 LOGIN
LOGIN
ZoeyThe bell’s echo still sat in my bones like leftover thunder. Elena’s talk of mates and pups hadn’t helped. My brain was running the hamster-wheel Olympics and the hamster was losing.Alexander had left without a defense or denial—just… gone—like a storm corked in a bottle. Embarrassment and nerves simmered under my skin until Elena, saint of good timing, nudged me into her garden.It was another world tucked inside stone—rows of herbs glowing under rune-light, beds edged with carved spirals that pulsed like quiet heartbeats. Bees drifted as if time had softened for them alone; the air smelled like rosemary, cedar, and something sweet-bitter that tasted like secrets when I breathed too deeply.“Gardens,” Elena said, brushing silvery leaves, “are the only kingdoms I still trust. They don’t lie. They only grow.”Hard to argue with truth that smelled this good.She slipped a sprig of something cool and sharp into my palm. “Courage. If it won’t answer, chew. The taste alone will distr
ZoeyThe bell’s toll faded, but it lingered in my chest like the aftershock of thunder. I kept my palm pressed to the spiral in the wall until its pulse steadied again. A soft hum, almost a reassurance: you’re still here, still in, still breathing.Kaia coaxed me into another sip of her mint-and-courage tea. Milo sprawled on the rug, whistling tunelessly. Jarek, silent and immovable, stood at the door like the world had carved him out of granite for that purpose alone.But the walls already felt restless. Nytherra itself seemed to be leaning closer, listening. Waiting.It didn’t take long.The door sigil glowed, and Alexander’s voice rumbled through: “Prepare her.”My heart slammed once. Prepare me for what?Milo bounced to his feet. “Field trip, round two.”“Not a dungeon,” Kaia murmured, slipping her hand under my elbow. “Better.”“Define better,” I muttered, but no one did.Guards gathered outside, their presence heavy as storm clouds. No chains, no ropes. Just an unspoken truth—r
ZoeyThe bell kept tolling—low, deliberate, like the palace had a heartbeat and wanted everyone to feel it.Kaia’s hand hovered near the spiral in my wall. Jarek had gone statue-still at the door. Milo’s grin dialed down to “I’m listening,” which I was learning was his version of serious.“That’s the Council bell,” Kaia said. “They’re already talking about you.”“Great,” I said. “Love being agenda item one.”Cold slipped under the threshold. Not a draft—a presence. Frost webbed out along the stone like lace deciding it was dangerous. The runes brightened, then flattened to a wary glow.Jarek’s shoulders angled, subtle but lethal. “Hold,” he said to the wall, and the spiral warmed beneath my palm, as if the den slid its weight to brace us.A second later, the sigil flared. The door didn’t open.But the temperature dropped anyway.She arrived like winter changing its mind—no squeak of hinge, no jostle of boot. One heartbeat the air was ours; the next it was threaded with snow and high-a
ZoeyI sipped what was left in Kaia’s cup—mint and something that pretended to be bravery. The tremor in my hand eased until it was just a line under the skin.“What now?” I asked.“Now you breathe,” Kaia said. “And you let the insult pass without letting it become a truth.”“On it,” I said, then added, because my mouth never misses a party, “Do we think she moisturizes with crushed icicles or just pure malice?”Milo’s grin returned, wide. “Both. Whipped together with a hint of elderberry.”Jarek’s mouth almost—almost—curved. “Rest,” he said. “We’ll rotate the watch.”I wanted to protest. To stand at the door like a second guard and glare the air into better choices. Instead I lay back, hands folded over the blanket, staring at the rune-thread that blinked like a very chill nightlight.The den dimmed a fraction. Not sleep-dark, just safe-dark.I didn’t drift so much as float—half in the room, half in the idea of the room. Voices came and went beyond the threshold—boots I recognized no
ZoeyWe found a rhythm. Milo sat on the floor and drilled the knock like a secret handshake. Jarek listened to the world with the whole line of his body. When footsteps passed—light, heavy, hesitant—he named them. “Kitchen carriers.” “Outer rotation.” “Messenger running fast.” When I guessed right, one nod—gold star.Milo tried to fix my dead phone by whistling scales at it until the screen flickered an offended gray. “See? Progress.”“It thinks you’re a flute,” I said.“It’s not wrong,” he trilled. The wall purred. My phone did not.“In Nytherra,” he added, “if you call a device a familiar, it gets ideas.”“Noted. This is not my familiar. It is a brick.”“Sturdy brick,” Jarek offered.“Tell me about you,” I blurted. “When you’re not guarding and juggling and insulting my technology?”“Gambling,” Milo said. “Stealing hearts. Occasionally bread.”“Training,” Jarek said. “Repairing what Milo breaks.”“I improve vibes,” Milo protested. “Also teach pups to howl in harmony.”“You teach the
ZoeyWaking up in someone else’s bed was never on my bucket list—especially not a bed that felt like cloud contracts and blackmail against mattress companies. Especially not with a man who looked like he could ruin me with a glance—and not in the paperback way.I surfaced to the same rune-lit ceiling, the same cool-linen air, the same steady hum of stone. And him.Alexander Veylor—Big Wolf Energy—still there. He sat in a chair carved from the wall itself, too still to be human, too contained to be safe. Those eyes—blue like bottled lightning—fixed on me the way a hawk studies a rabbit debating its life choices.I groaned and pushed upright. “You’re still here? Don’t kings have errands? Crown-polishing? Wolf PTA?”“I do,” he said evenly. “They can wait.”“Well,” I muttered, dragging the blanket up, “nothing says VIP like being babysat by a glacier wrestler.”The corner of his mouth twitched. Barely.“So.” I gathered the blanket like a shield. “Do I keep calling you Tall, Dark, and Mena








