MasukThree months passed in a blur, and Blackstone Manor had a new name: Nightfall Valley.The territory took in ordinary people who could not shift, weak wolves, and anyone driven out by a violent mate with nowhere left to go. The old banquet hall became a school. The cells where I had been held were torn out entirely and rebuilt as a fully stocked dispensary. Every door could be locked from the inside. Every punishment imposed here had to be supported by a complete record of evidence, and anyone accused had the right to appeal and defend themselves.I never took over Silverpine. I only turned the property that had been taken from me into a home where nobody's dignity was measured by how strong they were.Nyx and I stopped keeping track of who was in charge of the body. When I was calming a child, I stayed in human form. When I was guarding the border, I shifted. Being gentle does not mean swallowing everything, and having fangs does not mean using them however you like.I kept the sealing
The wolfsbane spread out through the nursery tunnels, and the first to go down were the children and the wolfless, who could not shift and had no strength to spare.Viola mixed into the panicking crowd and shouted that the dark wolf had poisoned the air and the water. Several Elders immediately ordered the guards to set up silver crossbows and put me down first, before the poison fog could spread any further.The fumes seeped into wounds that had not finished healing, and the bone-tearing pain of dying in the cells swept through me again. Nyx's killing intent surged up my spine, aimed straight at Viola atop the Moon Tower.One leap and it would all have been over.But then the cries of frightened children rose from the thick fog.I turned and shifted into an enormous black wolf, raising a shadow barrier that swallowed the wolfsbane fog. Nyx was far bigger than I remembered. Her razor-sharp claws struck the ground, yet she avoided every small hand reaching out of the smoke. I carried th
Damian surrendered the Alpha's signet ring and came to see me alone.He blamed all of it on Viola's faked pregnancy, on the rescue she had claimed credit for, on the accusations from the Ashbourne family. He was willing to punish Viola, to give me the Luna's authority back, even to pray to the Moon Goddess for a new fated mate mark between us."I loved you," he said. "I was just buried under lies.""Then let us count the pieces of evidence you had right in front of you."I laid out every chance he had been given, one by one.The border message records could have been retrieved and checked. He chose not to. The pregnancy herb could have been tested. He chose not to. The requisition slip still bore its stamp, and he threw it into the fire himself. The silver wounds were plain on my body, and he told me to keep waiting. In the end, the mate bond carried my dying pain straight to him, and he decided I was feigning weakness to manipulate him."Viola's lies were only a door." I pushed the ha
Before the public trial opened, I woke the moonstone pendant with my own blood.The images Agatha had stored filled the whole temple. They showed me at six, shifted into a black wolf, guarding the nursery door, refusing to give an inch even with a silver spear through my shoulder. The scene changed to Agatha setting the seal and carrying me, memoryless, to the Ashbourne door.A young Garrick and Helena crowded around. Two small boys argued over who got to carry me on his back. Viola pressed a candy into my hand.Agatha's voice rang clearly through the hall, "She will believe she has no wolf, and she will not remember me. Do not dig into her past. Only treat her as well as you would your own child. If you are good to her, nothing terrible will ever come of her life."At the end, the images laid out the full terms of the seal.If the promise was kept, I would live out a quiet life as an ordinary wolfless woman. The one thing that could wake Nyx was this: taking the Ashbourne family into
Nobody in the temple made a sound.Damian stared at the spike wound in my chest that had not finished closing, and his first reaction was still an Alpha command. "Kneel. Let the healer examine you."The full force of his Alpha power came at me head-on.Nyx did not dodge and did not block. The force hit her the way a wave hits a mountain range at midnight, and it slammed straight back into him. Damian grunted, and in front of the whole pack his knee hit the ground hard, one hand braced on the stone of the altar.Countless times I had lifted my head and taken his orders. Now he found out for himself what it feels like to have someone else's will bend your knees for you.Viola shrieked, "Evelyn is dead! That thing standing there is a monster wearing her body!""Then let us start with my death."Corbin was brought to the front of the platform and read the death record aloud, shaking the whole time. The two guards followed him and testified that Viola had ordered the wolfsbane injected, had
Blood rushed back into my fingertips, and I opened my eyes in the Forsaken Pit, among the piled bones.Black moon markings stitched the fatal wound closed inch by inch. Rotting earth, old bones, and the sweet, metallic reek of wolfsbane filled my nose. No second voice spoke in my head, no separate person. Instead, every sensory memory of the eclipse night when I was six came flooding back: children crying, the agony of a silver spear piercing my shoulder, and the instinctive care with which I had lifted the baby in my jaws, keeping every fang safely clear.Nyx was never some monster out of the dark come to save me.Nyx was me.The memories the moonstone had held spread out through my blood. I saw that when Agatha laid the seal she had not done it out of disgust for me. She did it to fool the Elders who meant to kill a dark wolf pup. She gave me a chance at a safe life, and she also left me a way out that only opened after I died.She also took from me the right to know what I was.I wa







