MasukAnd alas, so it ends.Here we are again, at the end of another adventure. And this was, quite possibly, one of the most difficult endings I've ever written.Thank you so much for stopping by and for all the support. I see all of you, and I appreciate every single one of you. The gems, the comments, even the little suggestions and observations along the way - I so enjoy reading your thoughts.This book was a little more plot heavy, denser, and moodier than I expected it to be. Hopefully, the next one won't be quite so... depressing and bleak.Thanks for sticking around. I appreciate you.Much love,Celice
LyricHe is infuriating in the mornings.That's the thing no one tells you about mating with an ancient, immortal Lycan king - they don't have alarm clocks in their soul. Noah wakes up at whatever hour he decides to wake up, which is invariably an hour before I'm ready, and then he just lies there, being pointedly awake at me."I can feel you staring," I tell him."I'm not staring. I'm looking.""What's the difference?""Staring implies something unflattering. I'm appreciating what I have."I open one eye. He's propped up on one elbow, looking down at me with those steel grey eyes and that insufferable almost-smile that he knows I cannot resist. His dark hair is doing something architectural that shouldn't be attractive and absolutely is."It's too early," I tell him."It's past nine.""It's too early," I say again, on principle.He laughs, the sound is low and warm, and drops back down beside me, pulling me into him. I let him because this one specific thing, the solid warmth of him
NoahThe mages and what’s left of the vampires leave the next day. But we stay. We wait for our packs that had been set free from that death trap valley where Bryce almost destroyed us.A week later, we’re all together for one last, glorious night together on that beach, drinking and feasting like only Lycans can, before we pass out all over the sand and what’s left of the promenade.Haldor leaves at dawn.He hugs Lyric so tightly I think I hear a few ribs crack, nearly breaks my hand when he shakes it, claps Darrian so hard on the back that the boy stumbles forward two steps, and then the ancient viking simply walks to the ocean where his warriors wait in their boats.We watch the row out on the glittering ocean. Old school to the bitter end."Will he be alright?" Darrian asks."Haldor has survived everything the world has ever thrown at him," I say. "He'll outlive all of us."Darrian nods, apparently satisfied with that, and goes back to turning fish over a fire that he built himsel
NoahShe's breathing, but her heartbeat is so faint that I can’t hear it, so I keep checking, every few seconds, like a man possessed. I press my fingers to the pulse point on her throat and count.It’s still there. Faint and steady. Stubborn in a way only she can be."You can stop doing that," Lyric says without opening her eyes. "I'm not doing anything.""You're checking my heartbeat.""I'm not."She opens one eye. The light green of it, even here on this miserable frozen rock, is the best thing I've seen in months. "You're a terrible liar for someone who's been alive for thousands of years.""Shut up," I tell her, and press my lips to her forehead. I feel some enormous, awful tension in my chest begin to, very slowly, unknot itself.She's way too cold. This frozen hellhole of a place is leaching all the warmth out of her, sucking her dry like The Towers did. I lift her into my arms, shielding her against the freeze with my own body, and look around at what's left of the battlefiel
LyricThe portal smells like the end of the world.Cold rushes through it first, a wall of it, the kind that doesn't just chill your skin but gets into your teeth and behind your eyes. Then the smell is almost unbearable - iron and something ancient, something that has never once been warm.I look over my shoulder at Noah who is standing there with his eyes fixed on me, his expression unreadable, lips pulled into a thin line. But nods at me, and that gives me the courage to step through.The sky on the other side is the colour of a bruise that never healed. Not dark enough to be night, not light enough to be day. Just that ugly, infected purple-grey that sits between the two. The ground is frozen solid, but there's no snow, no ice catching the light. Just hard, dead earth cracked in long fissures that crunches under my feet.No trees. No grass. No birds.Nothing alive here except the wolves.And there are so many of them.Fear spreads through me like the ice that rules this place, tu
Noah“Lyric,” I stop my mate as we start to wander down the ruined path that leads to the beach. “Hang back for a moment.”She stops and looks up at me with a frown. I wait until everyone is far enough away, then switch to the mind link just in case. “What was that?” I ask her.“What was what?” She asks, immediately defensive. “Me standing up for myself and the plan I believe in?”Yes, I found her plan problematic, but I don’t tell her that. She’s a queen finding her power, defiance is to be expected. “No. I felt something from you earlier. Like… a vibration of magical energy.”She pales a little and nods. “Yuh- you felt that?”“Yes. What was it?”“I don’t know. It scared me.”I can see why. It was pure-white rage made manifest inside my mate. My touch calmed her, but I have a feeling if I weren’t there, it would have exploded out of her like a nuclear bomb. “Do you know?” she asks. “What that was?”I shake my head. “Some kind of magic. It might be temporary, or it may be something ne
Lyric“It’s late, Lyric,” Noah says almost absentmindedly, but I get his drift.He was gone the whole day, trying to figure out why the world went tits up, and I sat in this room doing exactly nothing.Even immortal Lycans need sleep.I reluctantly lift my head and get up, stretching like a cat and
NoahNothing could prepare me for what I’d feel when I united with my mate. My last mate, the one that will stay with me until the day I die. Until we die.Every atom of my being called out at me to mark her, to complete our bond, but I promised her I wouldn’t. Even when I dragged my teeth across h
NoahLyric looks a little out of it. Her eyes are bleary and when she stops she keeps swaying like a branch in the wind. She looks at me, but her eyes aren’t focused on me.“I gave her something,” Philip explains with an apologetic little grin, “to help with the pain.”“Did it work?”The healer giv
LyricI wake slowly, the transition from unconsciousness to awareness a smooth, gentle ascent rather than a sharp jolt. The first thing I register is the deep, luxurious quiet, broken only by the soft, rhythmic hum. It’s probably just the heating, because the room is comfortably warm, but it feels







