LOGINBRIELLE'S POV"There's a compound in his blood that shouldn't be there."Maren said it the moment the door clicked shut behind us. She didn't soften it. She didn't lead up to it. She just held the envelope against her chest and let the words land in the corridor.I heard them. I didn't understand them."A what?" Tristan's voice came out rough."The human lab found traces of it on the first pass. They couldn't identify it." Her jaw tightened. "They couldn't identify it because it wasn't made for humans. It's built to work on a wolf's body. On a wolf's healing."The floor went soft under my feet. Tristan's hand shot out and caught my elbow."Poison," I breathed."I don't like that word until I know more." Maren pulled out a sheet of paper covered in columns I couldn't read. "But yes. It's layered. Small amounts, given over time, each one sitting on top of the last. Someone has been dosing your father for weeks.""Three weeks," Tristan rasped."Three weeks." She nodded. "It explains ever
TRISTAN'S POV"He knew you were outside."Elena yanked the passenger door shut behind her and sat there with both hands pressed flat on her knees to stop them shaking."What?""Zane." Her voice cracked on the name. "I never told him you came with me. I never said a word about you. He walked me to the door and told me to get back to the car before you came looking."I was out of the car before she'd finished.The street was ordinary. A man walking a terrier. Two women laughing outside a café. A delivery bike weaving through traffic. I turned in a slow circle and looked up at the Carrow, at twelve floors of dark mirrored glass, and every single window stared back at me blank.Any one of them could have been his.I got back in and started the engine."Tell me everything," I ordered. "From the second he opened the door."She told me. The drink he'd poured her. The card with nothing written in it. The petition he'd admitted to without blinking, and the question he'd asked like he was askin
ELENA'S POV"Give it to me."Tristan stopped on the hall steps with the folder held against his chest like he could keep the thing inside it from getting out."Elena—""You're standing there working out how to say it gently." I held my hand out flat. "Don't. Give it to me."He gave it to me.One page. A petition timestamped two minutes past four in the morning, and my brother's signature sitting at the bottom of it in that looping, confident hand our father drilled into us both before we were ten.The wind came up the steps and pushed my hair across my face. I didn't move to fix it."I'm sorry," I whispered."Don't do that.""He's my brother.""You've said six words to him in nine years, and four of them were in an elevator." Tristan took the folder back out of my hands. "You don't get to carry this."Except I did carry it, all the way down the steps and into the car, sitting in my lap like a stone.We got three streets before it turned into a fight."How much do you actually know abo
TRISTAN'S POV"You can't go in there, sir."The clerk planted himself in front of the chamber doors with a tablet clutched against his chest like a shield. He was maybe twenty-five. His hands were shaking."Move," I ordered."An heir holds no seat, Mr. Prescott. No seat, no voice, no entry while a session is sitting." He swallowed hard. "Those are the rules.""My father is in a hospital bed.""I'm very sorry, sir. The rules don't—""Article nine, subsection four." Elena stepped up beside me, and her voice cut through his like a blade through paper. "A named heir carries the proxy of a seated Alpha who cannot attend. It was written in eighty-one, and it has never been repealed. Would you like me to recite the rest of it, or would you like to open the door?"The clerk's mouth opened. Nothing came out of it.Elena reached over and pressed my father's council pin into my palm. She'd had it in her coat since we left the hospital, and she'd said nothing about it the whole drive."Go on," sh
DARIUS'S POV"Ninety seconds."Brielle stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked at me like I'd spoken in another language. "What?""That's all I want." I kept my hands at my sides where she could see them. "Ninety seconds, then I'll get out of your way and you can go home to the girls."She was grey with exhaustion. Her sleeve still had her father's blood dried stiff on the cuff, the same as mine."Darius, I can't do this now.""I know you can't." My throat was tight around every word. "That's why I'm not asking you to do anything."She let out a long breath. Then she leaned her shoulder against the wall, which was as close to permission as I was going to get.I'd had two weeks to work out how to say this. I still didn't have it right."I've been standing at the edge of your life since the day you came back," I began. "Your father called it hovering. He wasn't wrong.""Darius—""Let me finish, or I'll lose my nerve." My heart was slamming. "I don't know how a man apologises fo
BRIELLE'S POV"Dad. Dad, look at me."I was on the floor before I knew I'd moved, both hands flat on my father's chest, shaking him hard enough that his head rolled on the rug."Brielle. Brielle, stop."Darius caught my wrists and pulled them away. "You'll hurt him. Let me."I let him. I hated that I let him.He put his ear close to my father's mouth, counted under his breath, then pressed two fingers beneath his jaw. His shoulders dropped half an inch."He's breathing. It's fast, but it's there.""Maren." My voice came out in shreds. "We need Maren, she's—""Number." Hunter was already crouched beside us with his phone out, thumb hovering. "Tristan, give me the number."My brother didn't answer. He stood over us with his hands open at his sides, staring down at our father like a man watching a building come down."Tristan."He blinked. Then he rattled off a number, and Hunter was on his feet and talking before he'd finished."Car's at the door." Axel came back through the study door







