MasukBlade's POVIt happened the moment the last word of the oath left my mouth.Something opened up inside me. Like a door I never knew was there swinging wide. And then she came pouring through it.It felt like they were pouring all of her into me.I felt her heartbeat first. Fast, too fast, fluttering like a trapped bird. Then her breath, shallow and shaking. Then the cold. The cold ache in her arm, threading up from her wrist into her shoulder, into me, like winter water poured straight into my bones.I sucked in a sharp breath. So this was what she had been carrying. Alone. All this time.It should have scared me more than it did. I had just tied my whole life to a dying woman. I had made her death my own. Any sane man would have been afraid. And some small part of me was. But the bigger part of me … the part that had been hollow and howling since the day she ran … went quiet at last. Because she was here. Because I could feel her heart beating like it was mine. Because whatever hap
Calla's POVI woke up heavy.Heavier than I’d ever felt, like my body had been filled with wet sand. Every limb dragged. My eyelids didn’t want to open. But underneath the heaviness, somewhere deep in my chest, my wolf was … content. Happy, even. She was curled up somewhere inside me, calm, like she’d finally come home.That should have warned me.I turned my head on the soft moss, slowly, and felt the heat of a body beside me. Someone was lying right next to me, near enough that I could feel their warmth all down my side.My whole body went rigid.The fear hit before thought could catch up. Tyson’s people. Cass. A rogue. Someone who’d found me alone and helpless in the wasteland, who’d dragged me off while I was unconscious, who was going to … my mind sprinted through every terrible thing at once, every nightmare, my heart slamming so hard it hurt.I forced my eyes the rest of the way open and looked up.Blade.He was lying on his side, propped on one elbow, looking down at me. His
Adele POVI woke up with my whole body pulled tight, like a string ready to snap.I didn’t know why. I lay still for a moment, blinking at the gray light coming through the curtains, my hands curled into little fists under the blanket. My shoulders ached. My back ached. I stretched, long and slow, reaching my arms up over my head until something in my spine gave a soft pop, and then I pushed out my legs until my toes pointed and my knees trembled.That helped. A little.I sat up and rubbed my eyes and looked at the other side of the room, at the small cot where Mummy slept when she was home.It was empty. My chest went heavy.I pressed my lips together hard. I touched the little wooden wolf on my pillow, the one Mummy carved for me, and I held it tight in my fist until the carved ears dug into my palm. I didn’t cry. I just sat there holding it, looking at the empty cot, while the heavy feeling spread out from my chest into the rest of me.I’m strong. Mummy says so. I climbed down of
Blade's POVThe Book.The word sat in my chest like a stone.Book? I turned it over in my mind. What book? For half a second it meant nothing … and then it meant everything, and the meaning hit me so hard I forgot how to breathe.Could it be? Could she possibly mean that Book?I looked down at her limp in my arms, her face gray and slack, and the shock locked up my whole body. My lungs wouldn’t fill. Because there was only one Book that mattered. Only one Book that anyone would whisper about with her dying breath, sealed away in a place like this. The cursed thing my father had buried, the thing he’d warned us about in low voices, the thing only a handful of living souls even knew existed.And she knew about it.How? The question clawed at me. How in the world did Calla know about the Book? She’d been a breeder. She’d been kept in the palace, then thrown in a cell, then run for her life. She had no business knowing the secrets my father had died protecting. Only a few people knew …
Blade's POVThe bond pulled me north like a hook in my chest.I’d followed it for two days, run myself ragged on four legs through broken country, and it had only grown stronger and worse the closer I came. I could feel her at the other end of it … faint, flickering, fading. Every mile, it gets a little dimmer. Every hour, a little further from me.She was dying. The bond didn’t lie about that. It dragged the truth straight into my heart whether I wanted it or not.Then the trees thinned, and I saw where the bond was leading me, and my blood ran cold.The Valley of Kings.I knew this place. Every wolf knew it, even if most had never seen it. The burial ground of the old Alphas, generations of them laid in the earth between the northern peaks. Forbidden ground. Cursed ground. We were taught to fear it before we were old enough to understand why.And she was somewhere inside it.I shifted to two legs at the valley’s edge and felt it the moment I crossed the boundary stones … a weight,
Adele's POV“Mummy isn’t home again today, is she, Aunt Bianca?”I already knew the answer. I asked anyway, because sometimes asking made the missing feel smaller, like sharing it spread the weight around.Aunt Bianca was brushing my hair by the window. Her hands stopped for just a second. Then she smiled … but it was the kind of smile grown-ups did when they were trying to cover something up. I was little, but I wasn’t stupid. I could always tell.“No, sweetheart,” she said. “Not today. But you know why, don’t you?”“Because she’s being brave,” I said.“That’s right.” Bianca went back to brushing, gentle through my curls. “Your mummy is the bravest woman I know. She’s out there doing something very important. Something good, for a lot of people. Even when it’s hard. Even when it’s scary. That’s what brave people do.” Her voice wobbled a little at the end. “You should be very proud of her.”“I am proud of her,” I said.And I was. I held onto that, the way I held onto the little wooden
Calla’s POVI don’t want to let her go. Every instinct I have screams at me to keep holding her but I force myself back, pressing myself against the foot of the bed as the healer drops to his knees beside Adele.His name is Godfrey. He’s been the pack’s healer for thirty years. I have never seen hi
Calla’s POVThe word lands like a stone thrown into still water. Engaged.For a moment, I don’t breathe. I don’t move. The phone feels impossibly heavy in my hand, and somewhere far away, I can hear Bianca still talking … rapid, breathless words that blur together into meaningless noise.“Calla? C
Third Person POV Blade’s chest heaved against hers, the heavy oak door still rattling faintly from the force with which he’d slammed it shut. His body caged her perfectly…tall, broad, radiating raw Alpha power…yet the second his thumb brushed the delicate skin beneath her ear, something inside hi
Third Person POV The grand hall erupted into pure chaos the second Calla’s words landed.Gasps exploded like fireworks. Chairs scraped backward as wolves half-rose in shock, then sat again, unsure whether to cheer or snarl. Whispers detonated into full-blown arguments…some people looked confused







