LOGINRiley POV Power does not arrive gently. It doesn’t knock. It doesn’t ask if now is a good time, or whether you’re emotionally prepared, or whether your lower back already feels like it has filed legal complaints against the rest of your body. Power comes like weather. Like birth. Like teeth. It tore through me from the inside. Not pain. Not exactly. Pain is a language the body understands. This was older than language. A pressure under my ribs. A heat behind my eyes. A silver-gold pulse moving through my blood like something had opened a door inside me and forgotten to warn the person living there. Me. I was the person living there. Allegedly. My knees hit the ground. Lumi screamed my name. Kael moved— fast. Too fast. One second he was in front of me, between me and Elora’s smiling nightmares, and the next he was at my side, one hand hovering over my shoulder like he didn’t know if he had the right to touch me anymore. Good. At least one of us was learning. “Ril
Kael POV The first thing I understand— is that this is not an accident. Not a patrol gone wrong. Not a delayed consequence of bad orders. This is deliberate. Targeted. Chosen. The air shifts. Magic. Not the crude kind the court pretends to understand. Not the controlled, sanctioned rituals Elora performs in well-lit rooms with witnesses and measured breath. This is older. Sharper. Hungry. The figures step fully into the clearing. Three of them. No— five. They don’t move like soldiers. They don’t move like wolves. They move like something wearing both skins badly and not caring who notices. Their eyes find me. Not Riley. Not the wolves. Me. “Found you,” one of them repeats. Soft. Pleasant. Like this is a conversation. Like I am not already calculating how many of them I can kill before something goes wrong. The lycan rises. Not violently. Purposefully. It knows. Before I do. What this is. “Elora,” I say. Not a question. The one in front tilts his
Riley POV The first thing I register— is not the blade. It’s Kael’s face. Because apparently, even with cold steel pressed to my throat and a very real possibility that my life is about to end in a forest that smells like smoke and bad decisions— my priorities are still questionable. He looks— wrong. Not in the way he did before. Not the controlled monster. Not the King wrapped in silence and sharpened edges. This is something else. This is a man who just realized the fire he started has a name. And it’s mine. “Don’t move.” The soldier behind me presses the blade harder. Like I needed the reminder. Like I wasn’t already extremely aware of my current life choices. “Wow,” I mutter, because sarcasm is the only thing keeping me from screaming, “you guys really commit to the drama.” Lumi hisses somewhere to my left. “Riley.” “Not now,” I whisper. “I’m negotiating with my imminent death.” Kael takes a step forward. The entire line of soldiers tenses. Weapons lift. For
Kael POV The first sign something was wrong— was the silence. Not the absence of sound. The wrong kind of silence. The kind that settles after a scream has already happened and the world is still deciding if it should acknowledge it. I felt it before the report arrived. Before the guards shifted. Before the messengers started running instead of walking. The lycan lifted its head. Not curious. Alert. “Your Majesty—” The doors opened too fast. Too wide. No ceremony. No announcement. No rhythm. A soldier stumbled in, breath ragged, blood on his sleeve that wasn’t entirely his own. I didn’t turn immediately. Because kings turn for control. Men turn for truth. I was still deciding which one I was. “Say it,” I said. He swallowed hard. “The eastern patrols—” My jaw tightened. Of course. “The ones you countermanded,” he continued, voice shaking. “They moved anyway.” Of course they did. “They found a group in the northern sectors. Large.
Riley POV The third rule of surviving long enough to become a problem: Nothing that finds you in the forest is ever neutral. Not footsteps. Not silence. And definitely not a letter sealed with a name you taught yourself to forget. We were moving at dawn. Not because it was safe—nothing was safe anymore—but because dawn lies. It makes things look softer. Less intentional. Like the world might still be reasonable if you squint hard enough. I didn’t believe in reasonable. But I used the light anyway. “North ridge splits in two,” Adara said, walking beside me. “Left path dips toward water. Right climbs. Slower. More exposed.” “Climb,” I said. Lumi didn’t even ask why. She knew. Water meant scent trails. Meant tracks. Meant predictable. Climbing hurt. Which made it correct. The baby shifted as if it agreed—sharp, insistent. “Yeah, I know,” I muttered. “We’re doing something stupid again. Try to enjoy the view.” Fenris, two steps ahead, glanced back. “Yo
Kael POVThe report arrived at four in the morning, which was either fate or a very specific kind of cruelty.I read it standing. Some information doesn't deserve the dignity of a chair.Unbound gathering, northeast sector. Estimated thirty to forty individuals. Organized movement. Defensive pattern. No offensive action recorded.The group identifies as "The Threshold."Their banner carries a name: Lumira.I set the paper down.The lycan recognized the word before my brain finished decoding it. That particular animal intelligence — the kind that lives below thought, below reason, below every civilized layer I'd spent years building on top of it — sat up straight and went very, very still.Lumira.Lumi. Riley.Two names woven together like the separation had never happened.Like she'd taken the people she loved and made them into a declaration.I crossed to the window. Dawn was doing its best out there — grey, cold, honest in the specific way that early mornings are honest, without the
Kings do not do folly.That is what my tutors told me. That is what my generals expect. That is the doctrine I have worn like armor all my life: decisions measured, cruelty dispensed in clean lines, mercy rationed like a drink you are allowed only when you have earned dying for it.Last night broke
Sleep was not an option. Not after that. Not after the King of Lycans himself had slunk into my room in the middle of the night, shadow and regret wrapped up in a cloak, whispering words he probably wanted to chew back down his throat the second they left. Kael. Apologizing. Okay, not in so man
Kael point of view : I should not have gone to her room. Twice now. Kings do not linger in shadows, watching prisoners breathe. Kings do not stand at the edge of a rogue’s bed, torn between wrath and hunger. Kings do not bend. And yet, I nearly did. When I leaned down, when her breath tangled
By the time the guards shoved me back into my chamber, I was leaking from at least three new holes and limping like a one-legged pirate. My ribs hummed like broken bells, and my left eye was swelling into the kind of bruise that could win contests. I collapsed onto the bed. It groaned. I groaned l







