palm still resting on the cooling amber crystal. A sharp, wrong tug at the edge of her awareness, like someone plucking a single thread out of a tapestry she hadn't known she was wearing. The Shadowmere wards had been woven into her magic ever since the Awakening, and she felt them the way she felt her own pulse.Something had touched them."East," she said, before the door even opened. "It's the eastern border."Marcus stood in the doorway, breathing hard, his dark jacket streaked with mud. Behind him, all three brothers had already gathered in the corridor, the bond between them lit with the same cold alertness."You felt it too," Marcus said."It felt like a hand," Elara said slowly. "Testing a door."Alaric's jaw tightened. "Show us."***By the time they got there, the mist hadn't burned off yet. It clung low between the pines, pale and wet, and the only sound was the creak of leather and the muffled fall of ho
"Mine.""You're the one it's written about." His thumb traced a slow circle on the back of her hand. "I don't want Kieran and Caspian reading it over your shoulder and making it into a war before you've had the chance to understand what it is. And I don't want them carrying the weight of it before you do."She wanted to argue. It rose in her throat, the old reflex of a woman who had spent most of her life being told what she was and what she was for. But she could hear the difference in his voice. He wasn't deciding for her. He was offering her the choice first, the way he'd promised her in the hospital wing, when she'd still been half-drowned in medicine and fear."Aldric," she said slowly. "He told me to bring him anything about the prophecy before I told anyone else.""Then that's where it starts.""And Lysandra?" She looked down at the parchment again. "She's still in the archives. She's alone with it.""She's been alone with things for three hundred years," Alaric said dryly. "I
Elara woke to grey light and the scent of woodsmoke.For a moment she didn't move. She lay still beneath the heavy blanket, listening to the house settle around her. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers. Somewhere below, a door closed softly. The bond hummed in her chest, warm and full, and beneath it she could feel the three of them like points of heat scattered through the Shadowmere walls.Kieran was still asleep. She could feel him through the bond, his breathing slow and even, one arm still heavy across her hip. He had not let go once all night. Even in sleep, his body was curled around hers like a wall.She turned her head carefully, so she wouldn't wake him.The space beside her was empty.Not cold, though. Someone had been there and left recently.She sat up slowly, pushing the hair out of her face, and her gaze found the window seat.Alaric sat there with his back against the stone frame and one knee drawn up, a cup of coffee cooling in his hand. He was still dres
Up. Down. The wet slap of their bodies filled the room. Her breasts bounced against his chest, her hair swinging, her hands scrabbling at his shoulders for something to hold. He was so strong, so effortless, using her body like it weighed nothing, and the helplessness of it, the total surrender, sent heat ripping through her."You feel that?" he rasped. "Every inch. Every fucking inch of me.""Yes!" she sobbed. "I feel everything....Kieran, it's too much....""Is it?" He slowed, lifting her agonizingly high again. "Tell me to stop."She couldn't. The words wouldn't come. She shook her head wildly instead, and he laughed, dark and breathless, and slammed her down again.The pace broke into a relentless rhythm. Lift, drop, lift, drop, each stroke harder than the last. Her cries turned ragged, then desperate. Her thighs burned. Her pussy was so sensitive, so swollen, that every thrust sent a fresh wave of overwhelming sensation crashing through her."Please," she gasped. "Please, Kieran,
Kieran looked at her and then he steped back by two steps and Elara nearly cried for him to come back.He looked at her from where he stood and said. "Show me what you were thinking about just now before i entered."She should have been embarrassed. Instead, heat flooded her, pooling low in her belly. She let her head fall back against the tile and slid her fingers through her slick folds again, slowly, deliberately, while his gaze devoured every movement."Fuck," he breathed. "Do you have any idea what you look like right now?""Tell me.""Like mine." He crowded closer, one hand slamming flat against the wall beside her head. "Like every filthy thing I've ever wanted, dripping wet and begging to be ruined.""I'm not begging." Elara said.His smile was pure wolf. "Not yet."He caught her wrist and pulled her hand away, and before she could protest, he brought her fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean. His tongue swirled around each one, his eyes never leaving hers, and she felt t
Kieran: Kieran had been running patrol for hours when her scent hit him like a fist to the chest.It stopped him mid-stride, his massive paws skidding in the dirt as his wolf threw its head back and howled inside his mind. The sound was primal, desperate, triumphant...a cry that echoed through eve
Elera:The town didn't exist on any map.Elara had checked three times....once on her phone before the signal died somewhere between the last gas station and the mountains, once on the printed directions her grandmother's lawyer had sent, and once more on the GPS that had given up entirely twenty m
Alaric:Alaric had faced down rival packs, survived assassination attempts, and watched his father die in his arms.But sitting across from this tiny human woman who was glaring at him like she wanted to set him on fire was somehow more unsettling than all of that combined.The cottage was small, t
The words hung in the air like a death sentence.Elara's lungs forgot how to work."What?" she managed."The mate bond," Kieran said from behind Alaric. He sounded almost... apologetic? "When you touched me....when the bond snapped into place....it bound you to all three of us. You're our mate, Ela







