LOGINAina's POV Osborne slept for the first time in what felt like days, and I left him with Kade standing guard at the door.I didn't go to my room. I went to find my mother.She was sitting alone in the small guest chamber they had given her, a cup of cold tea untouched beside her. She looked up when I came in, and I saw her read my face the way she must have read it when I was small."Osborne remembered something," I said. "A ritual. His father, Veyron, a circle of white powder on the floor. They did something to his wolf when he was a boy."The cup stopped halfway to her lips.All the color left her face. It happened slowly, like water draining from a bowl. She set the cup down with great care, as though it might break."Mom."lShe said nothing. The silence stretched until I could hear the wind against the shutters."You know about it," I said quietly."Yes." Her voice was almost gone. "I knew about the Severance."Something inside me went cold and still. I had hoped she would say no.
Osborne's POV I woke to the sound of snarling.For a moment I thought something had broken into my room. My eyes snapped open and my body went tense, ready to fight. But the room was empty. The door was shut. Grey dawn light touched the window.The snarling was coming from inside me.*Varg?*He didn't answer. He was pacing, fast and hard, and I could feel his claws scraping the walls of my mind.The threat wasn't outside. It was a memory.Veyron's last words had sat in my chest all night like a swallowed coal. *Ask your mother why she allowed the bond to be broken.* I had told myself I would think about it in the morning, with a clear head. But some door inside me had already been kicked open.*What do you see?**A room,* Varg said, his voice ragged. *A locked door. Your father shouting.*Cold sweat broke over my skin.*And a child. A child begging someone to stop.*I sat up, gripping the sheets. I knew nothing about a locked room. I had no memory of begging. My childhood had always
Aina's POV Osborne had gone back to Silver Crest at first light, with Kade at his side and a hard set to his shoulders. He wanted answers from his father's records. I wanted something else.I wanted to stop being the last person to learn what I was.I found my mother by the broken doorway, wrapped in her blanket, watching the sun climb over the trees. She looked up as I came near."I want to understand the Moonbinders," I said. "Everything they could do. Everything the First Circle feared."Her face tightened. "Aina, that power is dangerous. It took people I loved. It can take you too, if you reach for it without knowing what you're doing."The old me would have nodded and backed away. She would have said *you're right* and gone to make tea."I'm tired of being afraid of things other people refuse to explain," I said.My mother held my eyes for a long moment. Then she looked away and let me go.Mara and I spent the morning in the main sanctuary, running our hands over the carvings. T
Osborne's POV We reached Silver Crest just before dawn, and for the first time in my life, the gates looked like the mouth of a trap.The same stone walls. The same guards bowing as I passed. But every face seemed to hide a door I couldn't see behind. My father had known about the Moonbinders. My mother had vanished because of a secret. And somewhere in my own council, a member of the First Circle was nodding politely at my orders.I had inherited a pack I could no longer trust.I couldn't accuse everyone. Without proof, I would only split the pack in half and hand the Circle the chaos it wanted. I needed evidence."Your father's private archive," Kade said quietly. "Not the official one.""Behind the east library."We went alone.The room had been sealed since my father's death. Dust lay thick on the shelves, and the air smelled of old paper and cold ash. Behind a false panel, we found rows of boxes tied with black ribbon.Inside were letters. Hundreds of them, written to and from t
Aina's POV Osborne walked out of the temple without a word.I watched his back disappear through the broken doors, Kade following close behind. A part of me wanted to go after him. A bigger part couldn't move. My mother's hand was still wrapped around mine, and I couldn't let go of it yet.I had imagined this moment so many times.In some versions, she ran to me and held me until I couldn't breathe, and the words poured out of her. In others, I asked why she had left, and she wept and said sorry, and the hurt melted away like frost in the sun.I had never imagined this. Cold stone. Broken doors. Blood on the floor, and my mother whispering a warning about the one man who had never made me feel small.I pulled my hand free. It was harder than I expected."Why did you leave?"Elara Wilfred sat down on the step as if her legs had finally given up. Up close, she looked even more fragile. Gray in her hair. A scar that ran down her jaw like a crack in porcelain."Someone found out what I w
Osborne's POV *One of his ancestors.*The words rang in my head long after Aina's mother stopped speaking.My first instinct was to reject them. My family had ruled Silver Crest for generations. We buried our dead with honor. We did not murder people to keep them apart.My second instinct was to demand proof. Names, dates, a witness. Something I could hold in my hands and test.But I said nothing. Aina was looking at me, pale and unreadable, and I couldn't find my voice.I reached for Varg instead. He always had an answer, even if it was a snarl.Nothing.*Varg.*Silence. Not the peaceful hush the temple had given me. This was the silence of a man who had gone into a room and locked the door.For eleven years, Varg had fought me for every inch of control. He had clawed at my mind, burned through my sleep, and driven me to the edge of every battle. I had wished him quiet a thousand times.Now he was quiet, and I was terrified.*Varg. Answer me.*I felt along the walls of our shared mi







