LOGINMiraElara's hands didn't stop moving.That was what I kept tracking — her hands, the way they worked with the focused efficiency of someone who had done this enough times that panic didn't get to interrupt the process. She pressed, adjusted, checked. The bleeding had slowed. Not stopped, but it had slowed, and she had said that like it was good news, so I was trying to treat it like good news.The baby's heartbeat showed on the monitor beside me, present and audible but uneven in a way that made Elara's jaw tighten every time she looked at it."You're doing well," she said, which I was almost certain was a lie, but I wasn't going to focus on that right now. Nope. Isla stood at the door with Kara's unit, all of them armed, none of them fully still. She had been watching the corridor in short, controlled intervals since we'd gotten here, and I had been watching her watch it."Finn challenged Rowan in the throne room," she said, without turning around.The words landed with more weigh
RowanThe throne room doors opened before my hands could even touch them.It appears that Finn had been waiting.He stood in the center of the room with twelve warriors fanned out behind him in a loose arc, the formation deliberate and rehearsed. The throne at his back wasn't lost on me — positioning himself in front of it was its own statement. In wolf tradition, to take this room was to take the kingdom. He knew I would know that.I stepped inside. My own warriors filed in behind me, and for a moment neither side moved.I let myself look at him. Really look. The years since his exile hadn't been gentle. Fresh scars layered over old ones, and his left eye had gone milky, clouded by some injury that hadn't healed cleanly. But his right eye — that one was sharp and burning with the kind of conviction that doesn't leave room for doubt or mercy.He spoke first."Alpha Rowan." His voice carried the formal cadence of Old Pack law, the kind used in blood declarations. "I invoke the right of
TOBIAS'S POVThe west wing was quieter than the rest of the castle, which was either good news or bad. I moved through it with four guards and my hand on my blade and my attention split between the immediate corridor and the picture I was assembling from everything I had seen since the first explosion.The secondary station was a room I had noted on my first full assessment of the castle years ago — small, practical, the kind of resource that gets overlooked in normal operations and becomes critical in abnormal ones. I pushed the door open and took in the room in one sweep.Mira was alive. She was sitting upright on the table with her hand pressed flat against her stomach and her face doing the thing it did when she was managing something she had not fully processed yet. Isla in the chair beside her, weapons visible, posture alert. Kara's unit at the door and the far wall. A young apprentice near the supply shelving with the wide, careful eyes of someone who had been frightened for h
ROWAN'S POVThe explosions had been timed perfectly.Each breach point was hit within seconds of the others, which required coordination across multiple teams who had no direct line of communication once they were in position. That level of timing required rehearsal. It required someone who had run this kind of operation before and knew how to synchronize without real-time contact.I had underestimated what Finn was capable of when he had nothing left to lose and months to plan.I was correcting that mistake now, corridor by corridor, with Tobias on my left and six of my best warriors forming a moving line as we pushed back through the east section toward the throne room approach. Finn's people had gotten further into the castle than I had allowed for in any of my planning, and fixing that was going to cost time and blood that I did not want to spend."Throne room corridor is holding," Tobias said beside me, reading from the runner who had just reached us and was already moving back.
MIRA'S POVI had felt the first cramp when the warrior grabbed my arm.I had told myself it was the adrenaline, the sudden movement, the reflexive clench of every muscle in my body responding to the threat. I had told myself it would pass. I had followed Isla through the servant passages and focused on putting one foot in front of the other and kept the information about what my body was doing in the category of things I would deal with when there was space to deal with them.There was space now, in the storage room, and the cramping had not passed. It had gotten worse.I pressed my hand flat against my stomach and tried to assess it without my fear doing the assessing for me. Sharp, not dull. Coming in intervals that were not consistent but were getting closer. My back ached in the specific way that was different from exertion and I knew the difference because Elara had told me what to watch for and I had listened carefully because I was not an idiot, even when I pretended the info
ISLA'S POVThe lock took forty seconds for me to pick. It was a good lock — better than the one on my cell at Finn's territory, better than most I had encountered in my life, which told me the person who designed Royalfang's secured quarters had actually thought about who might be put in them. But a good lock is still a lock and I had learned to pick them at fifteen from a rogue trader who visited our pack twice a year, and some skills do not leave you regardless of how long it has been since you used them.The door swung open onto an empty corridor.The explosions had done that much for me — every guard who had been stationed near my quarters had gone toward the breach points, which was correct prioritization on their part and convenient timing for mine. I stood in the doorway for a moment and listened to the castle and made a calculation.The calculation was simple. I was in a building under active assault by a man who had used me as a tool for four years and had no particular rea
MIRAThe silence in the room didn’t last long enough for me to even catch my breath. Isla didn't bother with the fake, honey-sweet greetings this time.She walked straight toward my bed like she was on a mission to destroy everything in her path. I felt the air leave my lungs.The letter. It was st
MIRAEvery time I heard a floorboard groan in the hallway, I stopped breathing.I sat on the edge of my narrow cot, my ears straining so hard they actually ached.The footsteps were heavy, rhythmic, and they stopped right outside my door. I clutched the thin fabric of my skirt, my heart pounding ag
MIRAThe guard froze. His hand was literally glued to the door handle, and I could see the sheer, paralyzing terror in the way his shoulders locked. The footsteps weren't just close; they were right there.There was no wardrobe to jump into. No heavy curtains to hide behind. Just four stone walls a
MIRAMy breath hitched as Isla’s fingers brushed the edge of the pillow. The world seemed to slow down into this one terrifying moment.If she finds that letter, it’s over. Not just for me, but for the guard who risked his life and for Rowan’s entire plan.Finn would tighten the security until this







