INICIAR SESIÓNOlivia’s POVThe moon was high and full above the private training yard when Dorian decided I had rested long enoughI had spent the day inside the royal wing, listening to the rumors spread and hearing Cassian’s reports about Vanessa growing nervous, but by nightfall, the walls felt too close. The Celestial power inside me would no longer stay quiet. It pushed against my ribs with a restless heat, and when Dorian appeared at my door and said, “Come,” I did not argueHe led me through a side passage I barely remembered, down a short flight of stone steps, and into the private yard used by the royal family. High walls surrounded it, keeping out both noise and watching eyes. Moonlight covered the hard ground and the wooden posts used for training, while the quiet night held only the two of us“You have been holding it back too tightly,” Dorian said as he removed his cloak and placed it over one of the posts. His dark shirt showed the strength of his body and the pale scar across his che
Olivia’s POVThe first rumor was like one drop of ink falling into clear water.Three days after we arrived, I stood by the tall window in my room and watched the capital wake beneath the pale autumn sky. Below, the courtyards were already busy with messengers, nobles, and servants moving through the palace as if nothing had ever gone wrong. None of them knew that the Celestial Wolf they had once whispered about was alive and watching from above.That was about to change.Dorian entered without knocking. He had started doing that in the mornings, always pausing for a moment first, as if giving me time to decide whether I wanted the door between us closed. Today, I had left it open. He carried a folded piece of paper and wore the calm look of a man who had already thought through every possible result.“It is ready,” he said.I took the paper from him. The message was short and written to sound like simple gossip:*They say the Luna of Black Dynasty did not die in the silver cave. They
Olivia’s POVThe room they gave me had once been mine.Five years had not changed the tall windows that looked over the eastern gardens, the pale stone fireplace, or the wide bed covered with the soft gray sheets the royal family liked. A small fire burned in the fireplace, and one lamp glowed on the table beside it. The room smelled of lavender and old wood, just as it had when I was still a princess who believed love could change everything.I stood in the middle of the room and felt like a stranger in my own past.A door connected my room to Dorian’s. Cassian had chosen the rooms himself, keeping us close enough for safety but far enough apart to show that our relationship was still only a contract. I had nodded when he explained it and had even managed to stay calm, but now the palace had grown quiet, and the weight of the day pressed down on me. The door between us suddenly felt both too thin and too strong.I took off my heavy cloak and the dirty clothes beneath it. A simple sle
Olivia’s POVMy father held me for a long time, and I stayed in his arms, letting all the years I had spent away from home rush over me at once. He smelled the same—cedar, old books, and the faint metal scent of royal power that had always followed him. His heart beat steadily against my cheek, and for a moment, I was not the woman who had died in a silver cave or the Celestial Wolf who had fought her way back from the Goddess’s river; I was only a daughter who had finally come home.When he pulled away, his hands stayed on my shoulders, his thumbs brushing over my damp cloak as if he still needed to make sure I was real. His silver eyes, the same eyes that once made whole packs bow their heads, were filled with open emotion. I had expected anger, perhaps even the cold disappointment I remembered from the night I left, but instead, I saw the deep relief of a father who had already lost his child once and refused to lose her again.“You are thinner,” he said, his voice rough. “And your
Olivia’s POV The capital rose from the morning mist like a memory I had tried to bury. I had left these walls five years ago with a heart full of reckless devotion and a bracelet that held everything I was. I returned now as something else entirely—a woman who had died, a mother who had lost her child before she could hold him, a Celestial Wolf whose power stirred restlessly beneath skin that still remembered silver. The great spires of the royal city caught the early light and threw it back in sharp, familiar angles. Every tower, every banner, every distant sound of the waking court felt like a finger pressed against an old bruise. We entered through a lesser gate used by merchants and lesser envoys, the kind of entrance that did not demand fanfare or formal announcement. Cassian had arranged everything. False names. Plain cloaks. A story about distant cousins seeking audience on minor territorial matters. My silver hair was braided tightly and hidden beneath a dark hood that sh
Olivia’s POVThe journey toward the capital began in silence.We rode under the thinning cover of night, the three of us moving like ghosts along roads that had once belonged only to royal messengers and the dead. Cassian took the lead, silver hair hidden beneath a dark hood, every line of his body coiled with the protective tension of a brother who had already lost me once. Dexter—introduced to me only briefly as Dorian’s Beta—rode at the rear, a solid, weathered presence who spoke little and watched everything. And between them, close enough that I could feel the heat of his presence even through the cool pre-dawn air, rode Dorian.I kept my eyes fixed on the path ahead.It should have been simple. I had agreed to the contract. I had placed my hand in his beside the sacred river and spoken the words that bound us for revenge. Yet every time the moonlight caught the sharp angle of his jaw or the dark fall of his hair, my breath still stuttered. The face was the same. The same mouth t







