LOGIN[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
[Selena's POV]Riders. More of them, coming up the slope behind the line already holding me, torchlight bouncing off wet rock, and for one wild second I thought Lucian had somehow found a way to send help after all.Then I saw her.Eileen rode in at Alaric's side, pale, one hand braced against her stomach, and every soldier on that ridge turned half a step toward her without meaning to, the way people turn toward heat in winter. She looked half dead on her feet even sitting on a horse. She looked like she should have been carried off that battlefield an hour ago instead of climbing a ridge in the dark to watch me finish falling apart."You shouldn't be here," Alaric said to her, low."I know." She didn't stop. "I'm here anyway.""Selena," he called out, "get down from the horse. Nobody else needs to die tonight.""That's rich," I said, "coming from the man who just buried a sword in my brother.""Your brother put that sword there himself, the day he decided murder was an acceptable op
[Selena's POV]I watched my brother die from the north tower, too far away to do anything but grip the stone until my nails split against it.I'd climbed up there to see better, to find some angle where the fight made sense, where Lucian's blade found an opening and Alaric went down instead. It never came. I watched the sword go into his side.He folded around it, and then the whole ward went quiet around his body.Then I ran.I don't remember the stairs. I remember the horse, one of the last saddled mounts left in the stable yard, and a stable boy too frightened to stop me from taking it. I remember the gate hanging open because nobody had thought to guard an exit nobody expected anyone to use, not with the whole ward watching their alpha die in the open.Lucian's dead.I said it out loud, once, into the dark, the way I used to say Bloodhowl just to hear how the word sat in my mouth. It didn't steady anything this time. It only made the shaking worse.Nine years, Selena. Kade's voice,
[Eileen's POV]The east wall came into view in pieces, torchlight and running men and shouting, and a knot of North Pack soldiers backed against the stone with their spears out and nobody willing to close the last few feet."Move!" Alaric shoved through them, and I saw why they'd stopped.Alice stood in the middle of the gap with a stolen sword too heavy for her grip, swinging it in wide, wild arcs, nothing trained or careful about the way she held it. Blood soaked one side of her dress from ribs Alaric had cracked days ago, and her hair had come loose from its pins, plastered to her face with sweat."Stay back!" she screamed at the ring of soldiers. "All of you, stay back!""Alice." Alaric's voice cut through the noise, low and even. "Put it down."Her head snapped toward him, then found me behind his shoulder, and something in her face shifted, ugly and raw."Of course," she said. "Of course you'd bring her.""Nobody brought me anywhere," I said. "I came because you were screaming."







