LOGINI rushed toward my mother, my heart slamming so hard against my ribs it actually hurt.What are they doing here?How the hell are they here?Is my father with them?Is this part of his plan? Is he stupid enough to bring them into enemy territory where they could be slaughtered on sight?“Oh, my baby boy,” Mama wailed as soon as she saw me, stumbling forward with tears on her face.The guards snapped into action, stepping in front of her instantly, blocking her path with their spears.My wolf exploded inside me, furious, protective, a storm trying to rip outward.“Hey!” I snarled, stepping in front of them, my voice vibrating with threat. “Don’t be harsh with her. She’s my mother!”A ripple of gasps sounded behind me.Damn it. I forgot Winter and her family were all standing there. I forgot where I was. I forgot whose land this was.“What…?” Winter whispered, her voice barely audible behind me.I closed my eyes for half a second, dragging in a breath through clenched teeth.I didn’t ev
Tyron POVThe dawn was cold and sharp, the way it always was before a storm. I had been awake for hours, sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at the floor, listening to the house breathe around me. My wolf prowled at my feet, restless, sensing the tension in the air, sensing my heartbeat thrumming like a war drum.I couldn’t tell Winter,not yet. I couldn’t say the words out loud. She would have protested, begged me to stay, tried to stop me, and I wouldn’t allow it. Not when the risk was this high. Not when I finally understood the full weight of what my father was planning. Augustus,my father, the Beta, the man who had built this chain of fire I was chained to,was moving his pieces. He had already set the attack in motion. And I couldn’t let Winter pay the price for a war I had unknowingly unlocked.I had spent the night mapping my escape, calculating every variable, every possible reaction. The spell she had bound me with,intended to anchor me to the pack,was clever, but it had a
Winter POVEver since that day in the library ,when everything I told Tyron had shattered the version of his life he’d clung to, there had been a distance between us. It wasn’t sudden, like a storm rolling in. It was subtle, a shift you could only notice when you cared enough to look. He had been distant in conversation, answering me with clipped words. He was distant in bed, though I knew it wasn’t me,it never had been. It was him, trapped in the shadow of the revelation, carrying the weight of a betrayal so deep it had been part of his bloodline all along.I tried to give him space, but space had only made the distance grow. The closer I got, the further he seemed to drift, like smoke slipping between my fingers. I couldn’t stand it. I hated seeing him carry all that pain alone, and yet he wouldn’t let me in.It was why, after Casey’s son was born, I had noticed something else. Tyrone had begun spending hours in the nursery, standing by the window, watching the boy sleep. He wasn’
Casey's POV The morning of our wedding dawned soft and golden, and I felt the strange flutter of nerves and excitement coiling through me. My belly was already rounded from four months of carrying our child, and every glance at Louis made the world around me feel like it had sharpened into perfect focus. He stood there, waiting, dressed in the ceremonial whites of our pack, his eyes quiet but steady, scanning me like he could see the exact rhythm of my heartbeat.“Casey,” he said softly when I approached, reaching for my hand. His touch was warm, grounding. “You’re beautiful.”I laughed, a little breathless, because he always had this way of stripping all the fear from me. “Louis, you’ve been saying that every day for the past four months. Are you sure it’s not just habit?”He grinned, brushing a strand of hair from my forehead. “Habit? Maybe. But also truth.”The ceremony was intimate. The pack gathered around in a circle of soft earth and scattered leaves, the sunlight filtering th
I stumbled out of the room, my chest tight, like the air itself had turned against me. The woods stretched around me, pale shafts of light cutting through the trees, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. My wolf circled me, its movements sharp, tense, mirroring the chaos rattling my chest. The bond was picking up Winter’s pulse, her quiet despair from earlier, and my wolf couldn’t soothe her. Neither could I.I sank to the ground, fists digging into the dirt, the soil pressing against my nails as if grounding me. My heart felt raw, shredded, torn between memory and truth. I replayed everything Winter had shown me , the papers, the reports, the survivor lists, the mission orders. The black-magic crest. Every detail was a blade twisting in my gut.My father , the Beta , the architect of deception.I closed my eyes, trying to reconcile it with the boy I remembered. I saw Terry, young and reckless, flinching as smoke and fire consumed the walls around us. I saw my mother, frantic, dragg
I felt the weight of her words settle in my chest like stones, one after another, until it felt like my ribs were cracking under the pressure. Augustus. My father’s name. She said it so calmly, but the sound of it in my ears made the ground shift beneath me. I couldn’t breathe properly. I wanted to believe her. Goddess, I wanted to believe her. I needed to. But every fragment of memory I had clung to me like fire and blood, like smoke curling around my lungs, and what she was showing me didn’t fit.I saw my mother again. Her hands frantic, dragging Terry through the smoke, screaming for him to move faster. I saw his small face, terrified and bright with stubborn courage. I heard my father’s voice, low and cold, and the words he drilled into me so many times when I was young: “Never trust them. Never trust the ones outside. They will betray you.” That voice wasn’t just a memory. It was a command etched into my bones. And now it was colliding with what Winter was saying. With the eviden







