공유

Chapter 122: The Red Thread

작가: Nova Quinn
last update 게시일: 2026-11-09 00:30:29

The first bolt hit the water a heartbeat after the Devourer screamed.

It was not aimed at my mother. It was aimed at the creature beside her. A lance of dark red light streaked down from the nearest fighter and punched into the Devourer's chest, and the black threads of its body flew apart like a burst of crows.

"No!" Evelyn cried.

She threw herself in front of it.

I will never forget the sight of her standing in that black lake with her arms spread wide and her threadbare robe plastered to her
이 작품을 무료로 읽으실 수 있습니다
QR 코드를 스캔하여 앱을 다운로드하세요
잠긴 챕터

최신 챕터

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 126: The Name in His Ear

    Sarah's lips parted.I have thought about that moment more than almost any other in my life. A pistol was pressed to my sister's temple, a hundred soldiers had dropped to their knees, and the whole sky was filling with warm gold light. In the middle of it a woman in a torn white gown was taking a breath to say a word the world had spent an hour forgetting."Sarah, no!" Maya screamed."Quiet!" Dran jerked the pistol. "Both of you! I will shoot her, I swear it!""You won't," Sarah said.Her voice was perfectly steady."You haven't the nerve. You've been a coward for ten years, Speaker. You hid in the Outer Rim building ships. You sent a stranger to do your listening. You sat beside my mother's glass every night for a year and never once looked her in the eye.""Shut your mouth.""I was there." Her brown eyes slid sideways, toward his face. "I came in on the third night, after the others left. You were reading the Ledger aloud. Do you remember?"The pistol trembled."You were crying," Sa

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 125: The Door Is Not for Takin

    The ship lurched.Frost screamed along the hull, and the whole bridge tilted ten degrees to starboard. Consoles tore loose from their moorings and skated across the deck. Somewhere below us, a bulkhead gave way with a boom that I felt in my knees."Kaelith's bridge is failing!" Killian shouted."I know!""The ship is going to fall!""I know!"I clutched the empty black case against my chest with one arm and the page of vellum against my ribs with the other. I had slipped it inside my coat the moment the thread snapped, and it lay against my heart like a second pulse. I would not lose it. Not now. Not after everything it had cost.Dran was on his feet.He had pulled himself off the console, one hand pressed to his chest, his scarlet coat torn at the shoulder. Blood ran from his nose. The cool silken calm had gone out of his face, and what remained was something thin and cornered and very old."You do not understand what she is doing," he said hoarsely."Then tell me.""I cannot.""You

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 124: Which of Them Do You Love More

    Which of them do you love more?The question hung in the red air like a blade on a thread. Through the viewport, three small figures stood waist-deep in the black water, and my daughter's voice rose from the lake, thin and clear, carrying a melody I had never taught her. Behind me the waste hatch glowed orange. Before me Dran held a black glass case out over its mouth with the calm of a man holding a cup of tea.I looked at the case.I looked at the lake.And I did what I had been trained to do for twelve years when someone put a scalpel in my hand and said choose.I refused the premise."That's the wrong question," I said."Is it?""You're asking which wound to leave open. A surgeon never answers that." I took one step forward. "She asks what's holding both of them shut."Dran's smile slipped a quarter inch."Doctor, I assure you…""You said the thread is anchored to the page.""Yes.""You said breaking the case would end it.""I said burning it would end it." He shifted the case a h

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 123: The Hook in the Gap

    Killian's silver eyes found me across the bridge, and the man I loved was gone.It was not like the possession at the lake. When Sarah had worn Maya's voice, I had seen my daughter fighting underneath it. This was a clean absence. The face was his, the breath was his, the scar through his left eyebrow was his. But the eyes were two coins of cold metal, and they looked at me the way a stranger looks at a locked door."Killian," I said carefully. "Look at me.""I am looking at you, Doctor."The voice was his, laid over another's."What did you do to him?" I asked Dran.The Speaker of the Fourth House had not moved from beside the black glass case. He turned the little tuning fork over in his fingers, and the red thread flickered and thinned."I did nothing. The Covenant did it for me." He smiled gently. "Your mother paid with her name, and it left a hole in everyone who loved her. A very small hole. A missing syllable. Most of you will feel it as a tooth that fell out.""And you found a

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 122: The Red Thread

    The first bolt hit the water a heartbeat after the Devourer screamed.It was not aimed at my mother. It was aimed at the creature beside her. A lance of dark red light streaked down from the nearest fighter and punched into the Devourer's chest, and the black threads of its body flew apart like a burst of crows."No!" Evelyn cried.She threw herself in front of it.I will never forget the sight of her standing in that black lake with her arms spread wide and her threadbare robe plastered to her legs, a small thin woman with no name and no weapon, facing down a dozen warships. The second bolt struck the water six inches from her feet. Spray burst up around her in a glittering wall.She did not move."Mama!" I screamed.I was already running.I do not remember deciding to. One moment I was standing on the shore with my children behind me, and the next the new grass was tearing under my boots and Killian was shouting my name and the lake was rushing toward me like a wall. Wolves streamed

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 121: The Thing That Woke Wrong

    The black water rose.It did not surge or crash. It lifted, slowly and smoothly, like a sleeper sitting up in the dark. The whole lake bulged toward the broken ceiling in a single dark dome, and from its crown a shape began to climb out.It was not the First Queen this time.The crown of branches was gone. The borrowed face was gone. What stood on the water was a tall, thin, shivering thing made of black threads, with a hollow where a face should have been and two long arms that hung almost to its knees. It looked like a child’s drawing of a person, done by someone who had never seen one.It turned its head toward the red ship.“That hurt,” said the Devourer.The voice was wrong.An hour ago it had spoken like a tired old woman at the end of a very long day. Now it sounded like something pulled out of sleep by its hair. Every word was ragged and too loud, and underneath it ran a low, grinding hum that I felt in my back teeth.“Everyone behind me,” Killian said.“Killian…”“Behind me,

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 2: The silver Doctor

    Five years is a lifetime in the world of the shifted. It is long enough for a forest to regrow, for a pack to forget a "useless" Delta, and for a broken heart to turn into a fortress of ice.I stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of my private office on the 80th floor of the Silver Rise Medical Ce

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 1: The Shattered Moon

    The scent of cedar and rain should have been my sanctuary. It was the scent of my home, the Blackwood Pack, and the scent of the man I had loved from a distance since I was a child. Instead, tonight, it was the smell of my execution.I stood in the center of the Pack Square, my feet bare against th

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 6: The Silver Vengeance

    The Grand Ballroom of the Blackwood Manor was a cavern of gold leaf, crystal chandeliers, and the oppressive scent of old money and champagne. Tonight was officially the "Gala of Recovery," a celebration for the pack members who had been healed by the Silver Doctor. But for me, it was a tactical de

  • The Alpha’s Regret: The Hidden Luna’s Return   Chapter 5: The Queen’s Shadow

    The morning sun over the Blackwood estate was pale and sickly, filtered through the gray haze of the dying forest. I stood on the balcony of the guest wing, watching the pack warriors train in the courtyard below. From this height, they looked like ants, scurrying to maintain an order that was rapi

더보기
좋은 소설을 무료로 찾아 읽어보세요
GoodNovel 앱에서 수많은 인기 소설을 무료로 즐기세요! 마음에 드는 작품을 다운로드하고, 언제 어디서나 편하게 읽을 수 있습니다
앱에서 작품을 무료로 읽어보세요
앱에서 읽으려면 QR 코드를 스캔하세요.
DMCA.com Protection Status