Aria stood still, her pulse loud in her ears, her eyes fixed on the doors where her stepmother had just disappeared into.It was only when she heard the sound of Lucien’s feet hitting the ground that she remembered how to breathe. She turned towards her mate and, once again, froze.He was crossing the marble floors of the throne room without his usual arrogant stride. Instead, his movements were more muted, careful and deliberate, as though he didn’t want to alarm her.His cane, a piece which she still did not understand, tapped softly with each step he took. His eyes searched hers with an expression stripped of every emotion but concern.“Are you okay?” he asked softly, his voice laced with concern.Aria forced herself to both smile and nod. “I’m fine,” she replied, the words sounding brittle as they left her lips.Lucien nodded. He could tell she wasn’t, but he didn’t push. He was sure that she would tell him whenever she wanted. He kept on walking forward till he reached her side.
Lilith’s POV:As the words left her lips, Lilith’s glare intensified.For the first time in weeks, her stepdaughter’s confidence faltered. For just a brief moment, as her eyes grew wide, Lilith was sure she saw a flash of fear pass through her eyes.That thought filled her with satisfaction. So much so, that she regained her confidence and took a step forward towards Aria. Her steps echoed loudly across the entire hall.“Are you scared, child?” she asked in a slurred tone, savoring each syllable as they left her lips, her entire being filled with triumph.Ever since she had been knocked out by her stepdaughter, Lilith had dreamt of this very moment. To watch the mask of confidence slip off her face. She needed to see cracks in her mask, to remind her little arrogant stepdaughter of who she really was.But before she could take another step further, Aria’s face grew still, she raised up her hand, slowly, and came down firmly on Lilith’s shoulders.“Leave now, Lilith” Aria said in a sof
For the first time in her life, Aria saw her stepmother at a loss. Lilith stood frozen in the middle of the throne room. Her proud shoulders trembled beneath the weight of the emotions she had never felt before. Fear. Disgust. Anger. And something else, something Aria couldn’t quite place, something she hadn’t seen before, something both raw and jagged that seemed to cut through Lilith’s heart before she quickly pushed it back out of her face. Standing in front of Aria was the woman who had once carried herself as untouchable. Now, she seemed suddenly, painfully human. Lilith swallowed hard, she sneaked a glance at Aria, clenched her fists and turned her gaze away once again. Aria's lips curled upwards into a smile as she watched all of this happen. She didn’t rush, she kept on moving, taking her sweet time walking across the room, letting each step she took echo across the polished marble floors of the throne room. She watched Lilith squirm with a satisfaction she really
For the first time in her life,Aria stirred awake to the sound of silence and the warmth of a fluffy bed.For a moment, as she got her bearings, she simply laid on the bed, her eyes still half closed as the heaviness of sleep threatened to drown her again. The sheaths around her were soft, softer than anything she had ever seen or even touched. And her bed? Her bed was so large that she could have rolled over multiple times from one side to the other, and she still would not have fallen off.Aria frowned as she felt the sleep fade away and her eyes grow alert. Her gaze swept upward, towards the huge white ceiling above her new bed. The ceiling was painted on the margins with delicate swirls of gold and dark red.From the moment she was born, Aria remembered living her life in cottages, huts or even damp, dim-lit rooms barely large enough to hold a mattress. Yet, here she was, waking up in a chamber so vast that she still could not wrap her head around it.The cottage she and Lucien h
The Shadow’s POV:The shadow burst out from the edge of WhiteVale like a storm, her presence was swallowed both by the night and her cloak. No eyes marked her flight, nor did any ear hear her movements.To the outside world, she was nothing more than a shadow slipping into the night.Her movements might have been dead silent, but her thoughts were not.Her breath still caught whenever she thought of Lucien. He was supposed to be dead. When she had fought him, she had made certain of it. She had only left when she felt his life energy beginning to drain away until it was barely a flicker. He should never have been able to survive or walk again.But it wasn’t Lucien’s survival or supposed wholeness that unsettled her the most. It was his mate, Aria.She had initially only blinked when she found out that the stillblood now had a wolf. But when she had switched into Weaver’s sight in order to check up on Rose, she had discovered something that shouldn’t be possible.The stillblood could w
“I challenge you to a duel.”Just hours ago, those words had brought the entire clawhold to its knees.Even now, as the light of the full moon shone brightly over the glade, the words still echoed around the trees.At midnight, the glade, the largest clearing in Whitevale, had been cleared, the circle drawn.At the far end of the circle, Alder stood tall.He was clad completely in adamant steel armor, his wolf-shaped helm turned him into a monstrous creature under the moonlight. His adamant armor glistened with runes forged on top of it. Runes supposedly drawn by a weaver, runes that were said to give combatants the ability to never lose.Beside him, his mate, Riley, trembled. She bit her lips as her gaze wandered across the clearing, towards the alpha couple. Her face was completely drained of blood and her eyes were blood-red from unshed tears.On the other side of the clearing, Lucien stepped into the moonlight, his bare skin glistening under the moonlight. Unlike his brother, who