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Chapter 22: Anatomy of a Trap

Author: Lara Combs
last update Last Updated: 2025-12-23 15:03:39

The silence that followed the shattered phone was absolute, and in it, I could hear the crumbling of my world. The image of Lillian’s empty bed was seared onto the back of my eyelids. The casual cruelty of that single lily on the pillow was a masterpiece of psychological torture, a signature flourish from a mind that reveled in pain. My breath came in short, ragged gasps that didn’t seem to reach my lungs.

Kaelen didn’t speak. The rage that had made him crush the phone was gone, replaced by a terrifying, glacial calm. He was no longer a man, or even an Alpha in a rage. He was a weapon calculating its trajectory. His eyes, now a steady, burning gold, met mine.

“The sigil,” he said, his voice devoid of all inflection. “We must understand it. Now.”

He guided me, his touch firm but not gentle, to the full-length mirror in the bedroom. With careful claws, he cut away the rest of the dress’s back, exposing the mark fully. In the mirror’s reflection, I saw it. The sickly green spiral, no lar
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  • SOLD TO THE WEREWOLF KING    Chapter 36: The Amber Prison

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  • SOLD TO THE WEREWOLF KING    Chapter 33: The Ossuary Gambit

    The voice from the darkness was a hook in my soul, reeling us forward into the chill. We stepped through the false wall, our single flashlight beam cutting a pathetic swath through the profound black. It fell upon bones. Not neatly stacked, but piled, heaped, a jumbled sea of femurs, skulls, and rib cages that filled a cavernous space from the slimy floor to the shadowed vault of the ceiling decades above. The Ossuary. The collective remains of centuries of Blackwood pack, their final energy a silent, heavy blanket that smothered the air and muted the magic in my blood to a faint, dying whisper.Vorian’s trap was perfectly sprung. We were in a cage of his design.“The dead make such excellent company,” Morvana’s voice echoed, directionless, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere. “So quiet. So… settled. Unlike the living. Always squirming.”Lillian flinched beside me, her hand tightening on the cloth-wrapped bowl. The tether, that psychic fishhook, gave a sickening tug. She gaspe

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