로그인LADY SERAPHINE POVPower and authority can not be proven through kindness. It is proven through obedience and obedience is never clearer than when it is forced.Mara is the perfect person to begin with.Because she mattered to Saphra. Because breaking her sends a message that echoes far beyond one girl’s suffering.I stand at the center of the servants’ hall, hands clasped loosely behind my back as they gather before me. The room smells faintly of soap and stone, of bodies that have worked too hard and slept too little. They line up quickly when summoned, heads bowed with shoulders tight.Fear hums beneath the surface.Mara stands among them.Her chin is slightly raised not enough to be called defiance, but enough that I notice. Her eyes don’t quite meet mine, but they don’t drop fast enough either.Ah.There it is.Loyalty.Misplaced and entirely unacceptable.I let the silence stretch just long enough to make them uncomfortable.“You, step forward,” I say.My voice is calm.Mara do
LUCIEN’S POV I am starting to lose control.“Find her.”My voice echoes through the war chamber, low and lethal, cutting through the heavy silence like a blade. The men standing before me don’t move yet.“Search every border,” I continue, pacing slowly across the stone floor. “Every village. Every forest. I don’t care how far you have to go.”My hands curl into fists at my sides, the skin along my knuckles still split from the destruction of the tower. Blood has dried there in dark streaks, cracked and reopened more times than I can count.I don’t bother to clean it.“Bring her back,” I finish, my voice dropping. “Immediately.”A pause.No one speaks.I stop in front of the closest group, three guards chosen because they are fast and loyal.“Do you understand?” I ask.“Yes, Alpha,” they answer in unison, though I can hear the edge beneath their voices.“Now go,” I say.They turn and leave immediately, boots striking the floor in hurried rhythm as they disappear from the chamber.The
LUCIEN’S POVSomething is wrong. The thought doesn’t come gently, it tears through me.I wake with a gasp, my body jerking upright before my mind can catch up. Sweat clings to my skin, my chest heaving as if I’ve just run for miles.My hand presses against my chest instinctively.There, that’s where it is. That sharp, hollow pain that wasn’t there before. My breathing turns uneven.The bond It feels..... Wrong.Not broken but stretched.“Saphra.”Her name leaves my lips before I can stop it.I’m already moving.The door slams open so hard it cracks against the wall, splintering wood and echoing down the corridor. I barely register it.Nothing matters except, Her.Find her, now.The hallway blurs as I run.Servants jump out of my way, startled, terrified. I hear voices and shouts but they’re distant, meaningless noise.“Sire!”“Alpha!”Ignored, all of it.My feet hit the stone hard and fast, each step driven by something deeper than thought.The bond pulses again.Empty.I reach the to
LADY SERAPHINE POV“Another time my lady,” he says smoothly as we walk the eastern corridor, his voice calm and controlled. “The palace is still recovering. There are areas that....”“I want to see everything,” I interrupt lightly, my tone pleasant enough to pass as curiosity.His jaw tightens slightly.“The main halls, the council chambers, the outer grounds....” he continues, as if I hadn’t spoken.“I said everything,” I repeat, turning my head just enough to meet his gaze, smile intact and eyes sharp.There's a pause, a silent standoff.“As you wish,” he says finally.Wonderful.The tour begins properly after that. He shows me what he wants me to see first. The grand halls, the throne room,the council chamber. All polished stone and carefully maintained illusions of control but I’m not here for illusions.Still, I let him lead for now.Until....“And the servants’ quarters?” I ask casually as we pass another guarded wing.He hesitates.“They are… modest,” he says. “Not particularly
LADY SERAPHINE POVThey said the palace was unstable, they said the Alpha was compromised, they said I should delay my arrival but I came anyway.Because power doesn’t wait for the perfect moment.It takes it.The gates open before me with all the grandeur expected of a place clinging desperately to order. Stone towers stretch high into the sky, banners snapping in the wind, still proud, still defiant, still pretending nothing has changed.But I see it.The doubled guard rotations.No, tripled.The tension in the air, coiled tight beneath polished surfaces. The way soldiers hold their weapons just a little too firmly. The way servants move too quickly with eyes lowered and voices hushed.Fear, uncertainty, weakness.I step forward, my heels striking the stone with measured precision, my entourage falling into perfect formation behind me. Twenty of them handpicked.A statement.My gown brushes against the ground like liquid, every thread chosen for impact, every detail calculated. My h
SAPHRA’S POVThe palace feels different the moment I step inside.It settles over me like a second skin, prickling along my nerves in a way I can’t quite explain. The familiar stone walls rise around me, unchanged, but something beneath the surface has shifted.I feel it in the way the guards move.In the way their eyes track me.In the way no one smiles.My steps slow instinctively as I cross the main hall, my hand pressing lightly against the bandages beneath my dress. The wound aches with every movement, a dull, persistent reminder that I shouldn’t even be out of bed.But I couldn’t stay there.I swallow hard and force myself forward.Focus.I didn’t come back here to fall apart. I came back to try to face him. To do the one thing that feels more impossible than anything else I’ve ever done.Forgive him.The word still feels foreign but it doesn’t make my chest close up the way it did before.That has to count for something.A group of guards passes me in tight formation, their arm
SAPHRA'S POV The rage fills me up white-hot and blinding. For a heartbeat after his confession, I can’t breathe. The dungeon seems to tilt, stone walls warping as if reality itself recoils from what he’s said. My mother begged him in dreams. Her murderer remembers her face. He remembers her dyi
SAPHRA’S POV Silence follows my confession. It stretches long and thin, taut as a blade drawn across skin. My chest heaves from the force of my screaming. Each breath scrapes my throat raw, tasting of blood and smoke and years of swallowed rage. My hands are clenched so tightly at my sides that
SAPHRA'S POV The dream takes me the same way it always does, without mercy and without warning. But this time, the dream seems different. I am standing in the snow. It clings to my boots, soaking through the leather, numbing my toes until I can barely feel the ground beneath me. The sky is
SAPHRA'S POV Lucien’s chambers are quiet in the way only powerful rooms ever are. The door closes behind me with a soft, final sound that echoes too loudly in my chest. The air smells faintly of parchment and ink, steel and something unmistakably him. Firelight flickers along the walls, casting l







