ログインVIKTOR’S POVThe stairs were empty.That was the first thing I saw.Good.Indira had positioned a guard at the base of the upper staircase. I had spoken to him earlier through the serving hatch but he was gone.Alan noticed it at the same moment I did. “Oh boy” he said.“She pulled him,” Alan murmured.“Or he left on his own,” I said.“He wouldn’t leave on his own.”He was right. Indira’s borrowed men were too well managed for decisions like this. Every placement, every rotation and position had been made by her instructions.Nothing more. If he was gone, she had most definitely moved him.Which means, she wanted the staircase clear.“By why?”Which meant she had known we were coming upstairs.We went up the stairs faster.At this point, I know for a fact that we awere both confused a little.The upper corridor was dim, the torches burning low, throwing long shadows between the doorways. The blue room door was still open from earlier, the curtain rod Bianca had was laying on the fl
KARI’S POVI heard the door slam from two floors below.I was in the corridor outside the kitchen with a cup of water I hadn’t drunk yet, listening to the sounds of the pack settle into what was supposed to be a normal evening, when that slam cut through everything like a blade.I set the cup down on the nearest ledge and moved.The stairs were empty when I hit them. I took them two at a time, one hand trailing the wall, the baby’s weight shifting with every step in a way I had learned to compensate for over these last weeks without thinking about it.Third landing.I stopped.The corridor ahead was not empty.Titan was standing outside a door at the far end. Not moving. Just standing there with his back to me and his hand flat against the wood like he was trying to feel what was on the other side of it.The door was closed.I walked toward him.He heard me coming and turned. His face did the thing it sometimes did when he was holding something very tightly. Very smooth. Very still. T
TITAN’S POVShe was still at the table when I walked in.I honestly expected her to run or do something at least. But nothing happened.Instead she was sitting at the same spot where I last saw her. The hall was quiet, which was kinda weird to be honest.Every head turned.I stood in the doorway and let them look.I was aware of everything happening around me. I had come back looking like a man who had been through something and survived it.I mean as I should.Good.I wanted them to see that.Thinking is back.I wanted every person in this hall to know that I had ridden into the territory of an enemy and come back standing, and that the woman sitting in my chair was just an imposter.I walked into the hall.The pack members on the benches separated the moment they saw me.Some of them hadn’t seen me in weeks.I could tell some people recognized me. While some didn't immediately finish processing what they were staring at.I stopped at the foot of the dais, looking up at her in my
TITAN’S POVThe sound came from the floor above me.I looked at Alan.He was already moving toward the armoury door, his hand on the handle, his ear was already against the wood.“Guards,” he said quietly. “At least three.”“Direction?”“East wing.” He pulled back from the door. “The blue room.” Bianca.I didn’t think so. I simply moved, pushing past Alan and through the door, my sword cleared its scabbard before I was fully in the corridor.The passage was empty but not quiet. The sounds from above were louder now, boots on stone, a voice giving sharp instructions that echoed down through the ceiling.Alan was right behind me.We took the stairs fast.The upper corridor came into view.Three guards, exactly as Alan had said.Two were positioned outside the blue room door, which was still closed. The third was moving toward the staircase, which meant he was going to see us in approximately four seconds.I didn’t give him four seconds.I covered the distance and hit him before he had
INDIRA’S POVThe evening meal was always served at seven.It had been that way since before Titan’s father died, a tradition so embedded in the rhythm of Wilder Pack that even my restructuring of the guard rotation and the council schedule hadn’t touched it.Some things you didn’t change.I sat at the head of the long table in the great hall, in Titan’s chair, which I had taken to occupying at meals with a deliberateness that was entirely intentional.Symbols mattered.Where you sat mattered.Who stood and who sat in your presence mattered.These were lessons I had learned early, growing up in a house where I was always slightly outside the warmth. Always present but never quite included. Always the daughter from the first marriage, the one who existed in the margins of a family that had reorganised itself around people who weren’t me.I had watched and I had learned and I had filed everything away with the patience of someone who understood that timing was everything.My time had ar
ALAN’S POVThe moment the throne room door closed behind me, I exhaled.The real plan.I turned it over in my mind as I walked the corridor, my footsteps were very steady, Wouldn't wanna be caught.She was going to poison him.I knew it would be something slow, probably something introduced into his food or his wine over several days.She had been planning it for a long time.Sneaky bitch.The particular detail with which she described it told me that. The dosage. The timing. The specific symptoms that would present and in what order. The healer she had already compromised who would sign whatever document needed signing.This was not improvisation.This was architecture.And I stood there and listened to every word.She had almost believed me.Almost.That almost was important.Indira was exceptional at reading people. It was her sharpest skill, sharper even than her patience or her planning. She read people the way other people read maps.I could tell she was sensing something wa







