LOGINMIRA'S POVElara moved faster than I expected her to as she put herself between me and the figure with both arms out.She was blocking and said something sharp that I didn't fully hear because the figure was already moving with a blade that came sideways.The steel caught Elara's shoulder as it was not a killing blow but an obstacle removal.Elara made a sound that I felt in my chest then she went down hard against the bedframe.I called her name but there was no time as the figure was still moving and I was the target.I felt my wolf rise with it being not clean and not controlled but just raw and immediate and desperate then I moved.We collided and the impact sent both of us into the writing table.It went over with a crash that I hoped was loud enough for someone in the corridor to hear through a closed door over their own dying as the figure was stronger than me.They were significantly stronger and I felt it in the first second of contact with the difference in mass and training
MIRA'S POVRowan told me to go back to my suite with triple guards and the look on his face made me not argue.It was not the careful, managed expression he used when he was keeping me at arm's length as it was something underneath that—genuine fear, the kind that bypasses control.He had looked at the dead girl on the dungeon floor, then at me, and whatever connection he made between the two things had frightened him.That frightened me more than anything else in that room.So I went.Three guards stayed outside the door with one inside the sitting area.I paced the length of the bedroom until my legs ached then sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.I kept seeing the girl's face as she was sixteen years old, maybe.She had smiled when she brought my morning tray and I hadn't learned her name.I should have learned her name.Night came slowly as I tried to eat the meal someone brought and managed half of it.I tried to read and got three pages before I realized I had no i
TOBIAS'S POVI had seen bad scenes in twenty years of service to the crown. This was one of the worst.Not because of the scale — I had seen battlefields. Because of the specificity. Someone had chosen this girl, this cell, this timing. Everything about it was deliberate.I crouched beside the door and looked at the bars. The lock had not been forced. There was no sign of damage to the mechanism — no bending, no scratching from improvised tools. Someone had walked up to this door with a key that fit and turned it. The girl had provided it, willingly or otherwise, and now she was dead on the floor and Isla was gone.I stood up and looked at the guards doing the initial sweep."Anyone see anything before the alarm?" I asked."Nothing, sir. The lower corridor was clear on the last check twenty minutes ago."Twenty minutes. Clean entry, clean exit, one casualty. This was not a desperate prisoner taking an opportunity. This had been planned.Rowan came through the entrance with three guard
*MIRA'S POV*On the third day, Elara finally said I could get out of bed.She said it with conditions attached though. The baby was fine and my body was healing, but I needed to move slowly, avoid stress, and not push myself into anything my body wasn't ready for. She listed these things while checking my pulse, with her fingers light on my wrist and her eyes on the small clock she kept in her coat pocket.I said yes to all of it and meant none of it.I sat on the edge of the bed after she left and took stock. My ribs were sore on the left side where I had hit the rocks, and my hands had healed cleanly with no scarring from the claws, which Elara said was normal for partial shifts. My legs were steady when I stood, though not strong.Good enough.Rowan had visited every day. He came in the mornings, sometimes for twenty minutes and sometimes longer. He brought books the second day — a history of the Royalfang territory and something lighter about pack traditions that I suspected Elar
MIRA'S POVMy hands would not stop shaking.But this wasn't from cold, although I was cold — soaked through, the night air finding every gap in my torn dress.It wasn't from fear either, though the fear had been real enough while it was happening.My hands were shaking because the space between what had just occurred and what could have occurred was so narrow I could not stop measuring it from every angle.Rowan could have gone over the cliff without getting his arms around me.Finn could have held on longer in the river. Rowan could have been half a second slower coming out of the water and I would have been dragged into the trees before the guards reached the bank.Any single thing might hand happened different and this would have ended differently.Elara was still beside me with her hand on my arm, running her quick healer's check — pulse, temperature, asking me to follow her finger with my eyes. I answered her questions while watching Rowan cross the rocks toward us, and the shaki
ROWAN'S POVI have ended fights before.I have put down challengers, settled border disputes with force, handled threats to the crown in ways that required my wolf and not my judgment.I know what it feels like to fight with control — to use exactly what the situation requires and no more, to stay present and deliberate even when the wolf is pushing forward.This was not that.When I came out of the water and saw Finn's hands on Mira — his weight bearing down on her, her claws already raked across his face, his hands moving to pin her again despite the wounds, I snapped and my wolf took over so completely that I have no clear memory of the distance between the river's edge and the moment of impact.There was water and rocks and the cold and then there was Finn beneath me and I was already moving.We went down hard on the rocks and I felt his claws find my shoulder immediately and I did not care.The pains I felt was information. It told me where his hands were, which told me how to mo
Mira’s POVThe click of the lock felt like the loudest sound in the world, a definitive, echoing finality. I leaned my back against the heavy wood of the door, my legs finally giving out completely as I slid down until my knees hit my chest. I was shaking uncontrollably. Not just a little tremor in
Mira’s POVThe door didn't just open; it practically flew off the hinges. I didn't even have to look up to know the healer had arrived, mostly because the sound of her heavy breathing and the frantic clatter of her medical bag preceded her by a mile.She looked like she’d run a marathon just to get
Mira’s POV I woke up to the sound of low, unfamiliar, and professional voices vibrating through the heavy door. It wasn't the usual light banter or bored silence of the guards who had grown used to my silent presence. These new voices were hard, professional, and entirely new to me. I could hear
Rowan's POVI stood there, completely paralyzed in the center of the room, staring at Mira as if I were seeing her for the very first time in my life. The air between us was thick, charged with the kind of volatile electricity that precedes a massive, catastrophic storm. My chest felt agonizingly t







