LOGINA few warriors shifted uneasily, but no one answered him and I stepped forward until I stood several feet away from him. “If you have something to say about my decisions, say it to me directly. There is no need to gather the warriors and make accusations behind my back.” Rowan gave a humorless laugh. “You speak as though you have earned the right to command them. Your mother built this pack, but you have spent most of your life away from its responsibilities. Now you return and expect everyone to accept you as their leader.” “I have never claimed that my mother’s name alone makes me worthy of leadership,” I replied. “I have asked for the opportunity to repair what was damaged under your rule, and I have supported an investigation into the records that explain how Silvercrest reached this point.” “You have encouraged the council to turn against me,” he countered. “You have allowed old accusations to be dragged into public view, and you hav
For the first time in a long while, I did not feel the need to look over my shoulder to see whether he was following me. His offer had not freed me, because the decision had always belonged to me. What it had done was remind me that I no longer wanted to spend my life waiting for him to become the husband I had once hoped he would be.Later that night, Lyra stood alone in her chambers, turning a small bracelet around her wrist as she considered what Damon had told her. He had not accepted every suggestion she made, and his questions about Samantha had become more cautious, but he had not dismissed her concerns either. That uncertainty was enough to keep her moving forward.She knew she could not force Damon to abandon Samantha through suspicion alone. She would need something more convincing, something that would make him believe Samantha had not merely kept secrets from him but had deliberately allowed him to live beside a lie.Lyra lowered her hand, her
Once doubt entered his mind, every truth about me could be made to look like a lie, and as I walked away from Damon, I realized I was tired of fighting battles I had never chosen.I returned to my room and closed the door behind me, hoping the quiet would help me settle the anger twisting inside my chest. For years, I had endured Damon’s affairs, his humiliating indifference, and the way he treated our marriage as though it were an obligation he could escape whenever he pleased. I had survived it because I believed there was something worth preserving, even when I was no longer certain he felt the same.Now, after everything I had endured, he was questioning whether I had been honest about being wolfless. I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my hands together, trying to steady myself. There was nothing I could tell him that he did not already know. I had never awakened a wolf, never felt one inside me, and never pretended otherwise. Yet Lyra had managed to turn
Damon was already awake when I entered the dining room. He sat at the far end of the table with a cup in front of him, but he had barely touched it. His expression was distant, and when he looked up at me, his eyes remained on me longer than usual. “Good morning,” I said as I took my seat.“Good morning.” His answer was polite, but there was a hesitation in his voice that immediately caught my attention. I poured myself some water and tried not to stare at him before finally asking, “You wanted to speak with me?”“I did.” He rested his hands on the table, looking as though he was choosing his words carefully. “About what?”“There are things I don’t understand about you.” said Damon.I lowered the glass slowly. “Then ask me.”His gaze remained fixed on mine. “Were you always this involved in Silvercrest’s affairs?”I almost smiled because the question was so ordinary compared with the tension behind it. “I was born here, Damon. My
I thought of Peter, his false accusation against me had not been random. He had been recruited, another person had been dressed to resemble me, and Peter had been sent before the council with a story designed to destroy my credibility. When that plan failed, Peter had become a liability, he disappeared, was eventually found and imprisoned, and now the guard assigned to watch him had vanished too.I looked back at the records. “Find everyone who had access to Peter during his imprisonment. Guards, officials, council representatives, anyone who could enter his holding area.”Gabriel nodded. “I will.”“And find out who approved the guard’s supposed reassignment also check whether the guard had any connection to my mother.” I said.Gabriel paused, and Amara looked at me. “You think he might have known her?” Amara asked.“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But my mother was investigating people who were moving resources through private merchants. She
Either possibility left me uneasy, my mother’s investigation had begun with records, shipments, and people who seemed insignificant until their names appeared beside something they should never have been connected to. Now Peter’s name was leading us into the same darkness.I looked again at the prison record, Peter had not been an ordinary servant, he had been a recruited witness and had been used to accuse me. When that accusation failed, he disappeared. When he was found again, he had been imprisoned. And when he vanished from that prison, the man assigned to guard him vanished at the same time, someone had gone to extraordinary lengths to control Peter’s story. The question was why. I pushed the records toward Gabriel. “Find the rest.”He gathered the files. “I will.”As he and Amara began leaving the archive, I remained behind for another moment, my mother’s death had always felt like a single tragedy that happened years ago. But the deeper I searched,







