Masuk~Amber’s POV~Pain came first. All of it, everywhere at once, like my body had waited until this exact moment to send every signal it had been holding back through the crash.I was conscious. That much I could confirm. There was blood in my mouth, warm and metallic, and I coughed it out weakly, tasting more of it settle in behind. I tried to move, tried to push myself up, tried to reach for anything that would get me closer to Asher but my body simply refused, some deep, essential connection between thought and motion severed somewhere in the wreckage. I fought to stay conscious, fought against the dragging pull toward black that kept threatening to take me under, and I couldn’t even tell anymore if I was upside down or if the entire world had simply flipped itself over instead.Through the fight to hold onto consciousness, I felt my body being dragged.I wanted to scream. Nothing came out.Then I was being carried. Or maybe I wasn’t. Everything kept sliding in and out of focus, sou
~Amber’s POV~The wolves lunged at us immediately, and a powerful growl cut through everything before the could reach us, deep, guttural, the kind of sound that vibrated somewhere behind my ribs instead of just my ears.For a second, my whole body forgot how to move.Axel.The thought slammed into me before I could stop it, before logic had any chance to catch up, some starved, desperate part of me already convinced just as a wolf tore into the space between us and the ones lunging for us and I watched him rip through the wolves surrounding, fast, brutal, unrelenting, bodies scattering with every strike he landed.I stood frozen, watching, my heart doing something stupid and painful in my chest, refusing to let go of the hope even as some quieter part of me was already cataloguing everything wrong with the picture in front of me.The wolf was the wrong color. Black but a much lighter shade, leaning towards Ash under the moonlight.Wrong size. Smaller, noticeably smaller than Axel’s wo
~Amber’s POV~“Take one more step, and it’s the last thing you ever—”I didn’t wait to hear the rest of it.My hand was already moving before the thought fully formed, closing around the blade I had grabbed from my vanity drawer on instinct, turned in one motion, threw, and the rest of his sentence died in his throat, quite literally, the blade lodging itself exactly where I had aimed.To hell with not coming to terms with killing.The warrior dropped without another sound.“Jesus Christ, Amber.” Aria’s voice came out somewhere between horrified and stunned. “Where did you even get a blade?”“I grabbed more than the carrier.” I was already moving past the body, refusing to let myself linger on it. “Come on. They are this way.”I turned toward the cell where my father had been left, unconscious under whatever spell the witches had used to keep him under and when I reached it, it was empty.“No. No, no, no.” The words tumbled out of me before I could stop them, dread coiling fast and co
~Amber’s POV~‘Amber, wake up.’A voice that sounded distant and close all at once cut through the fog, and I groaned, shoving it away, my hands finding something warm and comfortable to sink into instead.‘Amber Moon, wake up.’ It snapped again, closer this time, sharper but whatever my hands had found was still far too comfortable to leave.‘AMBER CRYSTABEL FUCKING MOON, WAKE THE FUCK UP.’It slammed straight through my skull that time, and my whole body jolted upright on instinct, every combative reflex I had firing at once, ready to lash out at whatever had just torn me out of the dark, right as another voice cut through it, close, clear, real.“Hey, hey. It’s me. It’s Aria.”I blinked, fighting to place myself fast enough as Aria’s worried face swam into focus, the pain still throbbing behind my eyes from where I had lunged at Melissa trying to knock the bullet loose, something I should have done the second I saw it glinting, instead of standing there absorbing the rest of her m
~Amber’s POV~“You know, I’ve always wanted to use the expression cat got your tongue, and this seems like the perfect moment. So.. cat got your tongue, Amber? Or really do you prefer Ambre? I mean, you did change your name to that for three whole years.”She laughed while I kept staring, absolute confusion tangled up with something colder underneath it, unable to process what had just happened in front of me.“I really should have brought my phone. The expression on your face would make the perfect picture to look at while I’m sitting on the throne, drinking wine.”She took a step toward me, and my brain, still lagging several seconds behind, sent my body stumbling back a matching step and something delighted flickered across her face. “I would drag this out just to keep that look on you, but let me put you out of your misery instead.”Another spell left her lips, and her body shifted again, face melting away, replaced almost instantly by the one that was the reason fit my shock an
~Axel’s POV~I expected to be blasted with the entirety of the darkness, to feel it grip the whole of me at once, for there to at least be some kind of struggle, me fighting through it, clawing my way toward whatever reality I was supposed to exist in on the other side.But there was none of that.I simply walked in. Felt not even the slightest ripple against my skin. And in the very next second, there was only the quiet click of a door closing behind me, and I realized I was standing inside a room.A frown started forming on my face, deepening the moment my eyes scanned the space and landed on a little boy sitting in the corner, staring down at something in front of him. Before I could even ask myself what the hell was happening now, he shifted, and I saw exactly what he was looking at.Crows.Two of them, small and injured-looking, tucked into a little cage.They looked like how birds should look without any facial expression then his small voice cut through the confusion.“No, I t
~Amber’s POV~‘Mate.’Roxanne’s voice filled with that same purr slammed into me with such deafening impact that it completely overwhelmed the understanding of what was happening to me, the knowledge she’d just sent flooding into my head seconds ago.I blinked, trying to push myself up to see the p
~Amber’s POV~It is expected that I begin with something intriguing, right?Something absolutely gripping that captures attention from the very first line.Preferably something entertaining.Well it is unfortunate that I would have to disappoint, because there was nothing entertaining about the gas
~Axel’s POV~ Clicking.“Axel, I don’t—”Harder clicking.“It all just happened. I don’t know what—”My fingers ran through the keys of the laptop with even harder intensity, trying to drown out the rest of his words like I had been doing for the past five minutes, but this time my hand went right
~Amber’s POV~“I need you to suppress my wolf.”Never in my life had I thought there would be a time when those exact words would leave my lips, nor did I think that they would be the first words I would say to the man I hadn’t seen for three years.Surprise flashed across his face before it gave w







