MasukAuthor’s POVFour days before the wedding, the palace had the particular energy of a place that had been given a deadline and was running toward it.Flowers arrived in crates. Fabric samples were pinned to boards in the room set aside for wedding planning. Staff moved through corridors with lists and expressions of focused purpose. The kitchen had been working in extended shifts for two days.In the middle of all of it, Sandra stood outside the library with a mop she had not yet moved and a problem she could not solve.Edgar's instruction sat in her chest like a stone she had been carrying since he said it. She had turned it over every day since, looking for an angle, looking for a moment — and every time she looked at the reality of it, the same facts presented themselves.Ava was almost never alone.When she was not with Sebastian she was with Isabelle. When she was not with Isabelle she was in the palace with three bodyguards who had been assigned specifically after the last kidnap
Ava's POVTessy spent the rest of breakfast stealing glances at me across the table with the expression of someone doing rapid damage assessment.I let her look.After the meal, when everyone dispersed and Sebastian was pulled aside by one of the elders with a scheduling question about the ceremony, Isabelle appeared at my shoulder."You are enjoying this," she said quietly."A little," I admitted."She insulted us in a jewellery store.""And now she is eating breakfast in my palace," I said. "I think that is sufficient."Isabelle considered this."Fine," she said. "But I reserve the right to be slightly petty about it privately.""Granted," I said.---**Fiona's Room**"Tell me everything," Fiona said the moment the door closed.Tessy sat on the bed and had the look of someone deciding how much of a story to tell."The woman from the jewellery store," she said. "That was Ava."Fiona stared at her."And Isabelle was with her," Tessy added. "The one she came in with today.""You insult
Ava's POVThe designer was coming tomorrow.I sat with that fact in Sebastian's study after Isabelle and Edwin left and felt it settle into me like something real — a wedding dress being made for me, specifically, in a palace, for a ceremony that would make me queen of the Lycan Kingdom."You are smiling at the bookshelf," Sebastian said."I am allowed," I said."You are," he agreed. He pulled me slightly closer on his lap. "We should talk about your training.""My training," I repeated."Your wolf. We need to start working on bringing her forward."I turned to look at him properly. "I thought we agreed that you were going to figure out how to do that.""I have been thinking about it," he said. "One possibility is that physical training — pushing your body — might create the conditions she needs to emerge. She may need to see you fighting for yourself before she fights alongside you."I stared at him."You want me to put myself in pain," I said."That is one interpretation —""Sebasti
Author’s POVThe conversation between Fiona and Sandra in the corridor lasted less than two minutes and ended with both of them walking in opposite directions carrying information the other did not fully understand.Sandra knew that she had given Edgar something valuable. She did not know what he would do with it or when.Fiona knew that Edgar had slept with Sandra. She did not know that Sandra had told him about the pregnancy.What neither of them knew was that the camera in the corridor had been recording since the morning.---Inside Edgar's room, the conversation moved the way it always did with them — her attempting to manage him, him finding everything she said mildly amusing and barely worth acknowledging."Sandra," Fiona said, from the doorway."She offered," Edgar said, not looking up from his phone."She is your son's former woman. That is —""Former," he said. "The word is former. Sebastian has moved on. I fail to see the problem."Fiona stood in the doorway and looked at h
Ava's POVSebastian was already home when we got back, which I was beginning to understand was less about his workload and more about the fact that he did not particularly want to be away from the palace right now with the wedding less than a week out and Edgar somewhere in it.He was in his study with Edwin, a document spread between them on the desk, both of them with the slightly too-casual posture of men who had been working and did not want to appear to have been waiting."You are deliberately spending less time at the office," I said, walking in.He held out his hand.I sat on his lap without thinking about it, which told me something about how much had changed in two months."You are right," he said. "I do not want to be away from you.""You are both disgusting," Isabelle said from behind me, and Edwin pulled her into his side and pressed a kiss to her temple, which silenced her with remarkable efficiency."You left the office to come home and continue working," I said.Sebasti
Ava's POVThe city felt different now that I was not hiding in it.Last time I had come here, I was Sebastian's mate but nobody knew that. I had walked these streets as Ava Wellington from the Night Howl pack — nobody, really, in the context of a Lycan kingdom — and the anonymity had been its own kind of freedom.In four days I would be a queen.I was still processing that."You are doing it again," Isabelle said beside me."What?""Smiling at nothing.""I am smiling at the city," I said."The city is a collection of buildings and infrastructure. It is not smiling back.""You do not know that," I said.She looked at me for a long moment."You are genuinely insufferable when you are happy," she said, with so much warmth in her voice that the words meant the opposite of what they said."Thank you," I said.The jewellery store was on the main commercial road, the kind of place with a single piece displayed in each window rather than racks of options — deliberate, understated, the visual







