로그인RivenThe name hit the clearing making all of us freeze. Lyra.My breath caught hard in my throat, a sudden, violent knot forming behind my ribs. The rain didn't feel cold anymore; it felt like grease sliding over my skin. My boots squelched in the blood-soaked muck as I stared down the slope.Jax had frozen twenty yards away, his axe hanging limp at his side, his chest heaving like a broken bellows. Kade’s back was rigid, every muscle in the bastard's frame coiled tight enough to snap. But neither of them was looking at the assassins anymore. Their eyes—and mine—were locked entirely on her.Catherine stood amid the mud and the carnage, her breath coming in ragged, steaming gasps. And then, the air around her began to twist.It wasn't a trick of the rain. The space outlining her body started to ripple, blurring at the edges like heat rising off a summer road. The heavy, mud-caked cloak she wore began to shred into ash, dissolving into black smoke that whipped away in the storm. T
KadeRain kept coming down like the sky itself wanted us dead. It turned the floor into a sucking black soup that tried to steal my boots with every step. I had mud climbing up my calves. Cold water ran under my collar despite the heavy cloak. I didn’t give a shit. My eyes stayed locked on the woman ten feet away.Catherine crouched low in the muck, her dagger still riding her thigh, every line of her body coiled and ready. Rain plastered her hair to her skull while her eyes never left mine. I could almost taste the wolf under her skin—it was restless, furious, half a breath from lunging for my throat.I kept my hands empty. Let her see it and wonder why.“I found a map,” I said. The words cut through the downpour. “It is older than the high courts want anyone to remember. Rogue kingdom shit. The kind they burned the records for.”Her lip curled up but no words left her mouth yet. Just that cold, murderous stillness.“It marks something buried under this valley. Something that belon
LyraThe rain didn't wash the stench away; it just hammered it into the mud until the earth itself smelled of old copper and rot.My boots sank two inches into the soil with every shift of my weight. My chest heaved, pulling in damp air that tasted like sulfur and iron. Around us, the forest was far too quiet. The birds had given up hours ago, driven deep into the roots of ancient oaks by the relentless storm. Nothing moved except the grey, heavy sheets of water sliding down the trunks."Split up," I whispered, the words barely clearing my teeth.Jax’s head snapped toward me, water dripping from his chin in a steady, maddening rhythm. His grip on his axe handle was white-knuckled—the leather wrapping slick against his palm."Are you out of your goddamn mind? We need to stick together and break through their line together. You want to divide us right in front of their men?""I want us alive," I snapped back, keeping my voice low enough to drown in the downpour. My fingernails dug in
LyraThe ridge bit into my palms as I hauled myself the last few feet. Rain still sheeted down, turning the rock slick under my boots. My lungs burned. Every muscle in my legs screamed from the forced march, but I didn’t slow until the trees thinned and the valley opened beneath us.There it was.Our territory. The low cluster of cabins half-hidden by the tree line. The training field. The longhouse where the younger ones slept. Smoke should have been rising from the cook fires by now. Instead, the whole place sat too quiet, too still, like it was holding its breath.I went still with it.Jax dropped into a crouch beside me, water streaming off his jaw. “Fuck. They’re already…..”“Don’t.” The word came out flat. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the shape of the valley.Kade’s men weren’t charging the gates. They weren’t setting fires or dragging people out. They ringed the territory in a wide, patient arc—dark figures moving between the trees, banners limp in
RivenThe candle on the desk had burned down to a stub, wax pooling like old blood across the grain. I hadn’t moved in hours. The report Kane dropped in front of me sat open, edges soft from how many times I’d flipped the same goddamn pages.A girl who was sixteen years old from the Bloodmoon pack. She suddenly went feral one night, tore through half the pack, then vanished into the wilds. The official record stated she died out there as rogues finished what the moon-madness started. There was no body recovered and the case was closed early this year. Except the pages didn’t line up. Ink changed halfway down the third sheet—different pressure, different slant. Whole paragraphs blacked out with a heavy hand. Dates that jumped like someone had ripped months out of the calendar and dared anyone to notice.I dragged a thumb across one of the redacted blocks. The paper underneath was thinner. Someone had sliced the original text out and glued a blank strip over the wound.Kane stood by
LyraThe stranger’s words still hung in the air like smoke after a fire.My pulse slammed against my throat hard enough that I could taste it. Jax’s bulky body stayed between me and the man who called himself Lucien, but I stepped around him anyway. My dagger stayed low, point aimed at the soft place under Lucien’s ribs.“How the fuck do you know that name?”The smirk on his face didn’t move. Rain dripped from the leaves above us and traced cold lines down the back of my neck. Nyx shifted under my skin, restless, not snarling the way she did at every other threat. That alone made my teeth grind.Lucien’s eyes tracked the blade, then flicked back to mine. “Some things you have to dig up yourself, little wolf. I’m not here to hand you a map of your own head.”“Bullshit.” My voice came out raw. “You don’t get to walk out of the dark, say my name like you own it, and then play coy. Talk.”He tilted his head, studying me the way someone studies a locked door. “Kade’s battalion isn’t raci







