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Chapter 37 — The Night the Palace Locked Its Doors
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2026-01-03 06:00:18The palace doesn’t grieve in public. It files. It escorts. It “debriefs.”
By dusk, the garden has been scrubbed so hard it smells like lemon and denial. The broken hedges are roped off. The blood is gone from the stone paths like it never belonged there. But I can still smell it on people. Fear has a scent. So does shock. They send the remaining girls back to their quarters in small groups with double escorts, as if separating us is safer than letting us huddle together like pack. Guards line every corridor. Every door has a witness. Tessa’s door has two. When we reach her room, a guard steps forward and positions himself beside the frame like a statue with a heartbeat. “Protocol,” he says, stiff. Tessa stares at him as if he’s another kind of cage. I squeeze her hand once before she goes inside. “You’re not alone,” I tell her. Her eyes shine. “My mate is a rogue, what did I do to the moon gode
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The Lullaby of Wolfbane Chapter 51 — A Better Lie
Adrian sleeps like he’s fighting even in dreams. His brow keeps tightening, his hand twitching like it’s still cuffed, like silver is still biting into his wrists. Melody has him stretched out on the clinic bed with clean bandages wrapped around burns and bruises, an IV dripping fluids into his arm because she refused, flatly refused, to let him “walk it off.”I sit beside him anyway. I keep his ring on a chain around my neck now, tucked under my shirt where my pulse can warm it. The metal is cold against my skin, but it’s mine again, not a taunt on a basement floor.My bond is calmer with him this close, but it isn’t soft. It’s furious. Protective. Coiled. I smooth my fingers through the hair at his temple, careful around the cut above his brow. He startles awake.Not dramatically, no gasp, no flailing. Just a sudden, sharp inhale and eyes snapping open like a blade leaving a sheath. His gaze finds me instantly.“Abby,” he rasps.“I’m he
The Lullaby of Wolfbane Chapter 50 — The Door That Finally Opens
The clinic clock doesn’t tick like a normal clock. It ticks like a sentence being carried out.I sit on the edge of Melody’s exam table with my hands clenched so tightly my nails cut into my palms. Mary is still strapped to the chair in the corner, silent now, watching me with the kind of hatred that used to be enough to make me shrink.Not tonight. Tonight, the only thing I can see is midnight sliding closer.Melody moves around the room in tight, efficient circles, checking drawers, arranging sterile cloths, laying out instruments like she’s preparing for surgery.“Stop pacing,” I say hoarsely.“I’m not pacing,” she snaps, then catches herself and exhales. “I’m preparing.”My bond pulls east like a hook under my ribs. Alive. Far. Alive. Far. Then, another spike. Hot pain floods my sternum so suddenly I gasp and fold forward, one hand flying to my chest like I can hold the bond in place by force.Melody is at my side in
The Lullaby of Wolfbane Chapter 49 — The Prince Who Lied Best
The pain through the bond hits again, less like a knife, more like a pulse of electric heat straight under my sternum. I gasp and grab the edge of Melody’s desk.Lia’s hand is on my back immediately. “Abby. Breathe.”Melody doesn’t waste time asking if I’m okay. She’s already moving, two fingers at my wrist, eyes narrowing as she tracks my pulse like it’s a monitor.“That wasn’t panic,” I choke out.Melody’s jaw tightens. “No. It wasn’t.”My throat burns. “They hurt him.”Logan’s face turns to stone. Nate goes still in a way that makes him look older, like something finally snapped into place inside him and it isn’t going back.“We move,” I say.Logan’s voice is iron. “We move smart.”Before I can argue, Melody is already shoving her quarantine orders into a folder and handing it to one of her clinic guards.“Double the Queen’s door,” she orders. “No one enters without my signature and the Prin
The Lullaby of Wolfbane Chapter 48 — Quarantine
The plan looks clean on paper. In real life, it feels like trying to hold back a flood with my bare hands.We crowd into Melody’s office, me, Melody, Lia, Logan, and now Nate, shoulders too close, voices kept low, every word chosen like it might be overheard through the walls.Adrian’s ring sits on Melody’s desk in a sealed evidence pouch. Even trapped in plastic, it smells like him. My wolf presses against my ribs, restless and furious, and the bond pulls east like a hooked chain.Melody taps her pen against a list of names Nate provided, then looks up at him. “You’re certain?”Nate doesn’t blink. “Certain enough to bet my throat.”Logan’s gaze stays hard on Nate, like he’s still deciding whether to trust him. “No betting. We verify.”“We verify by tightening access,” Melody says, decisive. “Starting now.”She slides a document across the desk, formal, stamped, clinic authority. The words are simple and brutal:
The Lullaby of Wolfbane Chapter 47 — The Prince Who Stayed
By the time we slip back into the palace through the service entrance, the cold has settled into my bones like it intends to live there. I keep Adrian’s ring clenched in my fist so tightly the edges bite my skin. I need the pain. It keeps me from floating away into shock. Logan doesn’t speak as we move, just stalks forward like fury given legs. Lia stays at my shoulder, steady and watchful, her calm so practiced it feels like a weapon. We don't go to the King. We go to Melody. Because the last thing we can afford right now is a roar that alerts every hidden ear in the palace that we’re moving. Melody takes one look at our faces and doesn’t bother asking for pleasantries. “What happened?” she demands, already stepping toward us. Logan’s voice is clipped, controlled with effort. “They moved him. Before we got there.” My bond pulses in my chest, answering like a cruel echo: alive, alive, alive, fa
The Lullaby of Wolfbane Chapter 46 — The Empty Chains
Night makes the capital quieter, but it doesn’t make it safer.It just hides the teeth. Lia walks beside me like we’re on an evening stroll, cloak neat, posture composed, face calm enough to fool any passing eyes. But her fingers are close to the knife at her hip, and I can feel the tension coiled under her elegance. My bond pulls forward. Not straight, never straight in this city of stone and turns but insistent, like a compass needle that keeps snapping back to one direction no matter how many walls try to confuse it. Adrian is close. Close enough that my wolf starts to pace inside me. We cut into a narrow alley where the buildings lean together like conspirators. A shadow detaches itself from the darkness ahead and becomes Logan. He isn’t dressed like a prince tonight. No crest. No bright royal cloak. Just dark clothes and quiet violence in his eyes. Behind him: four men, all carrying themselves with the stillness of t
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