LOGINLola's POV
Cara arrived with Tim and two guards within minutes. They took the unconscious man away. I barely heard. Morgan gave short answers. His voice was steady despite the blood still seeping through the shawl I held against his arm.
Then they left. Cara promised to handle everything. Said a doctor was on the way. Told us to stay put.
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Lola's POVThe fire had burned down to low orange coals by the time we slipped away from the celebration.Nobody stopped us. A few people smiled. Sera, who had been watching the whole evening from her usual spot near the food table, gave me a small nod that felt like a blessing. Evelyn caught my eye from across the field and raised her cup without saying a word. That was enough.Morgan held my hand the whole walk back. He didn't say anything, and I didn't either. Some moments don't need filling. This was one of them.The pack house was quieter now as we moved to our room, most people still outside, voices and laughter drifting through the open windows. He led me upstairs. Closed the door. And when the latch clicked shut, something in my chest finally settled. The last tight thing let go.I turned to face him.He was looking at me the way he had looked at me in the clearing earlier. Like he still couldn't quite believe we were here. Like he was checking, one more time, that I was real.
Lola's POVThe morning of the wedding, I woke up before the sun.I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time, just listening. The pack house was already awake. I could hear movement downstairs, voices carrying up through the walls, the soft sounds of people preparing for something they had all chosen to be part of. Not because they were ordered to. Because they wanted to.That was the part that still caught me off guard, even now, the choosing.Evelyn came in an hour after sunrise with a tray of food I barely touched and spent the next two hours doing my hair with the focused silence of someone who understood that this moment didn't need a lot of words around it. She braided sections back from my face and wove small white flowers through the rest, and when she finished, she stood behind me and looked at my reflection in the mirror."You look like yourself," she said. "That's the best thing I can say."I reached back and squeezed her hand.The ceremony was held in the open
Lola's POVElder Mara found me the next morning.I was sitting alone in the small garden at the back of the pack house, drinking tea and staring at nothing in particular. My mind was still moving through everything that had happened, replaying pieces of it the way you do when something large has shifted, and your brain hasn't fully caught up yet.I heard footsteps on the stone path and looked up. Elder Mara was one of the oldest members of the council, a small woman with careful eyes and grey hair neatly pulled back. She had been on the council for decades but had never aligned herself with Joseph's faction. During yesterday's confrontation, she had been the first council member to step away from him.She stopped a few feet from my bench. "May I sit?"I nodded.She sat down slowly and folded her hands in her lap. For a moment, she just looked at the garden. Then she said, "I owe you an apology."I didn't say anything. I waited."I knew about the witch," she said. "The one who came to
Lola's POVThe hall was quiet now.Joseph was gone. The soldiers who had come with him had either been detained or had walked out on their own, heads down, avoiding eye contact with anyone. The council members who had arrived so confidently behind him had slipped out one by one during the confusion, leaving behind only the echo of everything that had just happened.Morgan stood in the middle of the room, looking at the damage, overturned furniture, scattered documents, and a long crack in the wall where someone had been thrown against it. His arm was still bandaged from the garden. He hadn't complained once."We need to move fast," he said. "Joseph's people are still in the territory. Some of them won't accept what just happened. They'll push back."He was right. Within the hour, reports started coming in.Three of Joseph's loyalists had barricaded themselves in the east wing of the pack house, refusing to stand down. Two more had been found trying to destroy documents in the archiv
Lola's POVThe name on the paper was Elder Joseph.The man who had pressured me to marry Flint. Who had sat across from my family and laid out consequences like cards on a table. Who had been woven into the fabric of council life for as long as I could remember. He had been there at the beginning of all of it, not watching the conspiracy unfold, but driving it.Morgan and I drove back from Karen's cabin in silence. There was nothing to say that the weight in the car wasn't already saying. We had a name. We had Karen's testimony. What we didn't have was the kind of hard, documented proof that could stand up to a council that Joseph himself had helped build. We needed time to gather it properly.Joseph didn't give us time.Tim came through the office door the next morning, pale-faced and without preamble. Elder Joseph was at the gates. Five council members are with him. Twenty soldiers. A warrant for my arrest on charges of treason and conspiracy against the crown.The same charges th
Lola's POVI drove back with one hand on the wheel and the envelope pressed against my side, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds. The feeling of being watched had not faded. If anything, the farther I got from the palace, the heavier it settled.Morgan was waiting at the gates when I pulled through. He opened my door, looked at my face, then at the envelope, and didn't ask unnecessary questions, just walked me inside and locked his office door behind us.I told him what Abraham had said. The forged evidence. The silence he had chosen. The name of the organisation connected to my parents' deaths. Morgan spread the envelope's contents across the desk: documents, photographs, pages of handwritten notes, and we stood over them together, beginning to make sense of the edges of something much larger than either of us had anticipated.Then his phone rang.He answered, listened, and his expression shifted in the particular way it did when information arrived that changed the shape
Lola’s POVMorgan’s hand slid from my shoulder and settled on my waist. My body stiffened instantly. Heat rushed up my neck, not from attraction but from the audacity of it.“Take your hand off,” I said quietly, each word sharp. “That wasn’t part of the agreement.”His smile curved, smug and slow.
The Third POVFlint pushed through the doors, not looking back even once. Amy tried to follow, calling after him, but he didn’t slow down. He didn’t want anyone near him, not Amy, not his friends, and especially not Morgan or Lola.He moved fast, his anger pushing him toward the trees at the edge
Flint’s POVI regret it now. Letting Morgan get close to Lola was the biggest mistake I could have made. I thought I was being clever, thought I was testing him, thought that if she spent time with him, I would see her lose interest and finally forget me. Instead, it has backfired. She looks brig
Lola’s POVThe silence between us stretched after I finally gave in. My cheeks were still damp from crying, and Morgan hadn’t said another word. He leaned back in his chair like he had all the time in the world. My heart beat too fast, but I forced myself to sit straighter.I waved to the waiter.







