Mag-log inCassie's POVThree weeks laterThe morning Lark beat Mark in the sparring yard was the morning I knew everything was going to be okay.It had been three weeks since Alexa turned to ash in our courtyard. Three weeks, the pack slowly finding its footing again. Three weeks of Lark eating properly and sleeping properly and waking up without that carefully measured way he used to move, like he was calculating how much energy each step would cost him.I was sitting in the covered viewing area overlooking the yard when it happened. Two guards stood at either side of me. Below, a small crowd of warriors had gathered along the edges of the yard the way they always did when the Alphas trained. Nobody announced it. The word just spread the way it always did and people showed up.Mark and Lark were at the center of it all.They'd been going at it for about twenty minutes. Back and forth, neither of them giving much away. Mark was faster. He always had been. But Lark was reading him, antici
Cassie's POVSmoke engulfed the entire courtyard and palace as a whole.It was choking with a pungent smell.Guards stumbled. Some went down on their knees coughing. Others swung blindly at nothing.Alot of guards had fallen unconscious after inhaling a lot of it.“What in heaven is this?” Quickly Mark tossed a face mask towards my direction. I wore it quickly and built a wall of protection around the courtyard so the smoke doesn't cause more harm.Then she walked through it.Alexa.Like the smoke was hers. Like she'd made it specifically so she could walk through it looking like that. Unhurried. Dressed simply. The crescent moon mark visible at her throat, catching what little light the smoke hadn't swallowed yet.She stopped in the middle of the courtyard and looked around slowly.Then she smiled."Did you miss me?"The twins broke through the protection wall and lunged toward her as well as the courtyard full of blinded guards.Alexa didn't even look at them.She was looking at me
Cassie's POVWe got back just before noon.The pack house was moving through its usual midday noise when we rode through the gates. I had the root wrapped carefully inside my jacket the whole ride back, one hand pressed against it every time the horse moved too fast over rough ground. Mark had noticed but didn't say a word either. The ride was quiet.Lark was sitting up in bed when we walked in. He looked at the root in my hands and then at my face and whatever he saw there made him sit up straighter."Is it good?" he asked."Yeah," I said.Mark pulled up a chair and sat down while I went straight to the preparation.This time I took my time with it. No rushing. No telling myself that the damage was close enough to a whole. I had what I needed, and I was going to use it properly.Lark watched me work without talking. Mark was quieter than usual too.The three of us just existed in that room together for a little while, and it felt okay. Heavy but okay.When everything was ready,
Cassie's POVI prepared the root that same evening.I didn't tell Lark how little I had to work with. I just set everything up the way Berta had described to Mark.Lark was sitting up in bed watching me move around the room. Mark was by the window. Neither of them was talking, which was fine because I didn't need conversation right now. All I needed were quiet and steady hands and about three times more root than I actually had."You don't have to look so serious," Lark teased.Quite a humor for a sick patient."I'm concentrating," I retorted.“Your facial expression reads more of worry than concentration,” he adjusted his sitting posture.I didn't respond to his last statement. I finished the preparation and brought everything to the bed and sat beside him and looked at him for a moment before I started.He looked better than he had a week ago. His melanin was coming back slowly. He was eating properly again. The shaking in his hands had reduced him to something almost manageabl
Cassie's POVJoelle was on her knees before I even reached the courtyard.I heard the commotion from the corridor and came out to find her there in the dirt, head bowed, hands pressed flat on the ground in front of her like she was trying to make herself as small as possible. Petra was standing beside her looking pale. The two guards who'd ridden with them were off to the side and neither of them was meeting my eyes.That alone told me everything."Get up Joelle," I said.She didn't move. She just started talking to the ground."I'm sorry, Luna. I'm so sorry, I tried. I really tried, but the ground was frozen solid, and we couldn't get the root out cleanly, and I thought I had it but when I pulled—" her voice broke, "—it snapped. Right at the base. I didn't mean to, I swear I followed everything you said, but my hands slipped and—""Joelle." My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. "Get up."She got up slowly. Her face was red and wet and her hands were still shaking. She was ma
Cassie's POVI was mixing Lark's morning treatment when the door opened and Mark walked in.He looked like someone who'd been riding hard and hadn't slept. His jacket was dusty, and his hair was pushed back in the way it got when he'd been running his hands through it repeatedly, which he only did when something was sitting heavy on him.Lark looked up from the bed. "Where have you been?"Mark pulled up a chair and sat down and looked at both of us. "Vale Pack."The spoon in my hand stopped moving.Does he know about the letter?"I went alone," he said before either of us could respond. "Before you say anything. I know. But I needed to find something, and I wasn't going to find it sitting here watching Sorin's face every morning."Lark's jaw tightened. "Mark—"Oh, it isn't about that, he went to find help for Lark."There's a healer," Mark said. "Her name is Berta. She's old. She trained with Sorin back then, and she knows things he doesn't." He looked at me directly. "She said it's n
Cassie's Pov“Did you miss me?” She smiled as she moved further.Death would have been happy to look that good. I kept my face a stone, even though my heart was trying to punch its way out of my chest. Same Alexa, beautiful, terrible."My Luna" Her voice slid across the silent room, filled with sa
The hush that had enveloped the royal medical chamber quaked as though glass as the door smashed open in a deafening thud. Daisy stood frozen to the ground with the knife in her hands.The impact shock-jolted the candle fire and sent the very air flying about. The twin Alpha brothers Mark and Lark
“You don’t close your eyes, Cassie! Stay with me! We’re going to get you home,” he pleaded, the desperation formed a lump in his throat. At the palace, Daisy watched in horror as the search party trampled through the trees, carrying a figure in Mark’s arms that made her heart stop. Cassie was pale
Cassie kept running through the trees, her breath ragged, her heart pounding like a warfare drum in her chest. Each soar over twisted roots and fallen branches despatched jolts of pain shooting through her aspect, in which the sharp fringe of a bramble had torn through her pores and skin. She didn







