로그인[Eileen's POV]Alaric found me sitting on the low wall at the edge of the garden, looking out over the open fields, and he didn't ask why I'd sent for him three times before he finally got free."Roth said you'd been asking all morning.""I have. You’re a hard man to pin down when there’s still a kingdom to put back together.”"It's mostly put back together now, if that helps." He sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "What did you need?""I've been trying to figure that out since breakfast." I looked out at the fields instead of at him, easier that way. "Lucian's dead. Alice is dead. Selena's dead. Elena's in a cell answering for the rest of it. Everyone who hurt me, in this life or the one before it, is finally gone or accounted for.""I know.""I thought I'd feel finished. Wren warned me it wouldn't feel like anything right away, and she was right, but I assumed eventually it would settle into something. Relief, maybe. Peace." I pressed my palm flat against my sto
[Alaric's POV]"My lord." Roth reached us before I'd finished helping Kade unload the saddlebags, and whatever was in his hands looked important enough that he hadn't bothered smoothing his expression on the walk over. "Forgive the timing. This couldn't wait for morning.""Nothing ever can, with you, not even on a night like this one." I kept half my attention on Eileen, watching her lean into Lumi's shoulder, laughing at something for the first genuine time since we'd ridden home. "What is it.""West Pack territory. There's no clear heir. Lucian's council's already splitting into three factions arguing over who takes the seat, and two of them have started arming their own men against each other inside the walls.""So it fractures into exactly the kind of chaos that put a knife in my brother's back three years ago, if we let it.""That's my read as well, my lord.""How bad.""Bad enough that our scouts counted skirmishes in two separate districts before we'd even finished burying our
[Kade's POV]The safehold gate came into view around the last bend, and I nearly fell off my own horse getting down before it had properly stopped."Kade!" Hollis was already swinging the gate open, grinning wide enough to split his face. "We heard three different rumors about the battle before your rider finally got here. Half of them had you dead twice over.""Exaggerated, clearly.""Clearly." He clapped my shoulder, hard. "She's inside. I haven't slept right in days, waiting for word ."I didn't wait to hear the rest. I crossed the yard at a run, and the kitchen door banged open before I reached it, and then Lumi was there, flour dusted across one cheek exactly the way it had been the last time I left her standing in this yard."You're alive." She said it like she needed to hear herself say it before she'd believe her own eyes. "You're actually alive, you absolute fool, you said three weeks and it's been almost a month.""I said I'd send a word. I did.""Words aren't the same as
[Eileen's POV]I woke up screaming on the third night, and it took Alaric almost a full minute to convince me the sword wasn't real."Eileen. Eileen, look at me. Nobody's here. You're safe, you're in bed, it's over.""I felt it go into him." My hands were still shaking, fisted in the blanket like I could hold myself together with fabric alone. "Not Lucian. Selena. I had her wrist and I felt her pull away, and in the dream it was my hand that let her fall, not hers that pulled free.""That's not what happened.""I know that. I know it when I'm awake." I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes until colors bloomed behind them. "It doesn't seem to matter what I know once I'm asleep."He didn't tell me it would pass. He'd learned that much about me over the last three days, that promises about the future did nothing for the version of me sitting in the wreckage of the present. He just pulled me against his chest instead and let me listen to his heartbeat until mine slowed down to ma
[Alaric's POV]Wren found me in the hallway outside the healer's room. I’d been pacing outside her door for several minutes."She's fine," she said, cutting off the question I hadn't finished asking. "Exhaustion, nothing more. The baby's heartbeat is strong. She needs sleep, food, and about a month of somebody telling her no when she tries to get up too early.""I can manage that last part.""I imagine you can." Wren almost smiled. "Go. She's asleep, and she'll stay that way for hours. There's nothing here that needs you standing in a hallway wearing a hole in the floor."So two days later, with Eileen finally eating solid meals again and Kade refusing to leave her side for longer than it took me to walk the length of the North Pack court, I went to deal with Elena instead.She sat across the table from me in the small stone room we used for matters nobody wanted overheard, hands folded, spine straight, the picture of a woman who had nothing at all to answer for."My lord. I've been a
[Eileen's POV]I didn't hear her hit the ground. The wind took whatever sound there might have been, and then there was nothing where she’d been standing a second ago."Eileen." Alaric's arm locked around my waist and pulled me back from the edge before my knees understood they should be doing that themselves. "Don't look down. Look at me.""I had her wrist," I said. "I had it, and I let go, and I don't even remember deciding to.""You didn't let go. She pulled free. There's a difference, and you need to let yourself believe it.""Does it matter, in the end?""It matters to me." He turned my face up to his, thumb brushing along my jaw, careful as he checked my face. "You tried to save a woman who tried to kill you an hour ago. That's not a thing to carry guilt over."Kade came up beside us, breathing hard from the climb, and looked once over the edge before deciding against a second look. "Somebody should go down and...""In the morning," Alaric said. "Nobody's climbing that in the da







