LOGIN**EMILI**Three days after the ambush on the road, the Lycán mansion had returned to something resembling normality. Or what passed for normal in a place where the King destroyed desks during marital arguments and the administrator demanded a salary raise every time she opened a door without knocking.Alaric reinforced the patrols. Damián coordinated double shifts for the guardians. Klaus supervised the repairs on the armored trucks, which had been left looking like crushed sardine cans. Amelia replaced the office desk with one made of solid oak and reinforced legs, and when they installed it she looked at me with an expression that said, *let’s see if this one lasts more than a week.*I went back to my routine with Amelia during the day and my sessions with Silas whenever I could, though now with more caution. After what happened in the hallway — after Alaric saw us whispering — every meeting with the guardian felt like defusing a bomb. One wrong step and everything would blow sky-hi
**MALIK**The box arrived at dusk.A dark wooden chest, no sender, no note, left at the entrance of the crypt by a wolf messenger who fled before the sentinels could question him. Malik’s men carried it into the main chamber with the caution of those handling an explosive device.They weren’t wrong.Malik opened the lid with one hand. Mercury eyes — silver and inhuman — studied the contents without a single muscle in his face moving.Orlo’s head stared back at him from inside the chest. The lackey’s eyes were open, frozen in an expression of terror that death had failed to erase. His skin had turned gray, ashen, black veins visible beneath the surface like the roots of a rotten tree. His lower jaw was missing.Beneath the head, stained with dried blood, lay a note. One single line written in firm, elegant handwriting:*“The next one will be yours. — A.”*Alaric. The Lycán King didn’t bother using his full name. He didn’t need to. The *A* was enough. Everyone knew who the *A* was — the
**EMILI**We weren’t finished.I knew it from the way Alaric lifted me off the ruined desk: unhurried, not rough, but with that firmness that said *“this isn’t over — it just changed settings.”* He carried me as if I weighed nothing, my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around my waist, and walked toward the bathroom adjoining his office without saying a word.I had ink on my face. On my hands. On my stomach. A map of the Northern territory stuck to my left thigh peeled off halfway there, leaving behind a blue stain shaped like a mountain range. I looked like abstract art with legs.“I’m a mess,” I murmured.“Not yet,” he replied against my ear, and the promise in that sentence ran down my spine.The office bathroom was smaller than the one in the main bedroom, but it had a wide dark-stone shower and a wooden bench Alaric used after his transformations. He turned on the hot water, and steam began filling the tight space, wrapping around us like a curtain that shut out the world
**ALARIC**We had been back at the mansion for two days, and something didn’t add up.It wasn’t anything big. Not a red alarm or a sign of danger. It was a hum. A dull irritation, like a splinter lodged somewhere you can’t scratch. And that splinter had a name and a surname: Silas.My most loyal guardian — the man who had spent fifteen years at my side deciphering texts no one else could read, the bookworm who preferred an old scroll to a she-wolf in heat — was acting strange. Not with me. With me he was still the same Silas as always: respectful, efficient, irritatingly cryptic when it suited him.It was with Emili.I noticed it during dinner. Nothing scandalous. An exchange of glances that lasted half a second longer than necessary when Emili mentioned the altars. Silas passed her the salt, their fingers brushed, and she pulled her hand away too quickly. As if the contact burned her. Or as if she didn’t want me to notice.I noticed.My Lycan noticed.And the growl that rose in my th
****LYRA**Three demons. Bleeding flank. A defenseless omega clinging to my back like a terrified sack of potatoes.The Moon Goddess had a shitty sense of humor.The first one attacked from the right. The big one — charcoal skin threaded with veins of lava. It moved faster than something that size should be able to, and its claw came down like an axe toward my head.I dodged. Barely. I felt the heat of the strike skim my fur, and the ground where I had stood a second earlier exploded in a spray of dirt and roots.Emili clung to my back with a strength that surprised me. For an omega without a wolf, the damn girl had claws when it suited her.The second demon — the small, fast one — appeared at my left flank. Right where the wound was. Of course. Smart little bastards. I met it with a swipe that forced it back, but its translucent claws caught my shoulder, and the pain was like plunging my arm into acid.“Lyra!” Emili shouted against my ear.I couldn’t answer her. Not with words. In L
**EMILI**The landscape of Gustavo’s territory faded behind us like a bad dream dissolving upon waking. I was in the back seat with my head resting on Alaric’s shoulder, pretending to doze while my mind replayed every detail of the last forty-eight hours. The shadow mark on my wrist pulsed softly beneath my sleeve, reminding me that my problems weren’t staying behind with that postcard-perfect village. They were traveling with me.Silas sat in the passenger seat, supposedly reviewing his notes, but every so often he shot me a look through the rearview mirror that clearly said *we need to talk.* I ignored him. Talking could wait until we were safe, back at the mansion, far from corrupt alphas and she-wolves with lethal necklines.The road wound through dense forest. We had been driving for four hours and the border of Lycan territory was less than an hour away. Almost home. Almost safe. Almost.I should have known that *almost* is the universe’s favorite word when it wants to screw you
EMILI Not even two days had passed since the forest incident when Amelia entered Alaric’s room, where I was still resting. It was five in the morning, and her expression promised nothing good. “The King leaves in an hour,” she said, placing clean clothes on the chair. “And you’re going with h
EMILII had spent three days with the bank card burning in the pocket of my uniform. Three days without daring to leave the mansion, repeating the same routine of serving, cleaning, and keeping my head down while the memory of Alaric’s fingers digging into my chin followed me like a shadow.But tha
ALARICTwelve hours.Twelve damn hours searching for her and all I had was a handful of nothing. The witch had tried to track her using one of the shirts Emili had left in the bedroom at the coastal house. She ran her hands over the fabric, murmured in that ancient language that grated on my nerves
ALARICThe woman wouldn’t stop trembling. Her husband, kneeling beside his son’s charred body, had the empty stare of someone who had already given up. I gave them thirty seconds to compose themselves. Not because I was compassionate, but because I needed them to speak clearly.“From the beginning,







