LOGINADAMCan two people's lips taste the same?The question stalked me all the way back to my quarters, pacing my thoughts with the same relentless rhythm as my boots against stone. The night air should have cooled me, cleared my head. Instead, it sharpened everything—memory, sensation, doubt.Maya's lips had tasted like rain and iron. Like something wild caught between fear and defiance. I remembered the way she used to smile before she kissed me, like she already knew the outcome and was daring fate to interfere.Dora's had been different. Softer. Warmer. A quiet promise layered beneath the fire. Kissing Dora had felt like coming home to a place I hadn't known I'd been searching for. There had been grief there too, always grief, as if she carried endings in her bones.And Sage.Sage's lips tasted like both.The realization made me slow my steps, my chest tightening as the royal gates loomed ahead. Stone and iron parted for me, familiar and unyielding, but my thoughts refused to fall in
SAGEThe kiss shouldn't have happened.That was my first thought—not shock, not anger, but a sharp, clinical recognition that something had gone off-script. Adam's mouth was suddenly on mine, warm and insistent, and for a single suspended second my body froze while my mind scrambled to catch up.My eyes stayed open. I watched his close instead.There was something almost reverent in the way his lashes brushed his cheeks, the way his brow eased as though this—this—was a relief he hadn't known he was holding his breath for. The cave's low light caught on the sharp lines of his face, softened them, made him look dangerously human.Then his lips moved.Slow. Certain. Like he already knew the shape of my mouth.The breath left me in a quiet, traitorous sound.No. Absolutely not.Except my body disagreed.Heat unfurled low in my belly, startling in its speed, and when his tongue brushed my lower lip, coaxing, my resolve slipped just enough for a moan to escape me. Soft. Embarrassingly hon
ADAMShe was powerful.The thought struck me with the weight of inevitability, settling deep in my chest as I watched Sage stand there, her brow drawn tight after the priest's words. The faint rumble of the waters had not yet stilled. It lingered, vibrating through the chamber like an aftershock, as if the cave itself was reluctant to forget her presence.Powerful wasn't even the right word. She had made the waters move.My fingers curled slowly at my sides. That wasn't supposed to happen. Not without a trial. Not without a child stepping forward to be measured by fate and blood and bone. And yet the pool had stirred the moment she crossed the threshold, answering her like an old friend—or a subject recognizing its sovereign.Just like Dora.The memory rose unbidden, sharp and unwelcome. Six years ago, this same chamber. The same low hum. My wolf stirred. I told you. She is one and the same."No," I thought back immediately, almost violently. "That's not possible."It couldn't be. D
SAGEThe doctor's voice droned on like running water over stone—smooth, practiced, endlessly reverent."The goddess watches over this place," he was saying, hands gesturing toward the carvings as though they might rise and bow. "Every ritual, every trial, every drop of blood spilled here has been seen. Recorded."I nodded when nodding was expected. Tilted my head when he paused, as if inviting awe.Inside, I was bored.Not the restless kind of boredom that made you fidget or sigh. No—this was sharper, edged with irritation. I had heard variations of this sermon in a dozen places, spoken by men who believed reverence was the same as understanding. The goddess, the trials, the sacred balance. Always the same words. Always the same worship dressed up as wisdom.What occupied me far more than the doctor's monologue was the priest. His eyes had not left me.Not openly—not enough for the others to call him out—but enough. Too often. Too intent. His gaze didn't slide away when mine brushed
ADAMShe stopped.Not abruptly, not startled—but with a measured stillness that made the night lean closer, as if the world itself had paused to watch what would happen next.I halted too, my grip tightening unconsciously around her hand.For a breath, I simply stared at her.At the angle of her face as she turned slightly toward me. At the way moonlight softened the sharpness of her cheekbones. At her hair—dark, glossy, falling in a way that didn't quite sit right in my mind, as though some instinct deep inside me was whispering that this wasn't its true shade. Her eyes troubled me more. Too vivid. Too deliberate. As if she'd chosen them rather than been born with them.And yet none of that mattered. Because the feelings didn't stop.They hadn't stopped since the moment I'd been waiting in her living room, restless, irritated with myself, when she had walked in wearing that casual confidence like a second skin. They hadn't stopped when she teased me, slow and deliberate, her voice
SAGEThe night pressed close, quiet in that eerie, fragile way only fear can create. People had turned in early again. They hadn't left their lives to chance, or information, which was accurate really—vampires couldn't come in unless invited.Even with the magic dome holding strong over this part of the lycans' region, the air throbbed with the kind of silence that comes from shared dread. Doors bolted. Curtains drawn. Fires put out early. The vampires had made sure the entire kingdom slept like prey. Had made sure that rumors of their prowess had gone ahead of them. It was all according to the plan. Make the kingdom quake in its boots, to the point of surrender, if push came to shove.A kingdom, about to be destroyed…And here I was, strolling beside its king.Adam walked at my left, hands in his pockets, boots crunching over the stone path, maintaining the same silence. His energy brushed against mine, calm and restless all at once—like steady water trembling under a storm's appr







