MasukDAMON’S POV Leon was in his study when I arrived, which was where Leon always was at this hour — reports spread across the desk, the Silverridge campaign maps open, that particular quality of focused stillness he had when he was working through a problem. He looked up when I entered. “Damon.” His voice was even. It was always even. “This isn’t a scheduled meeting.” “No,” I agreed. I crossed the room and sat down across from him without being invited, which I’d been doing my entire life and which Leon had long since stopped objecting to. “I have something.” “You always have something.” “This time it’s different.” I reached into my jacket and placed Corvin’s report on the desk between us. “Read the marked section.” Leon looked at the report. Looked at me. Then, with the unhurried manner of someone who wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of appearing urgent, he picked it up and read. I watched his
DAMON’S POVI’d been right about her from the beginning.I want that noted. Not for anyone else’s benefit — there was nobody in my private chambers to note it, nobody whose acknowledgment I needed or wanted. But for my own record, my own internal accounting of things, I wanted it stated clearly.I’d been right about Isabella from the moment I’d first seen her in the servant’s corridor seven months ago.The others had looked at her and seen a maid. Leon had looked at her and seen — well. Whatever Leon saw when he looked at her now was its own separate problem that I was setting aside for the moment. Kennedy had looked at her and filed her away as a variable to monitor. Rogers had looked at her and looked away because Rogers’s attention span for anything that wasn’t a direct physical threat lasted approximately four seconds.I’d looked at her and seen a lie.Not immediately. Not in the first moment. But within the first week, something about her had snagge
RAMONA’S POV“Yes,” I said.“Then we need to stop thinking small.” Petra had a way of cutting to the center of things that I was learning to rely on. “Eleven people is a start. But if Isabella walks back into Evergreen and Clara still has sixty warriors and Redmoon’s support and the pack’s reluctant compliance—” She spread her hands. “Eleven people is a gesture. Not a movement.”She was right. I’d known it for weeks.“Who else?” I asked.What followed was the most important conversation we’d had.We went through the pack name by name.Not everyone — not the full roster of Evergreen’s several hundred members. But the ones who mattered. The ones whose positions or skills or relationships gave them weight that the others didn’t have. The pressure points, the connectors, the people around whom others organized themselves without necessarily meaning to.Captain Aldren of the warrior corps.We debated him longest. Berin knew him best and
RAMONA’S POVThree weeks after the assembly, I had eleven people.Not soldiers. Not warriors. Not the kind of people who appeared in stories about resistance movements — hardened fighters with weapons and battle plans and the particular quality of stillness that came from having already decided they were willing to die for something.Eleven ordinary people.Dex from the kitchens, who was eighteen and furious and had to be constantly reminded to lower his voice. Old Marta, who moved through the pack house like she always had — healers were invisible in a different way than servants, people forgot that healers saw everything. Berin the warrior, who had started being very careful about which orders he followed with enthusiasm and which he followed slowly. Three women from the outer eastern settlement who had known Isabella since she was a girl and who had listened to me with their arms crossed and their faces hard and then said yes without needing any time to think
ISABELLA’S POVI heard it from the kitchens.That was how most things reached me in Redmoon Palace — through the kitchens, through the particular information network of servants and maids and kitchen workers who traded news the way merchants traded goods. Quietly, efficiently, in the margins of other conversations, in the thirty seconds between one task and the next.It was how I’d learned about Greenforest’s fall. About Ironville. About the tribute arrangements and the conquest timeline and the slow, grinding expansion of Redmoon’s reach across the seven packs like water finding every crack in stone.It was how I learned about Edmund.I was carrying a tray of breakfast dishes from the upper corridor back to the kitchen when I heard two of the wash maids talking by the basin. They weren’t being secretive about it — it was the kind of conversation people had when they considered you furniture, when they’d long since stopped registering your presence as the pr
LEON’S POVThe report from Evergreen sat on my desk for two days before I read it.Not because I was avoiding it. Because I had seventeen other reports demanding attention and Evergreen had been, until recently, the least complicated of my obligations. A managed pack. A compliant figurehead. A reliable source of tribute and information.Simple.When I finally read it, simple became complicated.I read it twice. Then I set it down and looked at the wall for a while.Clara had imprisoned Edmund and declared herself acting authority.I should have been annoyed. I was, slightly, in the way you’re annoyed when a tool does something unexpected — not broken exactly, but operating outside its intended parameters in a way that required recalibration.But underneath the annoyance was something I didn’t immediately have a name for.Something that felt, if I was being precise about it, like recognition.I’d built Clara.Not from nothing — sh
Isabella’s POV꧁𓃙𓃠𓃥𓃚꧂ I shut the door to my room and leaned against it, breathing hard. My lips were still tingling. My cheeks were still hot. And my wolf was practically dancing. He almost kissed you, she teased, tail flicking. Our King almost kissed you. “Stop,” I hissed under m
Isabella’s POV ꧁𓃙𓃠𓃥𓃚꧂ The palace gates shook with noise. Drums. Cheers. Footsteps. Someone important had arrived. I peeked out from the corner of the hallway just in time to see a black carriage stop in front of the main entrance. The doors flew open, and the first person to jump out
Isabella’s POV ꧁𓃙𓃠𓃥𓃚꧂ My heart slammed against my ribs as the mask slid even lower down my cheek. No… Not now. Not here. If Edmund recognized me in the middle of his wedding celebration, everything would explode. Clara would lose her mind. The entire courtyard might fall into chao
Sierra’s POV Rogers’ room smelled like sweat and expensive wine… the usual mix that clung to him after training. I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it. It reminded me of strength… of power… and of everything I was slowly pulling toward myself. His door hadn’t even finished closing behind us whe







