LOGINTHEODOSA.The bathroom had no business being this well stocked.I stood in front of the shelf built into the shower wall and looked at the array of products lined up across it. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, all of them dark bottled and clearly male, smelling like something deep and earthy that I was going to pretend I didn't recognize.I used them anyway because what other choice did I have.I lathered my skin with my hands and stood under the water longer than necessary, mostly because it was warm and the room behind me was not particularly inviting. When I finally turned it off and stepped out, the only towel I'd found in the cupboard was thick and white and enormous, which tracked.I dried off and stood there.My clothes were in a pile on the floor. I looked at them. I looked at the cupboard. Then I opened it wider and looked at what else was inside.Dark fabrics, folded. All of them enormous.I pulled out a pair of sweats and a black t-shirt and stood with them in my hands for
XAHEN.I sat at the head of the table and stared at nothing.My mind was running a mile a minute, thoughts tearing through my head in a way I couldn't slow down no matter how hard I pressed against them.Flesh eating soil.So close to my territory that I could walk to it.That kind of soil didn't exist anywhere in the northern realm outside of the Unders. The lower level, where life was entirely nonexistent, where you couldn't move through the land without losing your skin like it had been kissed by acid. Nothing survived down there. Nothing grew. Nothing breathed. It was the most hostile terrain in the entire realm and it existed beneath us like a wound the earth refused to close.And yet that same decayed, rotting soil was encroaching into the borders of my territory.How.More importantly, why.I straightened in my seat and looked around the table.Every single one of my councilors was present and accounted for. All except one.And like she'd intentionally chosen to be fashionably
XAHEN.I stared at the wall in front of me as the water pelted down my entire body.I'd been in this shower long enough to prune.I couldn't bring myself to step out yet.The water was the only thing cooling the fire burning through my veins right now, the only thing keeping the anticipation of what I was about to do from climbing any higher than it already had. I was mere moments from going back to where I kept Theodosa and following through on this.Fucking her.Just thinking it now sent a full body shiver through me that I didn't entirely understand and wasn't going to examine too closely.I wouldn't lie to myself about it. I was nervous.But I was determined.I knew I needed to try this. To exercise it and see it through to the end. It was a slippery slope I was about to embark on and I was under no illusions about that. But what other choice did I have.Because looking at the way things had been occurring, I knew I was at a standstill.It wasn't a matter of wonder or coincidence
THEODOSA.I followed him nervously, keeping a few steps behind as he moved through the palace grounds ahead of me.He didn't pay me a single glance.Not a look, not a moment of his attention, nothing. And yet the pulse between us was there the same way it always was when we were anywhere close to each other. Thick and tense and chaotic, like a rubber band pulled too tight, making me scarily aware of him and myself and what we were to each other in a way I couldn't switch off no matter how much I wanted to.It was easy to forget sometimes that we were mates.That we were bound to each other by something bigger than either of us.Before all of this, I thought a mate bond was one of the most sacred things in the world.I believed in love and soulmates and true bonds with a scary sense of finality. Not just between mates either. I'd spent most of my solitude reading old human romance books alongside the more current wolf ones, losing myself in stories about people finding each other and fa
XAHEN.Every inch of me was lined with tension as I made my way through the palace hallways toward the council room.I pushed the grand doors open and all chatter around the table ceased immediately.All seven of them looked up at me at once.On any other day I wouldn't have been so peeved by it. Today my patience was especially nonexistent."Am I some sort of circus freak?" I asked. "Do I have a red nose? Paint all over my body?"Their gazes fell away from me as they mumbled amongst themselves, sensing the aggression behind the question well enough not to push it.I strode to my chair at the head of the table, pulled it out and slumped down into it."What's the status on Binny Fane?"Draven cleared his throat. "There's still been no word. Neither have we gotten even the slightest communication from the men we sent out." He glanced across the table before looking back to me. "None of our ships have returned either. Partie and Afnie haven't gotten a whiff of anything. It's almost like.
XAHEN.I balanced my weight on the thick branch and stared down at my prey.The bear hadn't noticed me.It was too focused on the triple-horned deer pinned beneath it to notice much of anything. The northern sectors magic fashioned it with six limbs, four of them front-facing, all of them currently doing the work of tearing the poor thing apart.The deer was still alive. Its eyes were already going dim. The deer knew it was over even if its body hadn't caught up yet.The bear ate without looking up once, tearing into its stomach and feasting, completely oblivious to everything above it.I was ready to attack.But I didn't. Yet.My lip curled in annoyance.Not because of the bear. The bear was the least of my concerns right now.It was my shadows.A small spark of nervousness ran through my chest at the thought of them and I resented the hell out of it. I'd had Theodosa pinned to that cabin wall, my hands around her throat, and my shadows had just vanished on me. Mid-command. Like they
THEODOSA. I should try to escape. The thought had been circling my mind like a vulture for hours—maybe days—waiting for me to be desperate enough to actually consider it. I stared at the bars of my cell, then down at the silver chains on my wrists. The burns were worse now. Red and weeping,
XAHEN.“Search the western wing again. Every closet, every crawl space. If a mouse moves, I want to know about it.”My voice seemed to bite into the walls of the throne room. The guard didn't even look up. He simply bowed, his shoulders hunched in fear, and scrambled away. I watched his retreating
THEODOSA.Ten years.I drew back from the bars, the weight of those two words crushing down on me like a boulder.Ten years locked in this cell? Ten possible years waiting for a king who believed I was his twice-over betrayer. Ten years hoping he'd shift back into a man who wanted me dead anyway?W
THEODOSA.Obsidian in the daytime was a different beast entirely.The streets that had felt like a death trap my first night here were now just streets. Busy ones filled with people who looked like they had places to be and things to do. Stall vendors shouted over each other trying to attract custo







