ログイン------The summons came before the world had the decency to wake up.Deimon sat in his lounge chair on the open terrace, wrapped in the cold predawn air like a man who hadn't decided yet whether he was still last night or already today. The hangover hadn't fully released him — it sat behind his eyes like a dull, persistent tenant refusing eviction. His irises caught the last of the fading moonlight and held it, pale and reflective, while his gaze drifted somewhere his mind couldn't follow.There was a lot to process. Too much for four in the morning, too much for a man already at capacity.Chief Adolphus had extended an invitation — a seat among the godheads of the Crescent, a title Deimon would have hunted through fire and bloodshed to claim under different circumstances. Under the right circumstances. But circumstances, lately, had stopped being right. Managing Silverwood already pressed its full weight against his chest every waking hour. The Crescent wouldn't just add to that weig
------Anna couldn't stop turning on the bed. Sleep refused to take her, no matter how many times she shifted, no matter how many positions she tried. Her thoughts churned in a haze, her mind racing through everything at once and making sense of nothing.Maureen's words had stung — sharp, deliberate, the kind of thing meant to leave a mark. But Emmett's? Emmett's had cut far deeper, quiet and clean, the kind of wound you don't feel until much later, when it's already bled you dry. Her stomach twisted every time the thought resurfaced. Fear and dread crawled up her skin like something with too many legs, settling cold around her heart."Nature made JB a monster." She muttered the words to the ceiling, eyes fixed on nothing. "It wasn't his fault at all. None of it." She rolled onto her side, one hand drifting to rest against her belly, as if to shield the life growing there from the thought itself.She didn't see it coming. Didn't feel it arrive. That was the unsettling part — how compl
--------"You won't like Jebediah at his full form. He's the force of nature given form."Maureen's words sat heavy on Anna's chest, refusing to settle, refusing to fade.Dusk had already claimed the earth outside, deep blues bleeding into black, and Anna sat curled in her apartment, alone, a pillow hugged tight against her chest like it could shield her from her own thoughts. The lights were off. The only glow in the room came from the aquarium in the corner, a faint golden shimmer that rippled lazily across the walls and ceiling.The more she turned Maureen's words over, the more her heart sank.Sweet Jebediah. Gentle Jebediah. The man who'd never so much as raised his voice at her, who treated her like something precious and breakable even when she insisted she wasn't. The idea of him capable of anger—real anger, blood rage—felt like trying to picture a calm lake suddenly swallowing a ship whole.But she'd felt that aura. That crushing, suffocating weight that rolled off him like s
-----Sunlight spilled gold and warm through the heavy curtains of Maureen's private apartment, pooling across the floor in long rectangles that crept slowly as the morning aged. Outside, the shower had receded to light drizzles now. Inside, the air was cool, almost too cool, the hum of the AC the only sound apart from the soft clink of glass as Maureen arranged small vials across the low table between them—dried herbs bundled with twine, pressed silver-grey flowers flattened between sheets of paper, something metallic and faintly luminous that caught the light at all the wrong angles, like it didn't quite belong to this world.Anna sat cross-legged despite her belly, leaning forward with the eager curiosity of a child being shown something forbidden."Wolfsbane." Maureen tapped the first vial, and her voice lost every trace of its earlier playfulness, settling into something flat and careful, the voice of someone reciting a lesson that had once cost her dearly to learn. "It kills mot
The keys glinted in Isabeau's hand like something stolen, like something she hadn't yet decided whether to surrender."Isabeau?" Anna's voice carried the uneasiness that always preceded trouble—the tone of a woman who already knew the answer and intended to argue with it anyway."I'm sorry, madam Anna, but you can't." Isabeau's apology came wrapped in a small, stiff bow, her eyes fixed firmly on the tablet clutched to her chest, as though the device itself might shield her from what was coming."Why not? Because I'm pregnant?" Anna planted both hands on her hips, the swell of her belly somehow making the gesture more comical than commanding. The gaze she leveled at Isabeau was sharp enough that the lady tipped her glasses down and looked anywhere else—the hedges, the gravel, the distant garage doors, anything but Anna's face."Master Ozeth won't allow—""Isabeau." Anna's tone hardened, the playfulness draining out of it like water through a broken vase. "The keys. Now.""Please, madam
"Ashworth?"The name hung in the air like smoke.Mama Eunice tipped her monocle and tilted forward, as if leaning closer would somehow change what she just heard."You heard me right, Mama."Jebediah sighed. The frustration wasn't just in his voice — it was written across his face like a headline nobody wanted to read. He leaned back on the swivel chair and pressed his hand over his face, as if shielding himself from thoughts he couldn't outrun."Son." Mama Eunice's voice shed every layer of humor. "Whatever it is that burdens you this deeply, I need you to ask yourself — is it truly worth the weight you're giving it? What happened to the unbothered Big Bad Wolf?" A knowing tilt found her lips. "Where is the terror that lives in the shadow of the greatest Alpha?""Mama, please." Jebediah lowered his hand just enough to reveal his eyes. "I'm serious." His gaze met hers with blinking. "Dead serious."He sat up straight, shoulders squaring like a man bracing against wind he couldn't see
---Both Jebediah and Emmett stayed the night with the Storm-Fangs. Emmett observed their culture — dwindling in number, maybe, but rich in everything else. Their battle style, their customs, their silences that carried meaning. But the most astonishing thing was their meal. One filled belly from t
---"I think the situation just got worse, JB. This is really, really bad." Emmett kept pestering Jebediah, who stayed quiet and seemed to ignore him with deliberate, practiced ease. "You don't get it, do you? A pregnant Luna is a game changer. Everything changes, everything."They were far fro
"Whoa."The word left Anna's mouth before she could dress it up into anything more articulate.She stood at the entrance of the estate's garage — or rather, what she had assumed would be a garage but which revealed itself, with each passing second, to be something else entirely. Something that defi
The bell's resonant peal rolled through Mooncrest Estate like a living thing—ancient bronze struck by ancient ritual, the sound carried on wolf-sense as much as air. It vibrated in Anna's bones, a call that bypassed human hearing and spoke directly to the beast within.Dinner.Anna was on her feet







