MasukAurelia's POVKaelen came into the library with a letter crumpled in his fist and the expression of a man who had read something twice hoping it would change and it hadn't.We were all there, Rylan with a book he wasn't reading, Torin sharpening a blade he'd already sharpened, me on the window seat doing nothing productive. Kaelen dropped into the chair across from the table and put the crumpled letter on it without flattening it."A contact inside the pack house sent this," he said, his voice stripped down to its bones. "Apparently kade is building a case.Gathering evidence, securing witnesses." He looked at all of us.“What's the case about and who's it against?” Torin asked. "The charge is entering Drakos without Alpha sanction. By ancient pack law, that's treason. Do I need to say who it's against?” Kaelen said, turning to face Torin. Probably trying to see his expression move from curiosity to fury. I stared at him."Tf? We saved the land," I said, my voice coming out flat wit
Kade's POVLyra was in the main hall when we rode through the gates, which meant someone had told her we were coming and she'd had time to arrange herself into the specific posture she used when she wanted answers and had decided patience wasn't going to be her approach.Arms crossed. Spine straight. Eyes moving between me and Aldric. "You look terrible," she said, when I got close enough."Thank you, Lyra," I said, handing my reins off without breaking stride. “You're always a comfort.""What happened in Drakos." Not a question. I stopped and looked at her. "The corruption is sealed," I said. "The triplets were useful. We came back." I moved toward the study. "That's what happened."She fell into step beside me, which I'd expected. "That's not what happened," she said. "That's just a summary with most of it removed.""It's what you're getting tonight," I said, my shoulder throbbing with every step in a way that made keeping my voice even a minor achievement. "I'm tired, Lyra. You o
Aurelia's POVA month out of Drakos and the world had decided to cooperate.The grass came back first, thick and green and aggressively alive, then the trees, small pale buds pushing out along the bare branches until the whole treeline looked like it was done hiding n The stream behind the mansion ran clear enough that I could see the bottom of it, which sounds ordinary but after everything? It wasn't, not after what it had looked like a month ago.I woke up to birds doing their normal, irritating, beautiful thing in the trees outside my window every morning.I had never been so glad to be annoyed by birds in my life.Training with Rylan had become a different thing than it used to be.The shift came fast now, no reaching for it, no fighting the seam of it. My wolf met me at the door every time, coat on. My claws extended on command. I could hold the wolf form for a full hour without slipping, which Kaelen had noted in his notebook along the days. The spirit wolf, however, had her o
Kade's POVTwo days of not being in a collapsing ruin did wonders for a person's outlook.My ribs still had opinions about the wraith throwing me into a wall, and my shoulder had developed a throbbing that arrived every morning like an unwanted visitor who'd decided to stay. But I was alive, which put me ahead of where the night in that chamber had seemed to be taking things.I walked to the edge of the settlement on the second morning with a cup of something the innkeeper called tea and looked at the ground.Grass. Thin, pale, but pushing up through the grey soil in small, scattered clusters, like something that had been holding its breath and had finally decided to try again. The residue on the settlement walls had flaked away overnight, leaving faint dark outlines of where it had been. The air smelled of damp earth and something underneath it, green and faint, the smell of nature trying to self revive itself. I stood there for a while and drank my tea and looked at the grass.We h
Aurelia's POVThe wraith was winning and it knew it, which made it worse.Aldric's magic sputtered out like a wet candle. Rylan hit the pillar hard enough that the sound of it went through my chest, and he didn't get up. Torin went down next, blood running dark from his temple, his blade skidding across the stone away from his hand. Kade was on one knee, his burning sword doing exactly nothing, his face the colour of old ash.The wraith turned toward me.It didn't have a face. But whatever it had instead was arranged in a way that communicated satisfaction, which I found deeply offensive given the circumstances.My wolf stopped pacing.[Let me lead.] Her voice arrived low and certain, stripped of everything except the fact of it. [Stop fighting me. Let me lead.]I had been fighting her for weeks. The shift, the loss of control, the fear of what happened when she moved faster than I could think. Even though I've gotten better at controlling myself during shifts, the fear still lingered
Kade's POVFor approximately thirty seconds, I thought we had it.The blades burned, Aldric's magic held, the wraith pressed back against the far wall like something that had run out of room, and I felt… for the first time since we'd walked into these ruins, something that could reasonably be called hope.I should have known better. Hope in Drakos was just stupidity with better posture.The residue mass convulsed.It split open down the center, a wet, tearing sound that had no business coming from something that wasn't alive, and the wraith came out of it like pressure finding a crack, larger, faster, its form more solid than it had been, edges defined in a way they hadn't been sixty seconds ago.My men went first. I watched two of them hit the walls hard enough that they didn't immediately get back up. The scarred woman took a glancing blow that sent her skidding across the stone floor on her side, and even she stayed down for a moment, which told me everything about the force of it
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-TWO.AURELIA’S POV.I jerked awake with a start, a violent shudder racked through my body as I gasped for air as if my lungs had been blocked. A scream was lodged at the back of my throat but it never made it past my lips as I glanced in panic. For one dizzy second, my brain was blan







