By the time the sun found the far sill and sat there, poised on the lip like a coin that can’t decide which way to roll, I’d worn a pattern in the dust between the water bowl and the anise fields on the map. Pathetic, I thought. But rituals make men. Even petty ones.When the door opened again, the
Katia’s eyes softened in the way that makes men want to break their own chairs. “Tristan,” she said, and my name in her voice reminded me who I had been before grief put its hands on my throat. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep your house. We’ll find her, keep her safe, even from you. Both can happen even wh
The room emptied but for the central handful: Selene, Lorn, Katia, Nathan, Mark, and Talon. My inner circle by blood or by duty, and the goddess and her mate, who had decided to treat me like a child in need of a corner.“Comfortable?” Selene asked with such dry sympathy that I nearly slipped on it.
Katia pushed off the window and moved close not to me, but to the map table. I followed because dignity is a habit: even with my neck low and my tail stiff, I will always move toward the center of power. She planted a fingertip on the inked hill line near the crossroads. “We’ll lose scent after the
“Better,” Lorn said in a low rumble. His eyes found me; something like private amusement flickered there, the kind given to a child who has announced a kingdom and has only a puddle. “We can’t afford soft steps on those ruins. The ash there remembers footprints.”I caught Lorn’s scent, pine and iron
If humiliation had a sound, it would be the soft, wet slap of webbed feet on Nathan’s desk.The alpha office of Ghost Whisper Pack was crowded, shoulders tight with rank and divinity, power stacking the air like storm clouds, and I, Tristan, king of werewolves, waddled in a ragged figure eight betwe