LOGINLilahMorwen calls it “meditation.”I call it “sitting still while my brain does cartwheels.”We’re back in the stone ring, late afternoon light slanting long and gold. Naomi is sprawled on a nearby rock, pretending to nap but absolutely eavesdropping. Bella sits cross‑legged a little farther away, sketchbook balanced on her knees, pencil moving in soft, scratching lines.“Again,” Morwen says.I drop onto the packed earth, legs folded, hands resting on my thighs. The bond throbs once, annoyed, like it recognizes this as the part where I poke at it.“Breathe,” Morwen orders. “Not like a drowning person. Like someone whose lungs still work.”“Rude,” I say, but I inhale slow, exhale slower.We’ve been at this for days now.Calling the wolf into my eyes. Sharpening and dulling senses on command. I sat with the knot in my chest without letting it dictate the whole show.It’s… working. A little.Today, Morwen wants me to listen again—deeper. Past the wards, past the trees, past the buzz of
LilahThe next morning, my body protested before I even stood.Every muscle feels like it’s been wrung out and left to dry crooked. The ache under my sternum is a familiar throb now—less emergency, more constant background threat.I sit up anyway.If there’s one thing the last few weeks have taught me, it’s that pain doesn’t wait for permission.The common room smells like smoke and something vaguely herbal. Naomi is sprawled in a chair with her feet on the table, hair yanked into a knot, eyes half‑closed. Bella is hunched over a piece of paper, tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth in concentration as she sketches the curve of the hearth.“You look like roadkill,” Naomi says when she notices me.“Thanks,” I say. “You look like you fought the road and won.”“I did,” she says. “It was gravel. I’m very brave.”Bella glances up, eyes bright. “You slept,” she says. “Properly. I could tell.”“Define properly,” I say. “But yeah. There was a dream. Less death. More… weird empowerment
LilahThe second morning at the safehold, I wake up to the smell of something burning.For a blessed, disorienting moment, I don’t know where I am.No stone ceiling above me. No distant clank of armor in the hall. No low murmur of pack voices through thin walls.Just a rough wooden beam, a square of pale sky through a small window, and the faintest taste of wards humming in the air.Then Naomi swears from the common room.“Bella, I love you, but whatever that is—it’s dying.”I shove the blanket back and swing my legs over the side of the bed.Everything in me protests.Muscles ache from too much travel and not enough real rest. The scar‑deep throb in my chest flares when I sit up, a hot, tight band under my sternum. Not the white‑hot agony of the Rite. It's just a constant, low‑grade reminder that something in there is not what it was.The bond sits wrong. Tangled. Quiet at the moment, like a sullen animal sulking in its corner. Still there. Always there. I refuse to poke it.My feet
LilahThe safehold doesn’t look like much from the road.Which, I decide, is the point.It’s tucked into a fold of the land where the forest thickens and then suddenly breaks. One moment we’re moving under a dense canopy of pines. The next we’re sliding into a hollow, that doesn’t quite make sense.Stone outcrops jut from the earth at odd angles, half‑hidden by moss and ferns. A low wall curves around them—not tall, not imposing, just there, like an afterthought. Wildflowers grow in the cracks. A narrow stream cuts through one edge, water bright and cold.If you didn’t know how to look, you’d think it was just another pocket of forest.Morwen lifts a hand as we approach and mutters something under her breath.For a heartbeat, my ears ring.The air shivers.Lines of faint light flicker along the stones—runes etched so deep they’ve nearly become part of the rock. The wall seems to straighten, the hollow deepen. Space… stretches.“I hate witch doorways,” Naomi mutters, clutching the side
RonanThe gate closes behind them with a sound I feel in my bones.It’s not loud. Just wood against stone, iron settling into place. It was a familiar noise I’ve heard a thousand times.It’s never cut this deep.For a while, I stand in front of it like an idiot.The guards shift uneasily at their posts. One clears his throat, then thinks better of it. The bond is a faint, aching line now, stretched beyond the trees, humming with absence.“Alpha?” One of the guards ventures at last.I blink, realizing I haven’t moved in too long.“Back to your rotations,” I say. “No one follows them unless Cassian says so.”“Yes, Alpha.”I turn back toward the heart of the compound.A shout cuts across the yard.Two warriors—young, hot‑blooded—slam into each other in the training ring. It's not sparring. Fighting.Too hard.Too reckless.Blood hits the dirt.“Enough,” I say.They don’t stop.For a second—I don’t move.The command sits in my throat… and dies there.Cassian steps in, shoving one back, L
RonanThey leave at dusk.I know this before anyone tells me, the way you know a storm is coming even with your eyes closed. The bond doesn’t carry her feelings cleanly anymore, but it carries movement—tugs and stretches, sharp little snaps as she walks further from where I’m standing.I spend the day doing everything except what I want to do.Which is to go to her.Instead, I move through the motions of Alphahood like a ghost reenacting his life.Sign this patrol report. Approve that food allotment. Listen to an elder complain about noise outside his quarters.I answer. I nod. I give orders. All the things I’ve done a thousand times.The difference is, now, every decision carries a new awareness: she will not be here to face the consequences, good or bad. Every choice I make is without her as my shadow—and for the first time, that feels less like autonomy and more like amputation.By late afternoon, the walls feel too close.I escape to the outer walkway, high above the yard. Fro
*Lilah*His hand closes on my shoulder.I move.It’s not graceful or pretty. It’s a panicked, sideways twist and drop, my knees giving out as I throw my weight in the opposite direction of his grab.Cassian’s fingers catch only the fabric of my dress. It stretches, then slips free.I hit the dirt h
*Lilah*I don’t stay in my room.I last fifteen minutes.Fifteen minutes of pacing between the bed and the window. Fifteen minutes of replaying Malric’s words in my head like a messed‑up podcast I can’t turn off.*Luna in low form. Human shell. Wolf soul. Last Luna died for your choices. Reject
*Ronan*The world narrows.Kade’s claws are a breath from Lilah’s throat.The bond between us yanks tight—hard enough that for a heartbeat, it feels like my own neck is under his hand.My wolf roars up.I move.One moment, my hand is empty. The next, Kade’s wrist is in my grip. Bone crunches.H
*Lilah*I don’t dream.Or if I do, I don’t remember—just a heavy press of sound and heat and too many eyes.When I wake, my throat is sore, and my head aches behind my eyes like I’ve spent the night crying and trying not to.The room is dim, and curtains are drawn. For a moment, I lie still and pre







