تسجيل الدخول[Selena’s POV]Four ruined pages already sat crumpled on the floor by the time I got the fifth one right, one of them torn clean through where I’d pressed the pen too hard trying to force the wrong sentence into working.The inn’s one candle had burned crooked, dripping wax onto the table faster than any candle had a right to, and my knuckles were stained with ink from crossing out the same opening line three separate times. Dear Lucian looked wrong. So did the version where I’d tried nothing at all, just his name and a blank space under it like I expected him to fill in the rest himself. The room smelled like tallow and someone else’s stale ale, nothing like the rosewater and cedar I’d trained myself to keep burning in my chambers for three straight years, and my hands were still raw from the reins.I picked the pen back up and didn’t let myself stop this time.Three hours on a borrowed horse had left my thighs raw and my temper worse, and every time I closed my eyes I saw the exact
[Lumi’s POV]The pounding on doors down the corridor woke me before anything else did, boots against stone, too many pairs for a single guard on a single errand.I sat up in the dark and listened. A door slammed somewhere near the old wing. Someone shouted a name I couldn’t quite catch, and then another voice answered it, closer, moving fast toward the stables.I was out of bed and pulling a robe on before I’d fully decided to be.The corridor outside my room was already full of half dressed guards and a maid clutching a lantern with both hands like it might run off without her. I caught a passing steward’s arm before he could get past me.“What’s happened?”“Lady Selena, my lady. Gone from her chambers, horse and all, sometime in the night.” He didn’t slow down to say it, already pulling free of my grip. “The Alpha’s ordered every gate checked twice.”I let him go and stood there a moment, my first thought going straight to Kade, to how much worse tonight of all nights would land on
[Kade’s POV]My feet took me to the old wing before the rest of me caught up to where I was going.I hadn’t set foot in that hallway since I got back. Three weeks in this palace and I’d found a hundred reasons to walk the long way around it, and now here I was at midnight, knuckles still aching from how hard I’d had them fisted in that gallery, standing in front of a door I used to know better than my own name.It wasn’t locked.Light spilled out from under it, thin and gold, and for one stupid second my chest did something painful before I remembered I wasn’t the only one with a key.I pushed it open and found Alaric on the floor, back against my old bed frame, a bottle of our father’s whiskey open beside him, half gone, a small carved wolf turning over and over between his fingers.He looked up, neither of us said anything for a long moment.“You come here a lot?” I finally asked.“Enough.” He didn’t look ashamed of it, which somehow made it worse. “Every year on the day the letter
[Eileen’s POV]Elena didn’t stop talking when we stepped into the gallery. Smoke from the torches lining the walls hung thick enough to sting, and she stood right in the middle of it, dabbing at eyes that weren’t actually wet.“…saw them myself, from my own window, well past an hour any decent woman would allow a man into her rooms.” Her fingers pressed to her mouth, right on cue. “A woman like that doesn’t get a second chance to ruin a good name. Mine or anyone else’s.”One of the elders, an older man with a Moon Chalice pin on his collar, noticed us first. The pin caught the torchlight as he turned, a small hard flash before his face settled into something careful.“My Alpha.” He inclined his head, then to me, more carefully, “My Luna.”“Someone rang the summons bell in the middle of the night for a rumor.” Alaric didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to, the whole gallery seemed to lean toward him anyway, the way rooms full of frightened people always leaned toward the one person
[Eileen’s POV]The door hit the wall hard enough to knock the painting beside it crooked, and Alaric was across the room before I’d even pushed off the edge of the bed.I hadn’t undressed. Hadn’t blown out the candle either, some stubborn part of me was certain he’d come back tonight even after a guard had dragged him away mid-sentence.“Alaric…”He didn’t let me finish. Both hands found my face before I’d gotten his name all the way out, like he needed to touch me to believe I was actually still standing there.“Kade wants Lumi.” His voice came out wrecked, none of the careful control he usually kept wrapped around every word he gave me. “Not you. Never you. I wasted two days on nothing, Eileen. Two whole days deciding my own brother wanted my wife, and the entire time it was written all over his face and I was too much of a coward to just ask him.”“I noticed the two days.”“I know you did.” His thumb dragged along my jaw, rough, unsteady, like he hadn’t fully decided whether he tru
[Alaric’s POV]I had him by the collar before he’d finished saying my name, his spine hitting stone hard enough to rattle the torch bracket beside us and send sparks scattering across the floor.“Did you touch her?” My voice didn’t sound like mine. Low, rough, dragged up from somewhere closer to the wolf than the man. My jaw was clenched so hard my back teeth ached, and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. They wanted his throat, not his collar. “Tell me you didn’t touch her, Kade. Right now.”His hands came up, not shoving back, just steady against my forearms, the way you’d calm a spooked horse. “I didn’t touch her. Let go of me before you do something you’ll regret in front of the whole staircase.”I heard it then. Feet on stone, two floors down, servants already stirring at this hour no matter how early it was. I let go of his collar and shoved him toward the study instead, hard enough that he stumbled through the doorway ahead of me.I threw the bolt behind us, metal biting into old w







