로그인Chapter 438OLLIETWO YEARS LATERThe smell came first, before anything else in the dream ever did.Wildflowers. Not the smell of the garden behind our house, which was mostly roses and something my mother called lavender that made my nose itch. This was different. Wilder. Sweet in a way that didn't sit in my chest so much as it wrapped around it, gentle, the way a blanket wraps around you when someone tucks it in tight enough that you can't wiggle free even if you wanted to.I never saw a face in the dream. That was the part that bothered me most, more than the smell itself, more than waking up with my heart going too fast and my sheets twisted around my legs like I'd been running somewhere in my sleep. There was just warmth, and the smell, and a voice that hummed instead of talking—no words, just a tune I could never remember once I was awake, no matter how hard I tried to hold onto it in the first few seconds before it slipped away like water down a drain.I had the dream maybe onc
Chapter 437SOPHIA"From growing up on a farm territory," he said, smiling, and there was such warmth in his voice, such easy familiarity, that it settled something in me even as the moment with Ollie still sat unresolved in my chest.We'd known each other so long. Sixteen years old, both of us gangly and awkward, meeting at a joint pack gathering our parents had insisted on attending. I remembered the exact moment I'd known I wanted him—some stupid, unremarkable afternoon where he'd made me laugh so hard I'd nearly choked on lemonade, and he'd pounded my back with more alarm than the situation warranted, and something in his eyes had told me he'd have kept pounding forever if it meant I kept breathing.We weren't fated mates. I knew that, had always known it, the way you know a fact about yourself that used to matter more than it did now. There had been a stretch of years, right after we'd properly gotten together, where the absence of that particular bond had felt like a wound neith
Chapter 436SOPHIAHe didn't answer. He rarely did, these days. He just looked at me with those large, solemn eyes—so like Xenois's, and yet somehow unlike them too, carrying something heavier than a five-year-old should carry—and then crossed the kitchen to take the stool furthest from his brothers."Pancakes are almost ready," I told him, keeping my voice light. "Chocolate chip or plain?"He shrugged. Just a small movement of his shoulders, and then he reached for the stuffed wolf he carried with him everywhere—a worn, gray thing with one ear stitched back on crooked, a gift Xenois had given him years ago that Ollie had never once been willing to leave behind—and set it on the counter beside him, arranging it just so, like the positioning mattered more than anything I'd asked him.Something in my chest tightened, small and reflexive, and I didn't examine it too closely. I never did."Plain, then," I decided for him, and turned back to the stove.It wasn't that I didn't love him. I w
Chapter 435SOPHIAThe morning light came through our bedroom curtains the way it always did, gold and soft, catching dust motes that drifted lazy over the bed like they had nowhere better to be. I lay there a moment before opening my eyes fully, listening to Xenois's breathing beside me, slow and even, and let myself feel the simple, ordinary miracle of a quiet morning.We didn't get many of those anymore. Not since Jerome.He'd slipped through our fingers three weeks ago, in the final chaotic hour of the offensive we'd planned for months, vanishing into whatever hole men like him crawled into when their armies stopped answering their calls. I still felt a flicker of frustration when I thought about it—all that planning, all that bloodshed, and the man himself still breathing somewhere out there. But his coalition was gone. Scattered, broken, absorbed or destroyed. The war was over in every way that mattered to the people who had to live in its aftermath.And we were rebuilding. God,
Chapter 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 206: Alone and AfraidOLLIEMy head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. The pounding behind my eyes was so intense that even the dim light filtering through the broken windows made me want to throw up. I tried to sit up, but the movement sent waves of nausea crashing over me,
Chapter 207: Not A Random KId, OfficerOLLIEA man lay sprawled on the concrete about ten feet away from where I'd been unconscious. His eyes were wide open in a silent scream, and there were claw marks across his chest that looked like they'd been made by something with very large, very sharp claw
Chapter 204: All MissingLUMINAThe expression on Zade's face told me everything I needed to know, even before he spoke. The hope I'd been clinging to crumbled into dust."We haven't found him yet," he said quietly, his voice barely audible as he kept speaking, holding onto me tight like he was sca
Chapter 198: A Necessary AllianceXENOIS"That's exactly what I'm asking," Marcus replied without hesitation. "I need your help getting these werewolves into Shadow City undetected."All three vampires took an immediate step backward, their friendly demeanor evaporating."Are you out of your mind?"







