LOGINCELINE (wolf: Casey)I barely tasted dinner.Uria asked if I was feeling well, and I said I was just tired. My father asked about my first day back, and I said it had been eventful and told them what had happened and they rejoiced with me.Kythan glanced at the claw marks fading across my forearm and said nothing, which, for him, was a kind of tenderness. Zithan told a story about Keon trying to sell tickets to the fight and failing in the office. Everyone laughed.Rythan watched me across the table.He'd been doing it since we got home, a quiet, anxious, sideways look, like a man who'd forgotten something important and couldn't think what. I ate my rice. I drank my water. I counted the minutes.When the plates were cleared, I stood and smoothed my gown."Rythan. The garden. Ten minutes."Three heads turned. Zithan's eyebrows lifted. Kythan's jaw flexed. Rythan quickly stood up and followed me.."Okay," he said.The garden was cold and silver under the moon, the rosebushes trimmed i
CELINEI didn't understand, but I tried. I reached inside for the place where my anger lived, the cold, steady center I'd found in that living room in Ruby’s house, and I leaned my whole self into it.Something rolled outward from me, wordless and enormous. Cassandra went rigid. A whimper escaped her. Her eyes, wild and yellow, rolled back toward mine, and I saw the exact moment she understood she couldn't win.She broke.The shift peeled off her in a gasp, fur fading, bones sliding back into the shape of a woman. She lay on the floor in the ragged ruins of her cream blazer, shaking, her hair stuck to her face, one hand clutching the floor like it might save her.I stood over her, chest heaving, blood dripping from my muzzle onto the floor.‘Come in,’ I told the triplets. ‘It's over.’The door exploded inward.Kythan was first, of course, wrecking the handle, his eyes searching me, the wolf in white fur, the blood, the broken desk. The others piled in behind him. Rythan skidded to a
CELINE (wolf: Casey)The wolf took another step, and the floorboards creaked under her paws.I didn't back away. Behind me, the door was shut. Between us there was maybe ten feet of carpet.'Okay,' Casey said. Her voice was steadier than I expected. 'This isn't like the park. Nobody's dying. We get to choose this time.'I know. 'So choose.'My heart was racing, but my head was clear. I remembered Ruby's voice in that bedroom, firm and kind. ‘Shift on purpose, in a safe place, so your body doesn't treat every shift like an emergency.’ A cramped office with an enraged wolf in it wasn't exactly a safe place. But it was a choice. And that mattered more than I could explain.I kicked off my heels, shrugged out of my blazer, and let it fall.Ready? 'On three.'One. 'Two.' Three.It wasn't like the first time. That had been a tearing, like my skin was being peeled off by force. This was a pull, deep and hot, a rope in my spine drawing taut. My bones bent and slid. My dress ripped away in a
CELINE (wolf: Casey)She was forty minutes late.I knew because I'd been counting. I sat at my old desk with my hands folded on the surface, while Rita pretended to type and Keon pretended not to watch me. I'd told the triplets before we'd even stepped off the elevator. Kythan had opened his mouth, Rythan had started to protest, and I'd held up one hand.“ Stay in your offices. All three of you. This one is mine. If I need you, I'll ask.”Kythan's jaw had worked for a moment, and then he'd nodded once, stiffly, like a man refusing to back down. Zithan had said "Understood." While Rythan nodded.Somewhere under all that calm, the thought of the woman in the parked car kept scratching at the back of my mind. I pushed it down, firmly. One snake at a time.The elevator chimed.Cassandra stepped out in a cream blazer and heels sharp, a coffee cup in one hand and her bag swinging from the other. She was halfway through a yawn when her eyes landed on me.She stopped dead.The coffee cup
CELINE (wolf: Casey)(NEXT MORNING)The smell of fresh bread and cinnamon pulled me down the stairs before I'd even finished tying my hair back.The dining room was already full, and my father sat at one end beside his plate. Queen Uria was at the other, pouring tea. Zithan was buttering toast, Kythan was drinking his coffee. Rythan was in the chair beside the empty seat that had clearly been saved for me."Good morning, everyone," I said."Good morning, sweetheart," Uria sang. I crossed the room and kissed her cheek, and she squeezed my hand, her eyes glossy and warm. Then I walked around to my father, bent down, and kissed the top of his head. He patted my arm without looking up from his tea, but I saw the way his mouth curved.I sat down, and it hit me.It was quiet. Not the brittle, braced kind of quiet I'd used to, where every clink of a fork felt like a gunshot waiting to happen. This was a different silence entirely, loose and easy and a little sleepy. I looked at my father,
CELINE (wolf: Casey)I turned around slowly.Kythan Blackthorne was standing in the middle of his own study, and he was blushing.It started at his collar and crept up his neck, a slow tide of red that reached the tips of his ears before he noticed and tried to pretend it hadn't happened. He dragged a hand through his hair. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, the lamplight caught the hard line of his jaw, and his ice-blue eyes were fixed somewhere around my left shoulder.I had seen this man furious. I had seen him cold, cruel, and silent in ways that could freeze a room. I had never once seen him embarrassed.'The Ice King is blushing,' Casey whispered. 'He's also unfairly handsome. I'm only saying.' No doubt, Kythan was hot and handsome, but I didn't want to be carried so I lifted my chin."You said it was important. Or were you going to stare at my shoulder all night?""Right." He cleared his throat. "It's about Cassandra. Why I hired her?"I folded my arms. I'd been waiting we
CELINE I rushed downstairs with my bag clutched against my side, eyes glued to my phone as I tried to power it back on. My mind was still clouded, thick with everything that had happened in that room. Everything Alpha Zithan had done to me with his hands and his mouth and that devastating patien
CELINE The word detonated inside my chest like something physical. Mate! The pull struck again, but harder this time, coming from three directions at once, like invisible hands reaching into my ribcage and pulling simultaneously. My own hand rose slowly and I pointed a trembling finger at each
CELINE I stood at the top of the stairs and stared at the empty corridor where the cold-eyed man had just been. The warmth I remembered from this morning was completely gone. Stripped away as if it had never existed. Those familiar features, same dark hair, same jaw, same mouth — had looked at m
CELINE The moment I was finally outside that house, everything hit me at once. My knees nearly buckled. I grabbed the gate post to steady myself and then the first sob tore out of me, ugly and uncontrolled, and once it started I couldn't stop it. My shoulders shook violently. I pressed my







