LOGINMelinda
The car jerked hard as Kian slammed the brakes, tires skidding against loose gravel, and we all lurched forward against our seatbelts. My heart shot straight into my throat as the headlights swept over the figure standing motionless in the middle of the road."Don't," Carl said quickly, his hand already braced against the dashboard, his body angling protectively in front of me even in the cramped back seat. "Everybody stay calm. Kian, can you see who it is?"CarlThe amber light spreading across the floor wasn't gentle this time. It surged up from the carved lines like something had been struck open, racing along the branches of that ancient family tree until it converged directly beneath Melinda and Ashley's joined hands."Get back," I shouted, already moving to pull them clear, but the light had already wrapped itself around their ankles, the same way it had in the chapel hours before, except faster now, hungrier, climbing past their knees before I could close the distance."Carl, don't," Melinda gasped, her whole body rigid. "If you touch it while it's active, you don't know what it does to you.""I don't care what it does to me," I said, reaching for her anyway, only for Voss's hand to close hard around my arm, hauling me back with surprising strength for a man who'd nearly died twice tonight already."Listen to her," Voss said sharply. "This isn't the binding ritual. This is something re
MelindaThe grinding stone finally stopped, leaving a black opening in the wall where solid rock had been a moment before, cold air drifting out from whatever lay beyond it, carrying with it a scent I couldn't place… old parchment, and something faintly floral underneath, like flowers pressed between the pages of a book no one had opened in a hundred years."That wasn't here a minute ago," Kian said, weapon still raised toward the opening, his voice tight."It was always here," Voss said quietly, pushing himself the rest of the way upright, one hand braced against the stone wall for support."Sealed and waiting. These chambers were built with more than one purpose, and more than one secret."His eyes moved to me and Ashley, still standing hand in hand, that steady warm current still humming quietly between us. "I believe it just opened because of what you two are now.""You believe," Carl said sharply. "You don't actually know."
MelindaVoss went utterly still, his hand frozen halfway inside his robes, and for the first time all night I watched real fear cross his composed face."Marcus," he said, and the name landed in the chamber like a stone dropped down a well. "You're supposed to be dead.""Supposed to be a great many things," the lead figure said, echoing words I'd heard twice already tonight from two different mouths, and something cold settled in my stomach at the realization that this whole conspiracy seemed built from the same handful of phrases, passed hand to hand across thirty years like a language only they understood."Aldric's second, before Aldric decided caution was safer than ambition. I decided otherwise."My son's frightened voice earlier that morning surfaced suddenly in my memory, the name he'd said to me at the tower, the name that had stopped me cold before I'd even fully understood why. Marcus…this was him."You used my son," I
CarlFor a moment I couldn't make the pieces fit. Voss, standing there in a stone chamber beneath a besieged mill, composed and untouched, while gunfire still echoed faintly through the walls above us."You," Melinda said, her voice barely above a whisper, Ashley pressed close behind her. "You sent me the report and you told me to be careful, you've been helping us all night.""I told you what you needed to hear, when you needed to hear it," Voss said, his voice as measured as it had been in the council chamber hours ago, as if none of what had happened since then had cost him anything at all."That's not the same thing as helping you, Melinda. Though I understand the confusion.""You were the one who delayed the council session," I said slowly, working it forward even as the shape of it turned my stomach."You gave us time, you showed us the logs proving Melinda's innocence.""I did," Voss agreed. "Every piece of that w
MelindaShe unfolded the paper slowly, and I caught the edges of it trembling slightly in her hands, the first real crack I'd seen in her composure since we'd stepped into that room."Before I read this," Corinne said, "you should understand something about the man who wrote it. He wasn't afraid of your bloodline the way Aldric is. He spent the last six months of his life trying to convince the council of the opposite. That's why he died.""Then read it," I said. "Please."She smoothed the paper against her palm and began, her voice dropping into something quieter, more careful, like she was handling something fragile enough to shatter if spoken too roughly."'The twins born of the split bloodline are not, as feared, a vessel for catastrophe. They are the fulfillment of a debt this territory has owed for four generations. The original division was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to be a wound, held open deliberately, so that whe
MelindaFor a moment I couldn't make my mind accept what my eyes were showing me. The silver-haired man, chained and bloodied, sitting inside that mill like he'd been dragged there rather than delivered there, when the last I'd seen of him, council guards had been hauling him away toward custody with his own laughter trailing behind him."That's not possible," I whispered. "He was taken into custody hours ago.""Apparently not for long," Rowan murmured beside me, his eyes narrowing at the scene through the gap in the branches."Or he was never actually contained at all," Kian said grimly. "Corinne could have intercepted the transfer. Council custody isn't as airtight as everyone likes to pretend, especially when the person arranging your extraction has spent thirty years anticipating exactly this scenario."Carl's jaw was tight beside me, his eyes fixed on the window, on Ashley's still form bound to the chair, on the careful, unhurried wa
Carl’s POV You’ve been staring at that report for ten minutes Carl." Damon, my Beta, stood across the room with his arms tightly crossed over his chest. His posture was rigid, his jaw set in a hard line that had become permanent over the last seven days. I had not slept properly in the past s
CHAPTER FOURMelinda’s POVI sat on the edge of my small bed, staring blankly down at the wrinkled white paper in my hands. Hours had passed since the council meeting, yet my mind still replayed every second over and over again like torture.Carl’s freezing disappointment. I squeezed my eyes shut,
Melinda’s POV“Dr. Thomas," I breathed relieved, rushing to him.“Please tell them what you told me just twenty minutes ago in your office."He stiffly turned away from me refusing to meet my eyes, Fear crawled into my chest like ice. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.Sweat glistened along his
Melinda’s POVI pushed the door open.Every single head in the room snapped towards me.My heart was pounding so hard against my ribs I felt like a trapped animal. The large office felt suffocating.The council elders sat around the long dark table near the fireplace. Their expressions shifted the







