LOGINAlexander POVLouve told me that evening. She came to find me in the eastern hall, where I had been sitting alone after the day's planning session, and she sat down across from me with the particular stillness that meant she had something to say that could not be approached obliquely. That was one of the things I had always respected about my sister. She did not circle. She did not soften. When she had something to say, she said it."I'm pregnant," she said.I looked at her."Lynx's," I said."Yes."The room was very still.I am a man who has spent his adult life learning to control his reactions. The pack watched me. The warriors watched me. Decisions made in visible emotion were decisions made poorly. I had learned this at our father's knee and had polished it to a discipline in the years after his death when control was the only thing I had. I sat in that stillness now and I did the thing I had learned to do. I did not react. I did not speak immediately. I let the information arriv
Louve POVI noticed it three days after the summit meeting. Four days after Kael stood at our wall. Five days, give or take, after the last time Lynx and I had been together. It wasn't a feeling, exactly. Or not only a feeling. It was a sequence of small, strange things that I would have explained away individually but that collectively stopped being possible to ignore. The nausea in the early morning, which I attributed to stress. The vertigo when I stood too quickly, which I attributed to not sleeping enough. The way certain smells that had never bothered me were suddenly intolerable. Coffee, which I normally relied on, made me leave the room. I sat with it for two days before I let myself think the word.Then I thought the word, and everything became very still and very loud at the same time.I went to Augusta, the pack healer, who had the particular discretion of someone who had been handling private matters for a powerful family for decades, at dawn on the fifth morning, before a
Selin POV I went to the east wing, where the guest rooms were quieter, and I sat by the window and I looked at the phone. I had one contact on this phone. Louve's number. But I had memorized the other one. Without meaning to, the way you memorize things you're not supposed to want. I stared at the phone for a very long time. Then I opened a message thread and typed a number in manually.I'm at the estate. I know you know that. I know who you are now, or at least who your brother is, which probably amounts to the same thing. And maybe I need you… I paused. Then, looked at what I'd written. Then kept going.I'm not going to pretend that doesn't complicate things. It clearly does. But someone tried to kill me in my apartment, and before that you sat with me in the dark of a stuck lift and you weren't strange about it, which given the circumstances is something I keep thinking about more than I should. I'm not asking you to come here. I know that's not simple. I just wanted to say that I
Selin POV The morning arrived loud. Not in the explosive way of alarms or approaching threats. In the ordinary, domestic loudness of a large house waking up with footsteps in corridors, voices in the kitchen, the smell of coffee drifting through the vents, and the particular energy of people who have been up through a crisis night and are now running on determination and caffeine rather than actual rest. I found Louve in the front sitting room at half past eight. She was not alone.The man beside her I knew immediately, though I had only seen him once from a rooftop-level distance in the dark. My memory sharpened instantly. But Louve had described him enough times over the years, in the gaps between not talking about him, that I would have known him anyway. I froze.Lynx.He was taller than I'd pictured. Not dramatically, but noticeably. He had the kind of presence that didn't announce itself loudly, it simply made the room around it feel slightly denser, the way a mountain makes the
Alexander POV We moved along the inner path that ran between the wall and the first row of old trees. The estate grounds were quiet, but I could feel the watch-presence of the guards positioned throughout. She had this place in order. She always had things in order, even when she was barely holding them."Kael came himself," I said."Yes.""What did he say?"She was quiet for a pace. Then, "He told me to ask Elina about the night my father died."I processed that without reacting."And did you?""Yes."I waited."It wasn't your pack," she said.Three words. Which hit in a quite and precise way. The ground of twelve years of complicated history shifted beneath that sentence. I could actually sense it internally. I looked at her. She was not looking at me yet. She was looking at the path ahead, walking with the measured step of someone carrying something very carefully."Louve," I said."Someone inside our pack killed him, but maybe someone from the panther shifters" she said. "We don'
Lynx POVAustin's message arrived at half past four in the morning. It was three sentences long. And this was direct, the way he always wrote when something was serious and he was trying not to alarm me until he had more information.Movement at the Louve estate last night. Kael himself. Everyone's alright — I think. Call me.I called him without waiting any more time. He picked up on the first ring."How bad?" I asked."No casualties. They came to the wall and Kael spoke directly to Louve. Then they left.""He spoke to her himself," I said."Apparently." Austin answered.I stood at the window of my house, looking at the city in the grey early morning. The streets were empty. The atmosphere felt nice and dangerous at the same time, in ways that could not be understood by a normal human being. The lights were still on in the buildings across the road, the ordinary lamp-lit windows of people sleeping through what had, apparently, been a significant night."What did he want?" I asked."W
Elina POV It's been a while since Louve left the mansion. The mansion fell back into its usual silence. A cold mist must have begun to spread across the courtyard, curling around the stone statues and ancient trees that surrounded the estate. The air carried the scent of damp earth and pine. The a
Lynx POV Since Louve left, I had come to think as I walked deep into the living room. The city lights streamed through the glass windows, casting long shadows across the polished floor. This was exactly why I had come here first: peace. The family mansion would have been the opposite—questions, or
Louve POV I groaned as the harsh rays of sunlight seeped through my closed eyes, forcing me to roll sideways. My eyes fluttered open slowly. As soon as I flapped my eyes open, for a moment I didn't remember where I was.Then the scent reached me.Rosemary…. And himMy heart skipped.I turned my he
Austin POV The moment she nodded, I didn’t waste another second. Her scent hit me the moment I leaned closer—blood, smoke, and something else… something warm and unfamiliar. My wolf stirred restlessly inside me.Mate.The word echoed faintly in my mind, but I forced it down immediately. This wasn’t







