登入ANOKAIThree months had passed since the ritual, and most mornings I woke up before any of them did.That morning was the same.I lay there for a while just listening to four different kinds of breathing around me, feeling the bond hum quietly underneath everything the way it always did now, steady and warm, nothing pulling or aching or twisting the way it used to.Nikolai stirred first, the way he always did, his arm tightening around me without him fully waking, and I let myself stay there a few more minutes before easing out from under it. The packhouse was different now too.Not in any way you could point to exactly, the walls were the same walls, the halls were the same halls, but the air in it had changed. People didn’t flinch when the brothers walked past anymore. Maids didn’t go quiet and shrink against walls.There was laughter in the kitchens some mornings, actual laughter, and the first time I’d heard it I’d stood in the hallway for a long moment just listening because I ha
ANOKAIThe grounds had never held this many people.I stood at the top of the steps in front of the packhouse and looked out at all of it, the merged territories laid out below in the firelight, faces from Shadowcrest mixed in with faces from packs that had been enemies a few weeks ago, all of them gathered in the same open space because the new alpha king had called for it and nobody refused that call anymore.Torches lined the edges of the crowd. The night was warm for once, no full moon hanging over us this time, just ordinary stars and ordinary dark, and somehow that made it feel like something was finally allowed to be simple.The brothers stood with me. Emiriel on one side, then Nikolai, then Malachi, then Rowan, all of them dressed the way they had been for the selection, formal and dark and impossibly imposing, and I stood in the middle of them in a dress the same midnight blue as that night, and I could feel every eye on the grounds find us and stay there.The priestess waite
ANOKAII woke up and the first thing I noticed was that the ceiling was made of wood. I knew that ceiling. Shadowcrest, the healer’s hut. My body felt heavy, like I’d been sleeping for years but I felt the anxiety slowly releasing the hold it had on my body.I turned my head, they were there. All four of them, sitting in chairs, standing by the wall. They looked like hell, tired, and worried.Emiriel saw my eyes open first, he was at my side in a second. His hand wrapped around mine. It was warm. Solid.“Anokai,” he said. His voice cracked.“Hey,” I managed. My throat was dry. Rowan came over. He didn’t say anything, he put a hand on my forehead, like he was checking for fever. His touch was rough but gentle.“Six days,” Malachi said from near the window. He pushed his glasses up. “You scared the life out of us.”Nicholas just watched me. His silver eyes didn’t blink. They told me what happened, how they found me in the glade after everything went dark, how they brought me back. The
ANOKAII’m here. The voice was quiet and certain and completely real, sitting in the hollow space inside me that had been empty for days, and I held very still inside myself the way you held still when something wild came close and you didn’t want to scare it away.Why, I thought,why now, why haven’t you been here, where have you been while all of this was happening to me?There was a pause, and then her voice came again, slower, like she was choosing how to explain something complicated. Restricted.She said it simply, and the meaning came with it, not just the word but the understanding underneath it, the way the curse that lived in the brothers was the same thing that lived in me, the same power transferred through the bond, and it put limits on her the same way it put limits on them.She could only come when the danger was absolute. When there was nothing else left. Every other time, if she came freely, if I could call her at will the way other wolves called theirs, the power woul
ANOKAIThe pain wasn’t the kind that left marks. That was the thing about what Orana did, it didn’t touch my skin or my bones, it went somewhere deeper and more private than that, reached into the space behind my eyes where my wolf lived and pulled at her like trying to drag something out of water that didn’t want to come, and every session left me feeling like I’d been wrung out from the inside.She’d been at it for a full day. The routine had shaped itself without anyone announcing it. Orana would come in and sit across from me and put her hands up and say something low and rhythmic under her breath and then the pulling would start, that intrusive searching feeling behind my eyes, pressing into the space where my wolf had been, and I’d sit through it and feel nothing give and eventually she’d stop and leave me alone for a while before coming back to try again.My wolf wasn’t just quiet anymore.She was gone. The voice I’d been hearing in fragments and at desperate moments for months
EMIRIELShe was nowhere to be found . Basil said the words and I heard them and my brain did the thing it had been doing for five days which was try to find a way to make the information mean something different from what it meant, try to find a version of it that didn’t land the way it landed.There was no other version.Every single one of her things was packed out. Nothing left. No note, no trace, no indication of when she’d decided to go or where she’d gone to, just an empty house that looked like someone had erased the evidence of themselves from it deliberately and carefully.Orana hadn’t come back after the night of the attack. The realization spread through me cold and slow as I sat there going through the timeline, placing everything in order, looking for where I’d missed it.She’d been in that corridor when we were leaving. She’d stood there looking worried and capable and exactly like someone who was trying to help, and we’d been exhausted and scared and desperate enough to
EMIRIEL’S POV. “It’s such an honor that you’ve opened your pack up to receive people now, Lord Emiriel. This would do us more good.” One alpha said. “If we had known that all it would take you is a bride, we would have given you one.” Another added. “We would love to make trades with you. The B
ANOKAI’S POV.For someone whose life was in disarray, getting multiple threats and about to be married to monsters in human clothing, I slept so well. Even so much better than I had since getting to the Shadowcrest pack. According to Rissa, my personal maid, the wedding was to take place in the ev
ANOKAI’S POV.The car that picked me from the pack house finally stopped in front of a large building, and my heart stopped with it. There were other cars outside, large, expensive-looking cars. When the alphas had told me other alphas would be present, I had thought maybe neighboring alphas, but w
ANOKAI’S POVThe ceremony dissolved into conversations and group meetings afterwards. After the marking ritual, Rissa had arrived to help me change into something simpler than the ball gown I was wearing. I would have loved to just retire for the night and forget this, but Basil had been with us, l







