LOGINI stood behind my desk, my boots anchored to the floorboards, listening to the muffled retreat of her footsteps down the hallway, her anger still lingering in the air.'Let her be angry,' I told myself, grinding my back teeth together until my jaw clicked.I reached down with a gloved hand and picked up the half-charred scrap of Eastern cipher, smoothing the scorched edge against the mahogany wood. Beside it, the heavy wax seal of Viktor Varkas stared back at me like a dare.I couldn’t help but kick myself at just how well the pieces fit together.But the quiet didn't last long. The door swung open once again, and Jasper stepped back inside, locking the door behind him.He didn't bother offering a polite knock or dropping his usual sarcastic smirk. He pushed the door shut, tossed his dark wool cloak over the back of the leather armchair, and walked straight up to my desk. His light eyes were sharp, scanning my face with the kind of intense focus he usually reserved for inter
Dominic was staring at me.He was looking dead at me, his fingers crumpled into the edge of the vellum manifest on his desk so hard that his knuckles were bone-white. His silver-gray eyes had gone completely still, the dark pupils wide, tracking every line of my face as if he were trying to memorize it before someone snatched it away.The quiet stretched until my teeth started to clench."Dominic?" I took a step away from the bookshelf, my boots making a quiet scuff against the rug. "What is it? What did you just realize?"Dominic blinked, and just like that, the curtain seemed to drop.The shock vanished from his features, wiped clean away, replaced by a mask. His jaw squared, his shoulders locked tight, and his eyes snapped down to the desk, refusing to look at me again."Nothing," he said flatly.The lie was so obvious and delivered with such dismissive ease that it felt like a slap right across the face."Nothing?" I echoed, taking another stride toward the desk, anger
The room smelled of cold ash from the fireplace and parchment. I rounded my massive mahogany desk, shedding my leather hunting gloves, tossing them onto the wood."Alright," I said, turning to face them, my voice flat and tightly controlled as my eyes locked onto Jasper. "Start talking. What happened in the village?"Jasper didn't bother dropping into his usual armchair. Instead, he walked straight up to the desk, reached inside his leather tunic, and tossed two items onto the parchment spread before me with a dull thud."We missed him," Jasper grunted, his tone laced with frustration. "It seems the bastard had a lookout. Kicked out the back window of Old Miller’s loft and dove straight into the river rapids before my trackers could surround the block."I frowned, looking down at the desk.One of the items was a half-charred scrap of parchment covered in a foreign script. The other was a heavy vellum travel manifest bordered in gold leaf, stamped at the bottom with a thick,
I took a deep breath, relishing the feeling of a hunt.It wasn't as peaceful as one would expect—the scuff of a boot catching frozen brush, the nervous hitch of a young warrior’s breathing, the scent of fresh sweat cutting through the clean mountain frost."Keep your weight on the balls of your feet, Dennis," I murmured, not bothering to look back over my shoulder. "A blind badger could hear you coming from twenty yards out."Behind me, the younger wolf stiffened, his jaw locking tight as he tried to adjust his stride over the pine needles.I had three of them out here with me on the high ridges of the eastern boundary: Dennis, a raw-boned brawler with quick hands from the lower village; Carrick, a steady scout who could track blood across ice but lacked stomach for close-quarters butchery; and Vince, a veteran’s son whose wolf was fast but wildly undisciplined.Sixteen graves were fresh in the frozen earth down in the Blacthorne ceremonial burial grounds. Sixteen of my best
The carriage lurched over a deep rut in the road, but neither of us moved.The second the name left my lips, the easy, mocking smirk that Jasper had worn since breakfast vanished like smoke in a draft. His light eyes hardened into narrow slits, the casual slouch in his spine straightening instantly until his broad shoulders squared against the leather bench."What did you just say?" he asked. His voice wasn't playful anymore. It was low, flat, and stripped clean of banter."The Bloodwyn pack," I said, keeping my hands locked together over my knees so he wouldn't see them shaking. "What do you know about them?""I know they’re five hundred miles to the east," Jasper replied, leaning forward until his elbows rested on his knees, his face inches from mine in the dim cabin. "I know that they participated in the great war hundreds of years ago, and they haven't sent an emissary past the neutral ridge in fifty years. But that’s about all I know. Why? What about them?"I swallowe
I woke up the next morning and lay on my bed as the morning light cut pale grey lines across the ceiling, staring at the canopy until my eyes burned. The encounter from yesterday afternoon in the village square was still carved into the front of my brain, and my stomach knotted up just thinking about it. But after twenty minutes of staring at the woodwork, I forced myself to sit up and swing my legs over the mattress. If there’s one thing surviving at the bottom of the heap had taught me, it’s that worrying about things you can't control will only get you killed faster. I couldn't hunt a wolf through the village on my own, and I couldn't undo the fact that he saw my face. So, I simply chose to pack it away in a quiet corner of my mind and move on.Then my eyes wandered toward the bedroom door, and my chest seized up in a completely different way.Dominic's deep voice echoed through my head, bringing a sudden, uninvited warmth straight to the skin beneath my collar. That







