登入Bella’s POVLucian collapsed before we made it out of the courtyard.One moment he was standing beside me, staring at the serpent pendant in Kael’s hand with murder settling into every line of his face. The next, the bond twisted so violently beneath my ribs that I grabbed the edge of the well. Lucian swayed once, almost imperceptibly, then his knees struck the stones.“Lucian!”I reached him before I realized I had moved.His weight nearly took me down with him. I caught his shoulder while Kael seized his other arm, and together we kept his head from striking the ground. Up close, the blood on Lucian’s clothes no longer looked like the aftermath of battle. Too much of it was fresh, seeping steadily through the dark fabric at his ribs.Kael swore and tore open the side of Lucian’s coat. “The stitches.”I saw the damage and felt my stomach drop. The wound from the fortress had split open again, probably sometime during the fighting at the western gate. Blood soaked the linen beneath hi
Bella’s POVThe first scream came before the bells.I was halfway down the eastern stairwell when it cut through Stormfang, high and terrified enough to stop me cold. A heartbeat later, the alarm bell thundered from the western tower, followed by another from the lower courtyard. Wolves shouted below, boots hammered over stone, and somewhere beyond the walls came the unmistakable crash of timber breaking.I reached the nearest window just as orange light climbed above the western roofs.Fire.For one terrible second, Magnus’s wolves on the ridge flashed through my mind. Then I saw the direction of the smoke and knew something was wrong. The flames weren’t coming from the outer wall where an attack should have begun. They were already inside Stormfang.“Bella!”I turned as Kael came around the corner with two warriors behind him, his sword bare and blood already streaking one sleeve.“What happened?”“Raiders breached the lower quarter through the old drainage passage. Someone knew exa
Lucian’s POVMagnus Veyar had always possessed an irritating talent for smiling when another man wanted to tear his throat out. Standing in Stormfang’s east courtyard with Bella only a few steps away, he looked especially pleased with himself.I stopped beneath the ruined archway, my claws already pressing against the tips of my fingers. The wound beneath my ribs pulled with every breath, still healing from the blade I had taken during our escape, but I barely felt it. Magnus’s scent was inside my territory, and I had arrived in time to hear enough of their conversation to know exactly why.He had come for Bella.Not to abduct her this time. Not to drag her away in chains. He had walked straight into Stormfang and offered her something far more dangerous—a choice. A place in his pack, protection under his name, and a life beyond these mountains if she decided she wanted it.My wolf slammed against my ribs.Magnus tilted his head when he saw me, his smile widening as though he could al
Bella’s POVThe first time I saw Magnus Veyar without blood between us, he was smiling. Not kindly, but not cruelly either, and somehow that made him more dangerous. I had gone to the old east courtyard because Stormfang’s walls had begun to feel too close again, and the abandoned space offered exactly what I wanted—cracked stone, dead ivy, winter grass pushing through the flagstones, and almost no wolves wandering through.I had just settled on the low edge of a dry fountain when a voice behind me said, “I expected someone taller.”I turned so quickly my wrist protested beneath the bandage. A man leaned against the ruined archway as if he had every right to be there, broad through the shoulders and perhaps a little older than Lucian, with dark hair pushed carelessly back from a face that looked far too relaxed for someone trespassing inside enemy territory. His eyes were a deep green, darker than leaves, the color of a forest just after rain.Recognition came almost immediately.Magn
Bella’s POVI avoided Lucian until noon, which turned out to be easier than it should have been. Stormfang had changed enough during my absence to give me places to disappear into: a nervous maid brought fresh clothes, the healer changed the bandages around my wrists, and breakfast arrived on a tray I barely touched. By the time I finally slipped out of the packhouse, the mountain air had turned crisp and bright, and the cold felt cleaner than anything inside those walls.I followed the path behind the kitchens toward the old herb garden, where stone terraces stepped down toward the forest. Frost still clung beneath the hedges, but rosemary and winter thyme had survived, releasing sharp green scents whenever the hem of my skirt brushed them. I wanted somewhere quiet, somewhere no one would ask me how I felt or whether I intended to stay.Preferably somewhere without Lucian.The irony announced itself when I reached the lower terrace and found him leaning against the stone archway.I s
Bella’s POVStormfang looked exactly as I remembered it.Black stone climbed against the mountain in severe layers, its watchtowers cutting into a pale morning sky while the iron gates opened with the same grinding complaint I had once heard from the back of Lucian’s carriage. Wolves along the walls paused as our group crossed the bridge, their conversations thinning until there was little left but horses’ hooves against stone and the wind snapping Stormfang banners overhead.A year ago, the staring would have made me shrink into myself. Today I sat straighter despite every bruise the fortress had given me, one hand wrapped loosely around the reins while my freshly bandaged wrists rested against my lap. When whispers started near the training yard, I heard them without turning.“She really came back.”“I thought she was—”“The human Luna.”Kael’s warning growl rolled across the courtyard before the last voice could finish. The nearby wolves suddenly discovered fascinating reasons to s
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
The corridors of the packhouse stretched long and dim, their torches guttering in the late hour. Most wolves had retired after the hunt, leaving the halls quiet but not silent—there was always the echo of distant voices, the faint shuffle of boots, the murmur of life within Stormfang’s stone heart.
The night after the feast, Stormfang was restless.Whispers curled through the corridors like smoke, lingering in every corner. Wolves muttered of the dance, of the Alpha stepping into the circle, of sparks they thought they saw between his hand and the human’s. Some spoke with disbelief, others wi







