ログインSloane's POVLucien said, "Stay here."He was already walking, Vince at his shoulder, four sentinels fanning out behind them. The council chamber emptied in a rush of boots and raised voices."Lucien."He turned back at the door. I had never seen him so tired or so careful, as if the words he used would break something."She wants Oscar; she'll come to the house to bargain or to burn it. Either way, I want you where I know you are." He took my face in his hands. "The library, Emma on the door, Nora in the hall—I'll be twenty minutes.""Carl—""It is guarded by eight men, and I will make it twelve."I let him go.The library was the oldest room in Blackstone, a long, quiet cave of oak and leather, and a fire was burning in the grate, and the rain was beginning on the windows. I sat in the chair nearest the door with Bernard's notebook open in my lap and didn't read a word.Bella.
Sloane's POVMore wolves than had ever been in the council chamber.The left benches were occupied by Blackstone's elders. Garrick was among Moonlight's elders on the right, who were sweating through their waistcoats. The long oak table was down the middle, and on it was everything.Black ledger, cracked at the spine. Dampened Bernard's notebook. Still in their rubber band, the bank slips each with a T. A gold-edged cream envelope. In the middle, a sheet of paper, yellowed and flat under a glass weight, in the hand of a dead man.Page seven.I was seated at Lucien's side, and my fingers had grown numb in my lap. He was seated at the head of the table, in his father's chair, and this time he wore the title as if it were his.They took Oscar in at noon.Silver bracelets on his wrists. A silver chain around his neck. A new shirt, as he had requested one even when he was in chains. He was seated at the bottom of the table, back straight, watching the displays like a man watching a strange
Sloane's POVHe thought he'd left me behind. He was wrong.I'd felt the link close, felt that careful, loving lie, and I'd lain in the dark with Carl's hand in mine for exactly four minutes. Then I'd stood up, kissed my brother's forehead, and walked out past Nora without a word."He said stay," Nora said."I know what he said."Emma drove. I followed the bond like a thread through a maze. Through the second bridge. Up the logging track. Down a rutted road I'd never seen, to a grey ridge where a row of cars stood empty with their doors shut.We went the rest of the way on foot, through wet pines, with frost cracking under my boots.I heard him before I saw him."Lucien, my boy." A voice I'd known my whole life. Warm and easy. "You look tired."I came through the last of the trees and stopped.The clearing was small. A stone cabin, shuttered windows, and thin smoke from the chimney. Forty wolves in
Lucien's POVThe dungeon had never smelled so much like my own anger.Theodore sat on the edge of his cot with his hands folded, exactly as he'd sat through every council meeting of my childhood. A grey prison shirt where the silk waistcoat should have been. Two cells down, Ryan lay with his face to the wall, and I made a point of not looking.I dragged the only chair across the stone and set it down in front of Theodore's bars. I didn't sit."Speak.""You'll want to hear my terms first.""I don't negotiate with the man who wrote Remove from fileacross my father's death.""You'll negotiate with me," Theodore said mildly, "because you're out of time, and I'm not.""I have a little boy upstairs with a mask on his face," I said, very softly. "I have a wife who hasn't slept in four days. And I have an old man in front of me who watched me bury my parents and dined on their grave the same evening."
Lucien's POVOscar Bianchi had been running for three days, and I had not slept for any of them.Sloane tried to make me. She stood in the door of the study each night with Carl's blanket over her arm and said my name in the voice she used when she meant it, and each night I kissed her forehead and told her soon.Soon was a lie. I had a hundred wolves in the field and a man who knew every back road in two territories. Sleep was a luxury for me after I put a chain on his throat.So I started with his money."Moonlight's operating accounts," I told Vince at 06:00. "All of them. Freeze them.""On what grounds?""On the grounds that I own the bank."He didn't smile, but his mouth twitched. Moretti Holdings had held Moonlight's paper for six years and bought a debt at a time while Oscar was too busy smiling at me across council tables to notice. I'd never planned to use it. A man ought to hold something in reserve.By noon, the lawyers had frozen four accounts in two countries.By evening,
Sloane's POVThe surgeon was waiting at the hospital wing when we carried him in.She checked his oxygen and his heart, listened to his lungs for a very long time, and finally straightened."He's stable," she said. "Dehydrated, exhausted, and badly frightened. But stable."I sat down on the nearest chair because my legs had stopped working."The surgery," Lucien said."Not tomorrow. His lungs need a few days to recover from the hypoxia. I won't operate on a body that's still fighting." She looked at me kindly. "Let him sleep, Luna. Let him be a little boy for a while."So I did.I sat beside the bed until he'd drifted off with the mask hissing over his face and his hand locked in my sleeve. Then Emma pulled me up by the elbow, and Nora took my place without a word, her knife on the table and her eyes on the door."He's safe," Emma said."I know.""Go to your husband."I almost laughed. I'd forgotten I had one.Lucien was waiting in our room with the lights off.He stood at the window
Sloane's pov.They say Omegas’ don't matter. They reminded us that we are nothing. Thus, someone like me can't dream to be with someone like Lucien. What he did to me back in college also confirmed it.Omegas' like me are treated like we don't belong and I've been made to live with that truth every
Sloane's pov.A knock on Dad's study was all it took. I didn't wait for permission before I twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.Dad was seated on the swivel chair, his hand tapping slowly on the desk. “You really want to do this?” I stopped in front of him and asked.Our eyes locked an
Sloane's pov.The world tilted around me and every sound disappeared like it had totally been ripped away by someone.My lips parted but nothing came out. My fingers tightened around the phone until they began to shake.No.That couldn't be right.Carl can't be dying…..The moment I dropped the cal
Sloane's pov.“Bella is gone!”My heart stuttered before my head snapped to the door. Dad was standing beside the opened door, his face laced with a frown, a glint of anger beaming in his eyes.I stood up from the chair and turned to face him completely, my face twisted in confusion. “What do you m







