MasukThe council meeting had been a waste of time.
Kaelan sat at the head of the long obsidian table, fingers drumming once against the arm of his chair as the elders droned on about border patrols and supply lines. Their voices blurred into meaningless noise. His mind was elsewhere else. Specifically, two floors up in the eastern wing where Celeste was likely still standing against that corridor wall, chee
The vision released both of them at the same time.Seraphine’s knees hit the cracked stone hard. Smoke already filled the upper part of the corridor. Her lungs burned. Beside her, Celeste was on all fours, her hair hanging around her face, still shaking from whatever they had just witnessed.Seraphine had seen it too.The shirtless Alpha with the same tattoos Kaelan carried. The way he had begged. The pendant pressed into Lyssara’s hand. The elders’ blades rising and falling. The mountain drinking the blood of its own Alpha.She turned her head
The vision took her without warning. One moment Celeste was on her knees in the council room, the silver light still burning from her hands as the runes fought back. The next moment the smoking chamber vanished and she stood in another room entirely. It was older, colder, lit by the same red glow that had haunted every vision since the seal began to break.She knew this place.This was the chamber where Lyssara had once found the truth.A man stood in the center of it.He was shirtless. Dark tattoos covered his shoulders, his arms, and the full length of his back
The mountain was burning.Kaelan ran through the upper corridor with one arm raised against the heat. Smoke poured through the broken arches. Somewhere to his left an entire section of the outer wall had cracked open and now glowed from the inside, as if the stone itself had turned into coal. Red light pulsed through every fissure. The air tasted of ash and hot metal.He had seen this before.The dream came back in pieces while he moved. He remembered the fire, the split rock, the way the sky had turned the color of blood. In the dream Celeste had been bleeding. Seraphine had been on the ground beside her. He had reached them too late. That memory sat under hi
The guards who were holding him were shocked when the sky changed color.Thorne felt the shift in their grips a second before the first explosion rolled through the stone. The two men holding his arms tightened for a moment, then loosened as their heads snapped upward toward the open courtyard. Red light spilled across the black walls. Shouts rose from every direction. Somewhere near the east wall something large caught fire.That was all the opening he needed.Thorne drove his head backward into the face of the guard on his right. . The man cried out and lost his hold. Thorne twisted hard, tore his left arm free, and slammed an elbow into the second guard&rsq
The doors to the council room stood open.Celeste stopped at the threshold. The air that came out of the chamber was colder than the corridor behind them. The red light from the sky outside did not reach this deep into the packhouse. The only light came from the floor.The markings were fully awake.Every carved line across the black stone floor glowed a deep red. The light ran under the long table, climbed the base of the raised platform, and pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat. The air above the platform shimmered.Seraphine stood beside her, breathing
Seraphine staggered first. Her boots scraped against stone. The air that filled her lungs was no longer the thin, strange air of the realm Lyssara had pulled them into. It smelled of smoke and old wood .Celeste was on her knees beside her, one hand pressed to the floor, silver hair still faintly glowing at the ends. Both of them were breathing hard. Neither of them spoke for several long seconds.Kaelan was already there.His injured shoulder was still bandaged from the attack. Blood had soaked through the cloth in a dark circle. His face was pale with pain and something sharper.
Celeste paused outside Thorne’s study, the tray in her hands trembling slightly. Steam curled gently from the teapot, carrying the calm scent of chamomile and honey but beneath it a scent slipped through the closed door, sweet, thick and unfamiliar.Not hers.Not anything from Silvermere.Another
Ravencrest was built from dark stone.That was the first thing she noticed as they came through the mountain pass, not the size of it, though it was enormous, not the iron gates that groaned open as they approached but the colour. Everything was dark. The walls, the towers, the road beneath the ho
Celeste woke to the smell of smoke.The smoke was not the soft one that circulated the cottage hearth. This was thick, black, and acrid, like metal burning. Celeste shot up, her instincts kicking in before her brain did. She crossed to the window.The sky was red.It wasn't dawn. This was a fierce
Moonfall was nothing like she expected.Celeste had imagined something small. A quiet gathering of wolves who didn’t belong anywhere, standing around scattered fires and pretending not to notice each other.Something easy to disappear into. She was wrong.The valley was enormous. Torches lined eve







