LOGINTanya's POVThe fire was too small.The flames were barely knee-high, snapping and struggling against the dark, and Tyson sat so close to them that his boots had begun to steam.Or maybe that was his skin.“She’s awake,” Cass said and stepped back into the shadows. I heard him strike a flint, light a pipe. The sweet, cheap tobacco smell cut through the rot for only a second.Tyson didn’t look at me immediately.He was staring into the fire, his long fingers steepled beneath his chin, and the orange light did him no favors. It turned the grey of his dying cheeks to ash. It made the black veins crawling up his throat look like cracks in old porcelain, filled with ink. His too-bright eyes reflected the flames without any hint of warmth, like a cat’s eyes in a barn at midnight.“She is the real deal,” Cass said from the dark. “The girl healed the breeder. She was as good as dead.”Tyson’s mouth moved.It took me a moment to realize he was smiling. Then he laughed.The sound started low,
Calla's POVI didn’t know how long had passed, but I started feeling intense heat. The cold, hard ground beneath my back. The bite of winter air in my lungs. A throbbing ache in my chest that told me, viciously and without mercy, that I was alive.It hurt. God, it hurts. Every nerve ending in my body screamed in protest, every muscle burned, and it was the most exquisite pain I had ever felt.Because it meant I was here.“Calla?” Brynn’s voice, which was raw and utterly ruined, cut through the haze. “Calla, can you hear me?”I tried to answer. My throat felt sandy, my tongue was swollen and useless. I managed a sound … something between a groan and a breath … and the body beneath my head went rigid with hope.“She’s back,” Brynn said, and his voice broke. “Blade, she’s back.”Blade.I turned my head a little too fast, causing the world to spin, and there he was. Kneeling at my side, his face streaked with dirt, tears, and blood, his eyes so wide they looked almost wild. He reached f
Tanya's POV“Fuck. Fuck.”I slammed the door of my chamber behind me and swept everything off the table with one violent sweep of my arm. The candlesticks, the wine cup, the little carved box of jewels … all of it crashed to the floor. It wasn’t enough. I knocked over the chair too. Then the washbasin, water sloshing across the stones. I wanted to break everything. I wanted to scream the whole palace down.He’d come back. And cut my prisoner down off the gallows and humiliated me in front of the entire pack. Everything I’d built in their absence … the loyalty, the fear, was gone, just like that. Undone in the space of a single afternoon.I stood in the wreckage of my room, breathing hard, my hands shaking with fury.It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. I’d done everything right. I’d been patient. I’d waited years for an opening, and when the twins finally left, I’d taken it, and I’d nearly had it … the crowd eating out of my hand, the breeder dying in some ditch in the wilds, the pa
Calla's POV The pain is gone.That is the first thing I notice, and it frightens me more than the pain ever did … because I know what it means when a body stops hurting. I know what that silence is called. I know I am dying.I am floating. Somewhere above myself, somewhere between the cold ground and whatever comes after, I am simply drifting, and the strange, terrible thing is how peaceful it is. How soft. I had expected death to be violent, to demand something of me at the end. But it is nothing like that. It is the way a fire goes out … not all at once, just dimmer and dimmer, the light going gently, until there isn’t any left.I can hear Brynn.His voice comes to me the way all sounds do now … muffled, remote, like he is calling from the bottom of a very deep lake and I am floating far above the surface.“Hold on, Calla. Please. Please hold on.”I want to answer him. I want to press my hand over his and tell him it’s all right, it doesn’t hurt anymore, you can rest now, you’ve b
Bianca's POVTanya straightened slowly, brushing the dirt from her skirts, and looked down at me with something cold flickering behind her eyes.“And what,” she said, “makes you think I care one bit for your mate?”My blood turned to ice.“Hang him,” she said, turning back to the gallows. “I’ve changed my mind. A weeping woman won’t sway me from doing what’s necessary. Put the rope back on. Be quick about it.”“No!” I screamed, lunging forward, but the guards caught me, dragging me back. “No, please, no…”They lifted the noose toward Kyle’s neck. He didn’t fight this time. He just looked at me across the courtyard, calm and steady, like he was trying to give me something to hold onto. The rope touched his throat…The courtyard gate slammed open.A great black wolf tore through it, fast as a storm, and before anyone could so much as shout, he’d crossed the whole courtyard and leapt … claws flashing … and slashed clean through the rope above Kyle’s head.The rope fell away in two piece
Bianca's POV“Bring him out,” Tanya said.She stood at the head of the courtyard in a gown the color of old wine, with her chin high, her voice ringing clear across the gathered crowd. The same crowd that had hanged the spy two nights ago. The same hungry, frightened faces.“Bring out the traitor. I mean to make an example of him. This kingdom has grown soft on traitors, and softness is what brought the plague to our doors. No more.”A guard near her hesitated. “Ma’am … are you certain? He’s no ordinary man. That’s Kyle. One of the Alpha’s most trusted knights. Brynne himself raised him up. When the Alphas return…”Tanya turned and slapped him across the face. The crack echoed off the stone.“When the Alphas return,” she said coldly, “they will thank me for cleaning out the rot they left behind. Do not question me again. Bring him out. Now.”The guard touched his reddening cheek, bowed his head, and went.I stood at the edge of the courtyard with Adele’s hand clutched tight in mine,
Calla's POV I stood up fast. The fire was almost dead. My body still ached from the cold and honestly I hated being in the wild. I just wanted to snuggle with my soft daughter and rest, but my mind was clear now. The sacred grove was the real goal. “Lwt us go now,” I said. My voice was urgent.
Third Person POV Calla walked beside Lira through the deep snow. The cold bit at her skin, but the heat from Blade’s tongue still lingered on her neck like a brand. Her thighs felt damp and uncomfortable under the layers of her clothing. Every step sent a small jolt through her body. She could
Third Person POV Calla sat alone on the frozen log, the cold biting through her thin coat like teeth.The snow fell steadily, blanketing the clearing in white silence. Her breath came out in small clouds. Her fingers were numb inside her gloves. She had been here for over an hour, staring into th
Third Person POV Tanya Knox stared into the dying flames. The small fire gave almost no heat now. The night had grown darker and colder. Her remaining wolves sat close together, their faces pale and tired. The expensive coat she wore was still mostly clean, but her hands shook with barely contai







