LOGINZaynTali purses his lips while leaning against the old well in the center of Eurye’s market district. With his eyes, he follows the progress of a woman in a black cloak and two preteen shifter girls squealing in delight as the witch bounces on her heels, straddling a wiry old broom, with the two girls seated behind her. In a flash, the broom is airborne, and the girls screech in delight, the trio zooming through the crowd, people jumping to get out of their way. I eye the Alpha of this territory, who looks as pale and unsure as every other shifter visiting the market today. Black cloaks dot the crowd, broomsticks strapped to their backs and baskets hanging from their elbows. The shifters selling wares begrudgingly drop into conversation with the witches, accepting coins and the occasional potion in exchange for vegetables and loaves of bread. Some sellers are more enthusiastic about the witches than others, but most are unsure how to act. The children at the market, however? They’r
FallonI don’t like feeling this way. My chest feels heavy and tight. My throat hurts every time I swallow. Grief and jealousy mingle into a tangled net that creates another kind of feeling–a twisting of the two that makes me want to cry more than anything, which is ridiculous. I am ridiculous. I’m being insane. Stella is beautiful, though, which makes this worse. Her sculpted bone structure and thick, red hair catch shadows painted by master artists as she slowly unbuttons Eniana’s nightgown, exposing her bare, pale chest. Her green eyes remind me vividly of Posey, my uncle Aris’s mate, which brings me a single, fleeting shred of comfort. Everyone loves Posey, even if she’s extraordinarily antisocial and awkward. Stella is neither of those things. “Did I make you uncomfortable, Luna?” she asks with a brief, almost shy smile that betrays the sharpness of her eyes. I stare at her coolly before going back to grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle. She is making me uncomfortable. No
FallonZayn is a cuddler, which I find hilarious, given that he’s spent months growling, grumping around, and being overall ridiculously standoffish. At least, he likes me touching him. He likes spreading out on the bed like I’m not in it, his arm flat over my body, his leg pinning mine to the mattress. His cheek is pressed against the top of my head, and every breath he takes fluffs my hair. I don’t mind this. Not a bit. I’m used to sleeping with a dozen pillows around my body and a weighted blanket, and his weight is more than enough to send me into a stupor. I should be sleeping now. It’s raining softly–a naturally occurring rain. I’ve learned to tell the difference between the scent and electric current of his magic and the soft, breezy kind of storms that swirl over the islands. I’m not sure what woke me up. I don’t think it was the rain. It’s not morning and won’t be for another few hours. No maids are awake yet. The house is utterly silent, save for the trickling pearls of r
Fallon“Louisa.” I sigh, shivering with delight. “You beauty. I’m going to make Zayn give you a fat stack of cash just because you’re a miracle worker.” Louisa is, at this moment in time, a figment of my imagination, but I’m dripping in her delicate handiwork while admiring my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Naomi would be in tears, rolling around on the floor laughing, if she could see me right now, but also, fuck her. She has no taste, and I have more than enough for the two of us. I stretch my arms out to the side to admire the bubble gum pink fabric of my new robe, which drapes heavily before tapering at my wrists, lined with pearl beads. The fabric is silken and impossibly light, but the length is what really gets me going. When I mentioned I longed for something to wear around the house that wafted over the tiles and made me look like I was some kind of apparition floating this way and that, Louisa delivered without a second thought. The robe has feathers along the hem. It’s
ZaynTali won’t leave me the fuck alone. He’s been staring all morning. Every time I glance at him, he’s there, looking at me intently while I field conversations in every direction. If any other wolf, any other Alpha, was going to sense the shift in my relationship with my still unmarked mate, it would be him. “Fuck off,” I mouth silently, throwing him a vicious glare. He chuckles, looks away, then meets my gaze again and laughs so hard that several of the Alphas I’ve been talking to for the last half hour about trade, pack relations, and war–mostly war–turn to frown at him. This is the shit I hate that Fallon is unfortunately very good at. Talking. Delegating. Trying to get multiple people to heed my command at once. I’ve lost her to the crowd, which is infuriating. She waltzed into the packhouse in Eurye on my arm like a dutiful little wife and promptly herded all the Lunas in attendance into a group using her charm and grace, and now she’s gone, lost to the glare of the sun be
IanDad doesn’t like coming to Moonrise. I’ve never outwardly questioned him about it. Mom picks up the slack when it comes to his sometimes strange moments of silence and entirely skeptical behavior. It’s easy to forget what he is and where he’s from. He wasn’t born in the rolling, emerald green hills and valleys of New Glade. He wasn’t born in the sawdust and wheat fields of Silverhide. The gnarled trees of the still- recovering plains of the Deadlands pale in comparison to the land of his ancestors on both sides–Pantharas. I’ve never been, but I’ve also never had the itch to travel long distances by boat, especially to a place my dad swore he’d never return to. Moonrise, however, is a fine trip. My parents are old school, all things considered. A week spent in wolf form traversing the northern, unpopulated territory of the Deadlands was the highlight, at least for me. There’s plenty of hunting. The summer weather is fair and dry compared to the depths of the Roguelands, where we
EvanderWater pours down the walls in steady, frigid streams. My head aches, and the smell of blood hangs thick in the air as I try to open my eyes for the fourth time in the last five minutes.I think my skull might be cracked. I reach up to rub my throbbing temple
KennaI’m not sure how two weeks have already passed since Evander and I fought in the shelter of the willow tree. Two entire weeks. I haven’t heard from him or seen him since that night, and maybe that’s for the best.I let my heartache turn to a
RyattGranger returns three hours after Ella slumped into a restless slumber in my arms. His golden wolf appears at the edge of the clearing I’ve been sitting in, unable to even blink, my mind and heart in shambles. How could I have been so stupid? So desperately, unapologetically unaware of how hard
EllaI step back just in time to catch the bundle Isaac places in my arms before he rushes to Maddy’s side. He falls to his knees beside the bed, holding her face in his hands as she sobs, her mouth pulled into a delirious smile. I look down at the baby in my arms, who looks up at me with a scowl. “H







