LOGINThe door clicked shut behind Luna.She leaned against it, pressed her forehead to the cool wood, and tried to remember how to breathe.He knows.He knows about the children.He knows I'm alive.He knows everything.Her hands were shaking. Her chest was tight. The mask she'd worn for five years — the cold, untouchable mask of the Grey Queen — had cracked the moment he'd said her name.Luna.Not Lyna. Not the merchant. Not the stranger.Luna.The girl who had loved him. The girl he'd destroyed. The girl who had crawled out of the fire and built herself into something new.That girl is dead, she told herself. I killed her. I buried her. She's gone.But her heart didn't listen.It never listened."Mom?"She looked up.KJ stood in the middle of the room, arms crossed, jaw set. Behind him, Silas, Rhea, and Ronan were arranged like a tiny army — four pairs of eyes fixed on her with varying degrees of suspicion, curiosity, and barely contained fury."KJ," she said carefully. "I need you to—"
Kael didn't sleep. He hadn't slept well in five years — not since the night he'd dreamed of Luna and woken with a black handprint burned into his chest. But tonight was different. Tonight, he couldn't stop thinking. Lyna. The merchant from the Northern Wilds. The woman with the grey eyes and the silk dress and the children who looked at him like they already knew him. Why does she feel familiar? He lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, and tried to piece it together. Her face wasn't familiar. He'd never seen her before — he was sure of it. Her face was wrong. Too sharp. Too cold. Too careful. But her smell — He sat up. Her smell. He'd caught it when he stood close to her. Something beneath the perfume. Something earthy. Something like rain on dry soil. Something that made his wolf whine. Luna. The thought hit him like a fist. No. Luna is dead. Luna died five years ago in rogue territory. I buried her. I mourned her. I — But he hadn't buried her. He'd buried an empty
The pack house hadn't changed.Same stone walls. Same dark wood. Same chandelier made of antlers — Luna had always thought it was ugly. She'd imagined, in her weaker moments, what it would feel like to burn it to the ground.Tonight, she stood beneath it in a silk dress that cost more than the pack house's entire monthly budget, and she smiled.Not yet, she told herself. Be patient."Lyna."She turned.Kael Blackwood was walking toward her across the great hall.Five years had changed him. His shoulders were broader — or maybe he just carried them differently, like the weight of being Alpha had reshaped his bones. His jaw was harder. His eyes were... emptier.Good, she thought. Suffer.But her heart didn't listen.It raced anyway. Stupid, traitorous heart."Alpha Blackwood," she said, keeping her voice cool. "Thank you for inviting me tonight."He stopped in front of her.Close. Too close."The invitation was from my Beta," he said. "Damon thought it would be good for the pack to... c
Three days after the rejectionThe pack house was silent.Not the good kind of silent — the peaceful kind, the sleeping kind. This was the silence of a held breath. Of wolves walking on eggshells. Of a house waiting for its Alpha to shatter.Kael Blackwood hadn't left his father's study since they'd found the body.The room still smelled like Marcus. Leather and whiskey and the metallic undertone of old blood — the blood that had soaked into the floorboards before anyone could clean it out.Throat torn out. Eyes missing.Kael sat in his father's chair.Behind his father's desk.Staring at his father's blood.There was a knock at the door."Go away."The door opened anyway.Damon Cross — Kael's Beta, his best friend since childhood, the only wolf in the pack who wasn't afraid of him — stepped inside. He didn't say anything. Just walked to the whiskey decanter, poured two fingers into a glass, and set it in front of Kael.Kael didn't touch it."You need to eat," Damon said."I need my f
The door didn't just break.It splintered — oak planks snapping like twigs, iron hinges twisting, wood shrapnel spraying across the cabin like shrapnel from a bomb.Celeste moved before the first piece hit the ground.She grabbed me by the collar of my ruined dress and threw me behind the fireplace. My back slammed against the stone. Pain lanced through my spine. The quadruplets kicked in protest — four sharp, angry flutters.Stay down, I told them. Please. Just stay down.I couldn't protect them.I couldn't even protect myself.But I could hide.Celeste stood in the center of the cabin, a knife in each hand, her body a wall between me and the darkness beyond the broken door."Show yourselves," she snarled.They did.Three wolves stepped through the doorway.Not in fur — in flesh. Men. Large. Armed. Their eyes glowed gold in the firelight, and their scent hit me a second later.Nightshade Pack.Kael's wolves.The tallest of them — a brute with a scar splitting his lip and dead eyes th
The fire crackled between us like a living thing. Celeste hadn't moved since she'd spoken those words. The Alpha who killed her. She stood with her back to me, feeding logs into the flames one by one, even though the cabin was already too warm. She was avoiding my eyes. Good, I thought. Because if she looked at me right now, she'd see too much. Fear. Anger. Hunger for answers I'd waited eighteen years to hear. "My mother," I said slowly, "loved an Alpha. Not my father. Someone else. And that Alpha killed her." Celeste's shoulders tensed. "Yes." "Why?" "Because she rejected him first." The words hung in the air like smoke. I pressed my hand to my stomach — felt the quadruplets' heartbeats, steady now, stronger than they had any right to be — and tried to understand. "She rejected him?" I whispered. "But you said he killed her. That doesn't—" "He didn't kill her because she rejected him." Celeste finally turned. Her copper eyes were wet. "He killed her because she came back.
The journey home took four days.Four days of walking. Four days of Kael hovering. Four days of Dr. Hayes checking my wound and listening to the babies' heartbeats.Four days of Voss's words echoing in my head."You think you've won. But you haven't. It will never be over."---We reached the pack
The facility fell quiet.Surrogates lay motionless on the floor. Alliance wolves tended to their wounded. The white stone walls, once pristine, were now streaked with blood.Kael carried me out of the chamber."You're bleeding too much.""It's just a cut.""It's deep. You need stitches.""The babie
The surrogates lunged.Red eyes. Clawed hands. Bodies that didn't feel pain.Kael stepped in front of me. His blade met the first one's chest. It stumbled back. Kept coming."They don't stop!""Then we don't either!"I grabbed a fallen sword. Gold flooded my eyes.The First Ones power surged.---Th
The alliance marched at dawn.Fifty-three wolves. Twelve Alphas. One pregnant omega with gold in her eyes and fire in her blood.Kael led from the front.I walked beside him."The mountains are three days north," Malric said, studying a map. "The facility is underground. Hidden. We'll need to find







