LOGINKieranI came back slow, and it wasn't gentle.The pain reached me first, a deep drag under my ribs that pulled with every breath. The bitter smell of silver still hung off the bandages. My wolf was awake under my skin, restless and angry and weaker than it had any right to be, scratching at the inside of me for a fight it couldn't find. The lamps were turned low, and for a moment I didn't know if I was in my own bed or still out on the ridge with the smoke in my eyes.Then I turned my head.Meredith was asleep in the chair beside me.Not gracefully. Not arranged the way a soft bedside wife arranges herself for the picture of it. Her neck was bent at an angle that was going to hurt her when she woke, her hair had come loose from whatever she'd done with it hours ago, and one hand was tucked up near the edge of the mattress, fingers half-curled, like she'd fallen asleep reaching for me and hadn't quite made it. There was still a faint smear of dried blood near her sleeve.My blood.Tha
AlarickThe report came in broken, half a sentence at a time, and I sat in the back of the car with the wine going warm and forgotten in my hand.Silverthorn's north ridge. Fire. Gunfire on the ridge road. The pack had sealed its outer routes inside the hour and nobody on the outside knew the shape of it yet.I should have thought about what it meant. Bloodmoon and Silverthorn and the coalition, the borders, what an attack on the Rogue Alpha's ground did to the balance of every territory around it. That was the Alpha's thought, and it should have come first.It didn't come at all."Was she seen?" I said.A pause on the line. "No, Alpha.""Was she hurt?""We don't—" Another pause. "No one's saying. Not because she's clear. Because no one knows yet."That was the part that got its fingers into me. Not she's hurt. Not she's safe. Just nobody knew, and I was three territories away with a glass of wine in my hand.I called her.It rang. Once, twice, the sound of it going out into a room I
MeredithI was already moving, and there was a roar in my ears, and all I could see was his face.I don't remember deciding to cross the floor. One second I was at the table with Kieran's blood drying on my hand, and the next I was halfway across the hall with my whole body aimed at the man in the doorway. His words were still in me, lodged somewhere they wouldn't come loose. Should've stayed dead at the pass. Kieran was bleeding behind me and this man was laughing about it, and my wolf had gone somewhere past thinking, somewhere I couldn't reach to call her back from.Sera caught me, but not easily.My nails cut the air close enough to his face that he jerked his head back before he laughed at me. A guard got hold of my wrist and twisted it facing it down while Sera locked an arm hard around my waist and took my feet right off the floor, and still I strained against both of them, reaching, and for one long breath the whole receiving hall got to stand there and watch their Luna try
MeredithI was crossing the hall before I could even think.They had him up between two wolves, his weight hung off their shoulders, the blood gone dark and stiff on his clothes and smoke worked into his hair. His head hung so low that even now, this close, some last desperate part of me tried to make him into someone else. Then the firelight caught the scar by his left eye, and everything in me dropped through the floor.I was almost at him before I'd decided to move.A healer's aide stepped into my path with his hands up. "Luna, we need space here, you can't—""Move."It came out of me low and flat and cold, nothing like my own voice, and the boy went white and stepped aside without another word.People turned. I felt them turn but honestly? I didn't care who saw it.Elara reached us, and she saw him properly then.Whatever had been in her face went out of it all at once. The warmth, the dry amusement, all of it just emptied, and what was left underneath was so still and so cold th
MeredithI was still standing where he'd left me, and the yard had already changed around me.Guards crossed it fast. A vehicle door slammed somewhere off to the side. Orders went from one wolf to the next, low and quick. And underneath all of it, where it had no business being, I was in a stupidly good mood, and I hated myself for it. My wolf was stretched out warm and pleased at the back of me, still humming over the kiss like the rest of the world hadn't just gone loud and wrong.He'd left right after. I knew he'd had no choice. It still sat crooked in me.His laugh kept coming back, the way his whole face had changed around it."Pull yourself together," I muttered. "He's gone to a border alarm and you're standing here thinking about his mouth."Someone cleared their throat behind me.I spun around with a sound I'd deny later. "Fuc—"Elara.She stood there with a small, knowing smile, and heat went straight up my face.I stiffened. "Are you going to say something?""I was being ki
KieranI was halfway to the vehicles before I realized my hands were on my lips fondling them.I dropped the hand like it had betrayed me. My wolf was still up and pacing and frankly offended, snarling at the back of my skull about the fact that I'd walked away from her, and I couldn't get my hand to forget the curve of her waist or my mouth to forget what she'd said. Kick you so hard you won't father this pack an heir.I caught myself almost smiling at it, in the middle of a border alarm, like a man who'd lost his sense somewhere on that path.I looked up at the sky once on the way to the vans, jaw tight, and wondered whether something over Silverthorn had the worst timing in the world or simply held a personal grudge against me.Then I shoved it down, because the north ridge did not miss a second signal for nothing.---We were moving inside two minutes. I took the lead van with Silas and a small strike team, and the doors were barely shut before he had the report out."North ridge
Meredith"The houses are smaller down here," I said.He didn't slow. "They're older. We built outward from this part, not toward it."It was the most he'd given me since the yard, and I took it, because the silence had started to get hard to walk in. We were well past the administrative grounds by
KieranThe question was wrong the second it left my mouth.I don't know why you still let him reach you.I'd meant that Alarick should not still have a road to her. That a man who'd thrown her away should not be able to reach into her week with a single message and make her hand go tight around a ph
Meredith Tell me he didn't mark you. Whatever had been holding the air still between me and Kieran broke. My fingers tightened around the phone. Kieran caught the change in my face before I said anything. "Meredith?" I didn't answer right away. His eyes went from my face to the phone in my han
AlarickThe office was too quiet.There were reports on my desk, messages waiting for approval, and a half-finished request from the household staff asking who should take over the Luna duties Meredith used to manage. I read the line twice, then threw the paper aside.It was irritation. That was al







