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
That night, I walked past the greenhouse. It was almost empty, just a few crates of unplanted blooms, a trowel still wet with earth, and one long trail of prints leading up from the back gate.Fresh boot prints. Too large for any of the gardening team, not wide enough for George and not deep enough
LILAThe council room stank of damp stone. George liked his meetings early, before the fog cleared, before anyone had time to think. Wolves filed in with clipped bows and drawn faces.The long table stood like a coffin between us, polished clean but splintered at the edges. My usual seat faced the w
LILAThe scroll came sealed with Janet’s crest, her name looped in red wax. A council meeting, she called it, an offer to discuss terms of co-rulership, equal weight in the new order. I read it twice, then folded it neatly and slipped it into my robe. She wanted me to believe she still needed me, th
JACKSONWhen he finally crawled out to go play with a stick he’d found outside, I sat by the front door, blade balanced across my thigh, eyes fixed on the treeline. He stomped around the front porch yelling spells at birds, then came back in and asked if dragons were real.I said I used to know one.







