LOGINBella’s POVBy the time I escaped the Moonstone sanctuary, I could still feel the mark burning beneath my sleeve.Not painfully. That would have been easier. Pain was familiar enough to ignore, but this was a steady warmth that seemed determined to remind me of what had happened every time I moved my wrist.Chosen by the goddess.The words had followed me all the way down the mountain, carried in the whispers of elders and warriors who had spent months questioning whether a human belonged beside their Alpha. Some had bowed when I passed. Others simply stared, their faces caught somewhere between wonder and disbelief, as if I might suddenly grow claws and make the whole thing easier for them to understand.I wanted none of it tonight
Lucian’s POVBy dawn, three warriors were still fighting for their lives, and Kael was one of them. I stood outside the healers’ chamber with blood drying beneath my nails, listening to Mara issue clipped orders behind the closed door while bowls scraped, glass clinked, and Kael fought for every breath as though his own body had turned against him. The poison had spread quickly, dark veins crawling beneath his skin before Mara forced enough antidote into him to slow its progress.Slow it.Not stop it.Bella stood farther down the corridor in a dark cloak thrown over the clothes she had slept in, her hair loose around her shoulders and exhaustion shadowing her eyes. She had ignored every attempt to send her back to her room, which I understood because I had ignored the same orders.
Lilith’s POVBy the time word reached me that Stormfang had uncovered one of the traitors inside its council, I was already standing beneath the pines beyond the northern ridge.So Varick had finally been caught.I stared through the mist at the fortress carved into the mountain, its watchtowers glowing beneath scattered torchlight. From this distance, Stormfang looked almost peaceful. Repairs had begun along the damaged walls, wolves moved in pairs along the battlements, and somewhere behind all that black stone, Lucian was probably turning Varick’s betrayal inside out until every secret fell from him.Finding one traitor had a way of making people believe they had found the only one.Cold wind slipped beneath my cloak as two patrol w
Bella’s POVLucian did not wake when we carried him back through Stormfang’s gates. I walked beside the stretcher with blood dried between my fingers and more soaked into the front of my dress, most of it his. That fact followed me through the entire ride home no matter how hard I tried to focus on the wounded warriors around us, the exhausted horses, or the wolves limping behind the column. The dagger was still buried beneath his ribs, exactly where Lilith had driven it.Mara had sent instructions the moment Tomas dispatched a rider ahead: do not remove the blade, keep pressure around the wound, keep Lucian warm, and for the love of the goddess, stop letting the Alpha collect knives in his body. The last part sounded suspiciously like Mara rather than medical advice. I agreed with it wholeheartedly.“Move!” Tomas
Bella’s POVBy midday, everyone in Stormfang knew the poison had been meant for me.I discovered that before anyone bothered to tell me the news had spread. The healers had finally forced me out of Lucian’s chamber so he could sleep, and I had crossed barely half the lower courtyard when conversation began dying around me. Wolves who had once stared openly suddenly found fascinating things to examine—their boots, the walls, the baskets in their hands—while others watched me with an intensity that made the back of my neck prickle.The strangest part was that not all of those looks held hatred anymore. An older warrior near the armory bowed his head when I passed, his fist touching his chest in the traditional Stormfang salute. A woman carrying folded linen did the same, followed awkwardly by the young girl beside h
Bella’s POVBy evening, Stormfang had begun locking itself against its own people.The surviving raider had been moved somewhere beneath the council wing, and Kael had doubled the guards at every entrance before ordering the drainage passage sealed. No one was allowed beyond the inner grounds without permission. Servants who had worked near the nursery were being questioned, warriors were checking storerooms and tunnels, and every familiar face seemed to be studying the next with new suspicion.I hated what it did to the packhouse. Stormfang had never felt like home to me, but I had never seen its wolves afraid of one another.I escaped to Lucian’s chamber partly because it was quieter there and partly because Mara had cornered me in the corridor and informed me that her patient w
The midday sun burned through the cloud cover, silver light pouring across the training grounds. Warriors moved in drills, their blades flashing in rhythm, the thud of boots striking the earth in unison.Bella walked the outer edge, her arms straining under the weight of two buckets filled with wat
The alarm bells rang through Stormfang lands, sharp and sudden as a blade.The copper clang echoed from the watchtower above, splitting the stillness of dusk into chaos. Bella startled, nearly dropping the bundle of bandages she carried for the omegas. Her gray-green eyes darted upward, catching th
The forest swallowed her whole.Bella ran until her lungs burned, until each breath was a ragged cry she dared not let out, until her torn gown clung heavy with dirt and blood. Branches whipped against her skin, leaving scratches across her arms and shoulders, and still she pushed on, her bare feet
The journey was a blur of cold roads and restless miles.Two days after stumbling into the little town, Bella pressed onward, carrying nothing but the clothes on her back and the ache in her chest. She bartered what little jewelry she had left—a simple locket her mother once gave her—for a seat in







