LOGINHe spoke first, his tone low but firm enough to carry. “We can wait,” he said. “Children will come when they’re meant to. The Pack already has its heart.” The room stilled for a breath. Mara looked over her shoulder, her hands still sunk in flour, her eyes soft and startled. “You mean me?” she asked
LILAThe house woke before dawn. Old wood shifted, the hearth whispered, and the air felt different—alive again. I stood at the foot of the stairs when I heard them coming. Two sets of steps, uneven from the road, but in rhythm all the same. When the door opened, cold air rushed through the hall. Ga
“I thought I had to be perfect,” she said. “Every step, every word. Like one mistake would make them lose faith in me.”“Then let them,” I said. “Let them see we bleed too. Let them see what real looks like.”Her eyes lifted toward the sky, catching the first streaks of gold between the branches. “T
GAVINHer breath came out in bursts, sharp enough to cut. She pressed her palm to her mouth, like the words might spill if she didn’t hold them in. I moved before I thought, closing the space, catching her hands in mine. Her fingers were cold and damp, her pulse racing under my thumb.“I can’t be wh
GAVINThe scent hit me before I saw the gate—hers, faint and fading, scattered by wind. I caught it the second I stepped into the hall, and everything in me snapped to attention. The council chamber still echoed in my head, the droning voices, the talk of territory lines and alliance disputes. I had
MARAI knelt beside a pool fed by a narrow stream. Moonlight rippled across its surface, silver on black. My reflection flickered there, the same face that wore the Luna’s mask every day, only softer now—bare, unsure, alive. I cupped my hands in the water and let it run down my wrists. The cold snap
LILAThe forest swallowed our footprints faster than we could leave them, the air pressed too heavy on my chest, the path curved wrong and the leaves were too quiet.Lyric moved ahead, blade drawn, braid knotted behind her back, eyes scanning every limb above and root below. Tyler kept Gavin and Cow
LILACowrie had commandeered the kitchen, dragging a plastic stool across the tiles, her sleeves rolled up, her curls bouncing with every stomp. She slapped a wrinkled piece of paper onto the wall beside the table and smoothed it down with both palms like it held a treaty of war.It held the rules f
By the time we stepped out of the shed, Cowrie had turned the clothesline into a fortress, a curtain of capes flapping wild in the wind, some pinned together with clothespins, others woven with twigs and string.Tyler crouched on the far end of it, legs folded, hands open as she passed him imaginary
LILAThe storm cracked inside me without warning. I sat on the floor beside Lyric’s cot, knees pulled in, fists buried in the folds of my shirt, as if holding my own skin might stop the way everything spun.The edges of the room blurred, the fire danced too wildly in the grate, the shadows ran longe







