Mag-log inThe reverberations of the horn were still sounding around the room when I seized her lips.Now there would be no more waiting, no more holding back. The beast and the king were one and raging in a way that Aria accepted without hesitation. Her nails dug into my scalp as I pinned her to the stone wall with a powerful hold. Her back touched the mantelpiece; I could feel the hard wood digging into her as she gasped.Mine. Finally, all mine.The wolf inside my ribcage gave a deafening, predatory roar. The beast didn't ask for permission. He didn't pace. With a quick movement, I pulled her gown upwards, revealing more and more of her thighs. My fingers met the silk of her stockings, which made a rustling noise. Already, she was shaking from anticipation and need. The scent of her aroused body was coming through, making my beast happy. “Draven…!” Her voice was breaking with my name as I picked her up with ease. My one hand held her in a powerful grasp by her bottom; the other hand rested
Draven’s POVFor thirty years, my chest had been an iron tomb.Within this cage, there had been only silence, rotten shadows, and the ghostly screams of five centuries of crimes committed by the ancestors. I had ruled the Northern pack as a man-king with a fractured soul, leading troops and quashing rebellions while waiting for the dark poison within my bones to eventually drive me mad and make me kill my people.Now, my ribcage was vibrating with every breath I took like a plucked war bow.The wolf was awake.He was not some sort of parasitic creature trying to kill me. He was an apex sovereign, pacing in the depths of my ribs with lethal, devastating power. With every breath I took, the taste of pine needles, cedar smoke, and melting snow from two leagues south of the mountain pass flooded my senses. The whole world opened before me, dividing into a multitude of sharp, bright currents, each and every one of them directed straight to the woman standing before me in the solar.Mate.M
Valemont Keep Two Days LaterKael’s POVThe smell in the private solar was that of burned ashes and cold limestone.These three days I hadn’t allowed any servant to touch the hearth. The rain beat hard upon the stained glass panes and spread ugly, gray shadows all across the flagstones.Cornered inside the dust sheet was the carved cradle of birchwood.Empty.I stomped my boots along the cold stone floor, my fingers trembling as they touched the edge of the smooth wood. The only remaining traces of my son were the lavender oil and the warm milk smell still clinging to the piece of furniture.He would soon be a year old.For ten months, I had enjoyed Leo's laughter; they resounded across these walls, and now the memory of the baby’s fat little hands reaching for mine felt like a fresh wound ripped wide open.I had let Aria depart with him.After he was kidnapped in my keep, it was the only thing I could have done, plus the plausible explanations.And I believed that been with him woul
By midday, the Obsidian Keep was no longer a secluded stronghold.It became the epicenter of a seismic shock wave that shook the very foundations of the five realms.The bells that tolled through the jagged mountains during the morning hours were just sparks. By noon, the great iron gates of the citadel opened up to the high plateau. Black-armored riders mounted upon the North’s fastest winter destriers were charging down the mountain paths in all directions, carrying royal dispatches sealed with the silver wax of the Alpha king of Blackthorne.The message was concise, ruthless, and undeniable:The five-century-old retribution of the Northern Line is purged.The Cursed King has shifted.The king proclaims to the realm the crowning of his mate.In the lower courtyards, the outcome was chaos.Hundreds of northern warriors, clansmen, and commoners were packed into the frosted flagstones, roaring in praise, pounding their fists against their iron shields, and igniting giant watchfires, wh
The silence in the royal chamber was almost suffocating, disrupted only by the constant crackling of birch logs in the hearth.Draven remained sitting on the edge of the pallet, gazing down at his hands. His chest was uncovered, clean, and warm under the glow of the fire.For five hundred years, every fifth-generation male of his lineage had been living in a prison of the ancestral disease, without the ability to summon the beast in any other way but by allowing the dark venom to take over their mind. He had ruled over an empire of iron, led wars, and commanded legions, while remaining in his naked human body because of the ancient curse that locked the wolf inside.Mother washed the gray remnants of the black salt from her hands with a cloth dipped into the fresh well water next to the mantel. On the opposite end of the chamber, Mother Elara hovered by the cradle of Leo, gently swaying the wicker structure until the even breaths of my sleeping son filled the room."Draven?" I whisper
The circle of crushed black salt and dried winterthorn absorbed the light from the torches.Draven lay on the thick pallet of bear fur near the hearth, stripped down to his midriff. His broad chest heaved with shallow gasping movements, his skin being an awful sight of pale ash and burning heat. The violet veins completely covered his throat, winding along his jaw in the shape of bruised briars and throbbing with an erratic, dangerous luminescence that emitted some kind of loud buzz in the stifling air.Mother was kneeling above his head, her palms flat on the cold floorstone just outside the salt circle.I kneeled next to him, close enough to sense the heat emanating from his ribs. My hands hover above his chest, trembling with anticipation, my fingers tingling from the dormant silver static of my Nullifier core.In the opposite corner, beside the baby's crib, Mother Elara watched the iron doors, holding the ceremonial sword in her arm's crook."Remember, Aria," Mother's voice sounde







