LOGINAURORA'S POV"You must be the ambassador everyone's talking about."I look up from my documents to find a man I haven't met yet standing at the edge of the garden, dark-haired, sharply dressed, with an easy smile that doesn't quite match the calculating look underneath it. He carries himself like someone used to being watched and enjoying it."That depends what they're saying," I reply."Mostly that you held your ground against half the court at dinner without breaking a sweat. That's rare, for a Council delegate." He crosses the garden and takes the seat Kade vacated less than an hour ago, uninvited but not unwelcome, exactly. "Draven Ashveil. Kade's cousin."Something in my chest goes carefully alert. I remember the name from my briefing files — a noble with a claim to the throne that never materialized, close enough to Kade's inner circle to matter, distant enough to be worth watching."Aurora Reed-Metcalfe.""I know who you are." His smile widens slightly. "Everyone in this fortr
KADE'S POVI tell myself I was just passing through that corridor.It's not entirely a lie. I do have business in that wing most evenings, checking in with the night guard rotation before I retire. But I also know, if I'm honest with myself, that some part of me had been keeping track of exactly where Aurora's dinner conversation ended and exactly how long it would take her to walk back to the guest wing, and that's not the kind of awareness a man develops by accident."You didn't have to intervene," Rhys says the next morning, dropping into the chair across from me in the war room. "Bram runs his mouth. He always has. He wouldn't have actually touched her.""He was threatening a Council delegate under our roof.""He was grieving loudly at a wolf who happened to be standing nearby. There's a difference, and you know it." Rhys studies me over his tea. "You didn't intervene last month when Lady Corwin cornered the trade envoy from the coastal territories over tariffs. You let that play
AURORA'S POVThe dinner is worse than I expected, and I'd expected it to be bad.The great hall is packed with Ashveil nobility, long tables lit by torches instead of the sterile lighting I'm used to in Council chambers, and every single person in the room watches me the way you'd watch something that wandered in off the road and might be dangerous."You're doing great," Kai murmurs beside me, not remotely convincingly."I can feel them staring.""They're definitely staring.""That's not helpful.""I'm not here to be helpful. I'm here for moral support and free food." He steals a roll off my plate, entirely unbothered by the hostile atmosphere in a way I deeply envy. "Also that guy at the end of the table has been glaring at you since we sat down. Might want to address that before he starts something."I follow his gaze to a broad-shouldered Lycan noble near the head of the table, arms crossed, expression somewhere between contempt and open challenge. When he catches me looking, he d
KADE'S POV"You know her," Rhys says. It isn't a question."I know of her. Same as you do." I don't look up from the map spread across the table, tracing a border line that doesn't need tracing. "Daughter of the two people who built the system we've spent twenty years refusing to join.""That's not what I asked.""It's what I'm answering."Rhys doesn't move, doesn't push, just stands there with his arms crossed, watching me with the particular kind of patience that's always managed to unravel me faster than any direct accusation ever could. We grew up together. He knows exactly how long I can hold a lie before it cracks."Kade.""Drop it, Rhys.""I would, if your face hadn't done something very specific the second she walked into that summit hall." He tilts his head. "You went still. You never go still. Not for Council delegates, not for hostile nobles, not for anyone.""I was surprised.""By what?"I don't answer. The silence stretches long enough that Rhys's expression shifts from
AURORA'S POVAshveil territory doesn't look like I expected.I'd pictured something bleak, given everything I'd read in the briefing files... a court built on refusal, on twenty years of turning down every hand my parents ever offered. Instead the road winds through forest so dense the canopy blots out the sky, and when it finally opens, the fortress rising on the far ridge looks less like a stronghold and more like something grown out of the mountain itself, all dark stone and sharp lines softened by moss and ivy."It's beautiful," I say, before I can stop myself."Don't let the King hear you say that," Kai murmurs. "Might ruin his whole reputation."The summit hall is smaller than I expected too... a long room with a carved table running its length, windows open to the mountain air instead of sealed behind glass like every Council chamber I've ever sat in. Elder Miriam's assistant briefs us one final time in the corridor outside, reminding me of protocol, of the delicate history be
Chapter 3 AURORA'S POVThree weeks before the transport, before the briefing folders and my parents' matching worried faces, there's a festival, and a night I still haven't told anyone the full truth about.I think about it now, watching the territory blur past the window as Kai reviews logistics beside me, because it's easier than thinking about what's waiting for us in Ashveil. So I let myself go back to it, the last night I had before all of this became real.The Unity Festival had been going for six hours and I'd shaken what felt like four hundred hands."You're doing the smile again," Kai had said, appearing at my elbow with two drinks. He'd handed me one without asking if I wanted it, which was fair, because I did."What smile?""The one that says you're two seconds from setting something on fire.""I don't have a smile like that.""You absolutely do. Mom has the same one." He'd grinned. "Go take a break. I'll cover for you."I'd slipped away before anyone could catch my sleev
KELVIN'S POV I sit in the back booth gulping my third whiskey, Derek was getting late. He is always late, just Likes to make people wait. Likes the power it gives him.Nonsense I hate him. Hate his cold eyes. Hate the way he talks about killing like discussing the weather. Hate that my father tr
ADRIAN'S POV I have spent days watching her move through my space. Days listening to her breathe in the room next to mine. Days pretending I can keep my hands to myself.I am failing.Claim her. Mark her. Make her understand she belongs to us.Kael has not stopped demanding since the moment she a
ADRIAN'S POV I kissed her because I could not not kiss her. Because the need was so strong it overrode everything else. Because she was right there looking at me like maybe she wanted this too.She kissed me back. Hard. Desperate. Like she needed it as much as I did.More. We need more. Take her u
CHAPTER 19 KELVIN'S POV Vanessa does not talk to me unless she has to.Three weeks married and we have nothing to say to each other. She sleeps on her side of the bed. I sleep on mine. We eat breakfast in silence. Pass each other in the hallway like strangers.This is what my father wanted. A po







