LOGINSylvia Fenris' POV
************************************************************* "Surely, you can't be serious, Sylvia." Rand turns to give me an incredulous look. I ignore him, keeping my eyes on Thoros. Thoros Myr. Oh my god, Nina wasn't exaggerating. He is hot. Hot as sin in his dark leather clothing, tall, he stands some inches taller than Rand, looking down at him with icy indifference in his dark eyes. His hair is dark and wavy, it is almost blue in the moonlight. There is a slit in his left brow, I can't tell if it is a scar or grooming, though I would go for the former considering his dark mysterious aura. He doesn't look like the kind of guy that spends time in front of a mirror and yet steps out looking ravishing. With those cheekbones and deep set eyes, straight nose and full smooth lips complimenting his perfectly square chin, he is handsome in a way that was unsettling. I can't understand my immediate reaction to him. My body is doing something entirely new and scary to me as I hold his eyes, Rand in between us is forgotten. I drag my eyes away from him to spare a glare at Rand, I can't believe his nerve, "fuck you." I tell him before walking up to my saviour. Standing beside him, I get a lungful of his scent and it threatens to make my knees buckle. It probably doesn't make any sense but he smells like midnight. Like the woods after a torrential downpour of rain overnight. Something clean and solid and mysterious. Something that pulls you to it. My God. Who is this man and what is he doing here? Even in my dazed state, I can just sense it off him. He is not here for any positive reason and it is strongly tied to his family's banishment. He is dangerous. And my blood heats us when his eyes meet mine. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing. "Sylvia." Rand is in front of me, moving to grab my arm again. In a flash, Thoros grabs me by the waist to move me out of his reach, it all happens really fast and I feel dizzy but my skin burns through my clothes at the spot his long svelte fingers grabbed me. My face goes hot. "Don't." He growls, the sound low and gravelly, making the very air vibrate around us, I can't see it because I am behind him, but I know he is showing a glimpse of his wolf, it is intimidating, reeking of such naked power and yet, absolute control. It is heady just being around him. I hold my breath without even knowing it. Now I get the buzz of the whole school when he was introduced earlier today. It would have been insane if people hadn't reacted the way they did. "Sylvia, c'mon. Don't be stupid." Rand calls to me, the anger in his eyes scares me. He looks unrecognisable. We are still alone but I know we have an audience now, watching us quietly from the windows. Interested in this unusual standoff. I can't imagine the version of this encounter that would be shared by morning. I don't know if I want to find out. "Goodnight, Rand. Morgana must be waiting." I say, hating the rise of my voice that indicates my jealousy and hurt. He raises his brows at me, I turn around and start walking, acutely aware of the solid protective mountain beside me, I don't look back but I feel the burn of Rand's glare on my neck as I walk. We walk in silence. I can hardly breathe and I don't know why. He walks silently beside me, and I walk clumsily, suddenly aware of my every move down to the minute details. Maybe it is the moonlight? Why is my body reacting this way? What is wrong with me? "Where is your dorm?" He breaks the silence when we arrive in the residential areas for the first year. Here, all the lights are out except for the warmer overhead lights illuminating the pathway that branches off to the different dorms. "Uh..." That is a very good question, of which I know the answer to. I know where my dorm is but I just can't remember the name right now. Not when I am looking up into those dark roiling eyes of his. They remind me of the ocean at midnight. Why does everything about him scream midnight? Secrets. Danger. "There." I point instead at the dorm a few metres ahead of us, embarrassed at myself for blushing. Rand's words ring in my head. He said I was frigid. Innocent. He didn't make it sound like a compliment so I am not taking it as one. He defined me as defective. Lacking. How dare he. He nods and we walk towards the dorm, the porch lights are out, so it is swathed in moonlight, bright enough to see but dark enough to be concealed by the night. My heart beats faster as we approach. I don't know why. "Thor is your fated mate?" He breaks the silence and I stop walking, we are already in front of the porch, I turn to him, there is nothing in his eyes that tells me anything about what he might be thinking about. "Yes." I whisper like I am ashamed of the term. Up until an hour ago, I wasn't. Before I walked in on him getting his cock sucked by Morgana fucking Balkin. Before he hurt me both emotionally and physically. I climb up on the porch, the moment is awkward and so quiet, it is like the night is holding its breath for us. "Sylvia." My name in that low gravelly voice of his makes me stop, letting the delicious chill chase up my spine as the baritone settles in my stomach. I turn around to face him, because of my vantage point on the raised porch, I stand a few inches taller than him. It is like looking down into a great alluring darkness. "For what it is worth, I don't think you are frigid, Sylvia." He says with a slight smile dancing on his lips, he is standing so close, I see the genuinity in his dark eyes. It is moon madness. I am still in shock from my encounter with Rand. It is the wine Nina snuck in for my birthday that I drank almost twelve hours ago. It is a combination of things that push me to wrap my arms around his neck, pull him close and cover the distance between our lips. I think I have lost my mind. But when my lips touched his, the firm smoothness of them yielding immediately against mine, I found it.Thoros Myr's POV************************************************The letter arrived three days later, delivered quietly to Garrick by a scout who had spent the better part of a week working his way through informants along Ashwood's border, exactly the kind of patient, careful work I had learned to value most during six years of planning my Clan's return."You'll want to see this," Garrick said, finding me in the war room going over border patrol schedules with a focus that had become second nature these past weeks.The letter was brief, coded in a manner I recognized from Alpha Thor's own household correspondence, the same careful, deliberate style that had marked every note we had intercepted from his network since this entire ordeal began.The girl's bond is named now. Her guard will be more difficult to breach, but not impossible. The council believes t
Sylvia Fenris' POVWe did go back to the celebration, though something in me had shifted after Rosalind's quiet warning, a low hum of unease threading beneath the warmth of the fire and the music and the laughter still rising from every corner of the camp."You're thinking too hard again," Thoros murmured against my temple, pulling me gently back into the rhythm of the evening."I can't help it." I let him lead me anyway, weaving between clusters of celebrating wolves, some of whom stopped to press congratulations into our hands, well wishes for the newly named mate bond, for the restoration, for a night that felt, despite everything, genuinely worth celebrating. "Every time something good happens lately, I keep waiting for the other blow to land.""That's fair," Thoros admitted. "But Sylvia, if we spend every good night bracing for th
Thoros Myr's POV************************************************The celebration stretched long into the evening, torches lit across the entire Bloodstone camp, food and music and the particular joy of an entire people finally allowed to breathe freely after twenty years of careful, quiet survival. I found myself pulled into conversation after conversation, well wishes from Clan representatives who had traveled from every corner of the dynasty to witness the restoration, and it was well past dark before I finally found a quiet moment to search for Sylvia among the crowd.I found her near the edge of the celebration, sitting with Nina, Edwina, and Maria beside one of the smaller fires, laughing at something Nina had said, her face lit warm and golden in the firelight in a way that made my chest ache with something far too large to name
Sylvia Fenris' POV"Down!" Thoros's hand closed around my arm and yanked me flat against the ridge just as the first arrows whistled overhead, close enough that I felt the wind of one passing inches above my head.Below us, the scouts we had planned to ambush were already shifting, dozens more wolves pouring out from concealment in the trees where they had clearly been waiting the entire time, patient and disciplined in a way that told me exactly how thoroughly we had been outmaneuvered."Fall back to the second line!" Garrick's voice cut through the chaos, and I felt Thoros pulling me upright, both of us scrambling along the ridge toward the rally point we had marked only hours earlier, before any of us understood we were the ones being hunted rather than the hunters.The fighting that followed blurred into something I could barely separate into i
Thoros Myr's POV************************************************The ridge was already alive with movement by the time Rand's riders reached us, torches bobbing along our own lines as Bloodstone and Crescent Moon wolves scrambled into position, the eastern flank sketch the mercenary had drawn spread across a makeshift map table under flickering lantern light."They are pushing harder than we anticipated," Garrick said, tracing the latest scout reports across the map with a grim finger. "If they reach full deployment before we strike, that weakness closes entirely.""Then we do not wait for full deployment." I studied the terrain, the narrow pass the mercenary had marked as Ashwood's blind spot, weighing every risk against the alternative of simply letting that army reach the council chamber unopposed."Garrick, ready our fastest riders. The mome
Sylvia Fenris' POV************************************************The council chamber doors opened, and every conversation in the hall died at once.Rosalind led the returning elders back to their bench, her face composed but tight with the particular strain of someone who had spent the last hour weighing twenty years of buried crimes against the little time we now had left before Ashwood's army arrived.I gripped Nina's hand so hard I heard her wince, though she did not pull away."This council has reached its judgment," the head elder said, his voice carrying grave and final across the silent chamber. "Alpha Thor, formerly of Crescent Moon, stands convicted before this dynasty of orchestrating the deaths of Alpha Weylan, Alpha Cressida, and Alpha Ambrose, of falsely banishing the Bloodstone Clan to conceal those crimes, and of ordering







