登入Aurelia's POVThe daylight hit like a slap and I didn't have time to blink through it.Horses. Four of them, already saddled, already tied to the post at the side entrance. I stopped for half a second, just long enough to take it in, I looked at Kaelen."You planned for this," I said, already moving toward the nearest one.He didn't look at me, fingers working at the reins quick, "I plan for everything," he said. "Mount up rather than asking questions.”We mounted and rode.The courtyard stone gave way to dirt that gave way to the open road, and the wind came in fast and cold and I pressed low over the horse's neck and let the animal do what it was built for. My fingers tightened in its mane. I stopped thinking and just moved with it.Behind us, the shouting started.I glanced back, I couldn't help it and caught the first blur of movement at the gates before Rylan's voice cut through the wind beside me."Don't look back, it slows you down.""I'm gauging the distance …”"Ten guards, m
Aurelia's POVThe guards moved the way guards moved when they'd been told to move, with blunt and committed energy. Rylan stepped forward to meet the first one, his voice cutting across the chamber. "You'll regret this decision." He said it directly to Kade, not to the guard, his eyes finding the head of the table over the approaching bodies. "Whatever you think you're building here, you'll regret it.""Cold comfort from a cell," Torin said, coming up on Rylan's right, his voice low and carrying no heat whatsoever, which somehow made it land harder.Kade's face did something then, a brief, involuntary tightening that he got back under control in the time it takes to blink, but I was watching and I saw it.Before he could answer, one of the elders at the far end of the table was on his feet, his face the colour of a man whose blood pressure had been making poor decisions. "They dare threaten the Alpha!" His voice cracked with it. "After breaking sacred law, after lying to this counci
Aurelia's POVThe chamber was already full when we walked in, which meant everyone had a clear view of us doing it.Every head turned. The murmuring didn't stop, it just changed pitch, the way a room sounds when its topic has walked through the door. I kept my eyes forward and my chin level and my hands relaxed at my sides, which took more effort than any of the training had. I honestly didn't think I'd be straining this much to remain composed. Kade sat at the head of the long table looking like a man who had arranged every detail of his morning and was satisfied with how it was coming together. Aldric stood at his left shoulder with his arms folded, his face doing its usual impression of a wall. Giving nothing away. We took the seats near the back. I sat between Rylan and Kaelen, Torin on Rylan's other side. Under the table, my hands found each other and stayed there.Kade let the noise settle on its own, which told me he was in no hurry."Thank you all for coming," he said, his v
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-OneKade's POVSleep had decided it wasn't coming, which I accepted around the second hour of lying in the dark with nothing in sight. The halls of the pack house at this hour had their own thing to them, the torches burned low and far apart, the stone cold underfoot. I walked around without a destination in mind which wasn't something I did often enough to be comfortable at it.I heard them before I saw them.Near the garden corridor, voices, speaking in low tones, the cadence of a conversation that didn't want to be overheard. I slowed down without deciding to. Pressed back against the wall at the corner and turned to check who it was. Lyra. And Corvus, leaning toward her slightly, his grey head bent, his hands moving in the quiet emphatic way of someone making a point they needed the other person to receive correctly.I couldn't make out the words. The distance was too far to get anything, the stone eating the sound before it could get to where I
Aurelia's POVThe week moved slowly, the way it does when you're waiting for something and all of a sudden time feels slower than normal. Every morning I came downstairs expecting something. A letter, a rider, news through Kaelen's contacts inside the pack house. Every morning there was nothing, and the nothing came with tension and silence that couldn't be easily shrugged off with a couple of training sessions. Kaelen sent messages. Nobody answered. His contacts had gone quiet, and it was never a good thing whenever they went ghodt.The letter came on the seventh day.Kade's seal. Formal, clean, the wax pressed with precision that said someone had taken their time with it.Kaelen read it aloud in the living room, his voice flat and even, apparently we're being invited to the council meeting. Not the usual session, an expanded one, outside pack leaders invited, more names than any standard weekly gathering warranted.Tomorrow.The letter sat on the table between us when he finished.
Kade's POVThe fire had burned down to something that was more suggestion than heat, and I hadn't called for it to be restocked.The warrant sat on the desk in front of me, Aldric's careful handwriting filling the middle third of the page. I'd been looking at it for twenty minutes without picking it up.Aldric stood at the window with his hands behind his back, watching the sky do what it did at this hour, darken by degrees, the last grey light pulling back from the treeline."I want to issue it," I said."I know," Aldric said, without turning."Then say what you want to say about why I shouldn't, because I know you have that in mind."He turned from the window and looked at me. "The triplets have had time to build since Drakos," he said. "Corvus is already uneasy, we know that from the council meeting. There may be others. A public arrest, handled wrong, could fracture the pack along lines you haven't fully mapped yet.""Fracture it how?" I asked. "If enough of the elders see the ar
Aurelia's POV.I couldn't move.The tray was still in my hands, heavy and trembling slightly as I stared up at the stranger with ocean-blue eyes who had just said my name like he knew me. Like he had always known me."I'm sorry," I said carefully, "do I know you?"A small smile touched his lips. It
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.LYRA’S POV.I didn’t bother knocking, I just shoved the door to my father’s study open and slammed it behind me so hard, it rattled on its hinges like it was going to fall off. My father was seated behind his desk, but he wasn’t working. He was just sitting there, staring at not
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.RYLAN’S POV.“I was at the southern ridge yesterday, saw three ferals cross the riverbed and there wasn’t a single guard around to stop them. This isn’t a joke anymore, they were hunting in our territory.” Kealen growled, aggressively stabbing at his food with his fork.We were
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.AURELIA’S POV.Thick darkness enveloped me instantly. The large curtains hanging over the window had been drawn tight but a silver of moonlight was somehow pouring in from a crack between the curtains, lighting up the room just a little bit. The moon light cut across the large







