ANMELDENTHIRD PERSON’S MULTIPLE POVKaidora was still deep in prayer when she spotted a wolf running toward the Lunar Temple.Fear moved through her chest but she kept her hands locked together. This prayer was the only thing she could offer Aurelian and Darius from here. She poured more into the flame and let it rise higher, not moving even as the wolf’s footsteps grew closer.Then a faint howl echoed inside the temple walls.The wolf stood at the entrance, blood matted into its fur, chest heaving.She raised an eyebrow.Then it collapsed and shifted back, the form dissolving into the body of her son lying on the floor.She abandoned the prayer immediately and moved to him as fast as her old legs allowed. She crouched beside him. His eyes were shut and his breathing was shallow but present.“Darius.” She said his name quietly, her lips trembling.She couldn’t carry him. So she pulled him by his arms across the floor until he lay on the cloth nearest to where she had been praying. She covered
THIRD PERSON’S MULTIPLE POV“You are not leaving this pack today.” Luna Morgan’s voice tore through the room.Alpha Lucien kept buttoning his shirt like she hadn’t spoken. Like she wasn’t standing right there in front of him, like the years between them meant nothing worth pausing for.She had not slept. Not for a single hour. She had spent the night turning it all over in her head, trying to find a way to pull him back from whatever edge he and the other alpha kings had been walking toward for twenty years. Trying to figure out how to protect Astarian from a father who didn’t know how to choose his son over his ambition.“Lucien.” She stepped closer. “You are not walking out of this palace today. And if you try, you’ll do it over my dead body.”He finally looked at her. “I have to leave.”“Why?”“We are close.” His voice carried the particular weight of a man who had been waiting too long for something. “I will not throw away years of work now. Not when we’re this close.”“Close to w
THIRD PERSON’S MULTIPLE POVAurelian stood still among the servants and felt himself coming apart quietly. The chanting hadn’t stopped. If anything, it was worse now, pressing into his skull and moving down through his limbs until his fingers had gone numb at the tips. His skin burned and itched beneath his uniform and he ran his fingers lightly over his arm, just barely, just enough to dull it without drawing attention.“Kaidora said nothing would happen to me. She said I was protected. So why does my body feel like it’s being pulled apart from the inside?”He kept his face forward and his breathing calm.What occupied him more than the discomfort was the door at the back of the hall. Darius had slipped through it minutes ago. Richard had followed shortly after. And since then, nothing. No sound. No signal. No way of knowing what was happening on the other side of that wall.He wanted to move. He couldn’t.One of Rowen’s followers broke from the formation and moved to whisper someth
THIRD PERSON’S MULTIPLE POVRowen moved to the center of the hall. His followers spread out around him, pouring ash across the floor in careful patterns before laying a white cloth at the center. A small iron stove was carried in and a fire was lit inside it. Rowen began feeding things into the flame, ingredients that produced no visible smoke but changed the air in a way that was difficult to name.When everything was in place, Rowen lowered himself onto the cloth and closed his eyes. His followers formed a chain around him, hands joined. Then the chanting began.It started low. Almost below hearing. Then it rose.The words had no language that anyone in the room recognized, but they pressed against the walls and against the chest and against something deeper than either.“The Omega will be drawn out by the chants,” Richard said quietly to Voss, his eyes moving carefully across the room. “It’s only a matter of time.”The chanting grew louder.Darius felt it first.It moved into his
THIRD PERSON’S MULTIPLE POVThe Pack Sentinels lined the servants into the ancestral hall, guiding them through in a single file. Clara walked side by side with Aurelian, her shoulder occasionally brushing his as the crowd compressed around them.As they passed before Alpha Kael and his sons, Aurelian tilted his head briefly and his eyes moved across the three heirs. Tavian smiled at him.Astarian held his composure, though something in his expression softened for just a second. Rhydian simply stared, his jaw set, looking like a man who had unfinished business and was unhappy about the interruption.The servants were positioned at the center of the hall. Aurelian’s gaze swept the room quietly, moving from face to face, searching for something familiar in the crowd of sentinels standing along the walls.Then his eyes found Richard.His hands folded sharply at his sides, anger rising fast through his chest. But before it could settle, a sentinel standing just behind Richard caught his
AURELIAN’S POV“Aurelian.” He called my name again, softer this time, his eyes still locked onto mine. “Please. I need an answer. Would you give me that chance you would give your mate?”It’s time to end this.“No.” I said.“No?” He repeated it like the word didn’t make sense to him.“I would not give you the chance I’d give my mate.” I held his gaze without flinching. “Because you rejected me. Whatever bond you think still exists between us, don’t speak of it again.”Something moved through his expression. Not hurt exactly. Something harder than that, something that looked more like a man who had walked into a wall he built himself.“Why are you so bold talking to me like this?” He asked.“Because whatever is happening between us is illegal under pack law.” I kept my voice even. “If word got out, I could be executed. Banished. And you—” I tilted my head slightly. “Could you handle the disgrace? In front of your father? In front of the elders?”His jaw tightened. “That logic makes no







