MasukChapter 434XENOISShe laughed, a little watery, a little relieved, and pressed her face into my shoulder.We stood there a moment longer, and I let myself remember—the way you let yourself remember something good in the middle of something terrible, grabbing at it like a rope thrown into deep water. Sophia, sixteen years old, laughing at something stupid I'd said outside the pack training grounds, the first time I'd realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life making her laugh like that. The years after, dating quietly at first and then not quietly at all, my parents' cautious approval slowly warming into real affection for her. The mating ceremony, her hand in mine under the full moon, the whole pack howling their approval into the night sky.The pregnancy. God, I remembered the pregnancy—how sick she'd been those first months, how she used to press my hand against her stomach in the middle of the night just so I could feel the twins move, how she'd cried the first time Riley kick
Chapter 433XENOIS"Lumina!"I shouted the name into the smoke-choked hallway, my voice cracking on it, raw from shouting it for the last ten minutes straight. The pack house was in chaos around me—guards running past with weapons drawn, someone's voice on the radio crackling with static, the acrid smell of something burning drifting up from the lower floors."She was in the safe room," Silvia said, appearing at my shoulder, her face pale. "Thorne said the portal came out of nowhere, that they took—""Took who?" I demanded, spinning to face her. "Took her where?"My mother's mouth opened, then closed. Something crossed her face I didn't have time to name. "I don't—Xenois, I need you to help me search the east wing, some of the younger guards are still unaccounted for—""Not until I find her," I said, already moving again, pushing past a knot of pack members clustered near the stairwell. "Lumina! Where are you!"I didn't know why I was so certain something had happened to her. I didn't
Chapter 432JANICEThat is what I told myself, at least, in the moments before I began.There are rules to what I can do, and I want to set them down plainly, because I think it matters—maybe only to me—that the limits are real and not just a story I tell to make myself feel less like a monster.I cannot kill. Not directly, not as payment, not ever. Death is a door I am permitted to open once, for the person who is owed a second chance, and never again for them after that. Whatever else I do to Lumina, I cannot end her life. That is not mercy. It is simply outside what I am allowed to do.I cannot torture without end. Pain has its place in balance—suffering is sometimes the only currency a thread will accept—but it must have a shape and a limit, a beginning and a close. What I was doing to Lumina, sealing her in the grey, letting her drift in fragments too thin to hold onto, was not meant to be eternal. It was meant to last until the thread stabilized around her absence. Two years, ro
Chapter 431JANICEI had done this eleven times before Lumina.Eleven threads unraveled and rewoven, eleven people sent back to fix a moment that broke them, eleven debts collected when the balance came due. I remembered each one, though most people would think a thing like me couldn't remember anything at all—that I was just a force, a rule, a law of nature wearing a woman's shape. They were wrong. I remembered everything. That was the curse of what I was. I never got to forget.Lumina thought I was cruel. I understood why. From where she stood, cruelty and inevitability probably looked the same. But I wasn't cruel. I was constrained.Let me explain it the way I wished I could have explained it to her, if there had been time, if the rules had allowed for more than the little I'd already bent.The world does not like being changed. This is the first thing I learned, centuries ago, when I still had a name that wasn't Janice and a life that wasn't this one. Time is not a river, no matte
Chapter 430LUMINAChapter 430LUMINAThere was no floor beneath me, and yet I was standing.That was the first wrong thing. The second was the color of the world—or the lack of it. Everything around me was gray, but not the gray of fog or stone. It was the gray of nothing. Like someone had erased the world and forgotten to draw it back in."Where am I?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted."Somewhere between," Janice said.She was there suddenly, though I hadn't seen her arrive. She looked the same as she had in my dying moment six months ago—tall, still, her eyes holding centuries I couldn't count. She didn't look cruel. That was the worst part. She looked almost kind."Between what?" I asked."Between what was and what will be," she said. "It's easier to talk here. No distractions. No pack bonds pulling at you. No heartbeat to worry about."My hand went to my chest without thinking. No heartbeat. She was right. I couldn't feel it beating at all, and the panic that should have c
Chapter 429THORNENightwalkers poured from the shadows—not from inside the warehouse, but from the surrounding buildings we'd thought were clear. They'd been waiting, watching us breach the empty structure, timing their assault for maximum effectiveness."Contact!" I shouted, opening fire. "Multiple hostiles, ambush pattern!"My team responded instantly, forming defensive positions and returning fire. But we were caught in the open, halfway between the compromised warehouse and actual cover, exactly where any competent tactical planner would want their enemies.Jerome was proving to be a very competent tactical planner."Alpha Command, Delta Team under heavy assault!" I reported between bursts of gunfire. "Ambush force, estimated twenty plus combatants, requesting immediate support!""All teams reporting similar attacks," Xenois responded, his voice tight. "This is a coordinated counteroffensive. We walked into a trap. All teams fall back to rally points, regroup and—"Static cut off
Chapter 311: Buried TruthsZADE"How did things go with Simon?" Lyn asked, clearly desperate to change the subject."Productively," I said, moving into the room and letting the door close behind Rivers and me. "We established some boundaries about interfering with pack stability and threatening my
Chapter 302: Figuring Out A PlanOLLIEThat's a terrible idea," I interrupted. "You can't just randomly portal into places where dangerous ancient creatures might be hanging out. What if you open a portal right in the middle of them? What if they grab you and pull you through before you can close i
Chapter 289: School PoliticsOLLIEIt was a bold thing to say—invoking my father's authority, essentially threatening Derek's family with the possibility of a leadership challenge. But I was angry, and protective, and these were my brothers being attacked for something they couldn't control.Derek'
Chapter 300: Plans JEROME"And third," Victoria added, "we're talking about declaring war on an Alpha family. That brings consequences beyond just this pack. Other Alphas might decide we're too dangerous to tolerate. They might unite against us, and then we're facing not one pack but dozens."Thes







