로그인Alaric's POV I was in the kitchen going over the evidence files when I heard Raven's voice from upstairs. It was not a normal voice. It was the kind of voice that makes you push your chair back before your brain has fully caught up. I was at the bottom of the stairs before she finished the sentence. "The baby," she said from the top of the stairs. "He's not in his room." I went past her and into the small room off the hallway. The crib was empty and the blanket was gone. The back door was slightly open and I stood there for exactly two seconds before I turned and said, "Stay here." I went out the back and across the field. I called the lead warrior on the perimeter and reported what had happened. He started moving immediately and I kept walking fast across the field, pulling up the tracking application my father's security team had installed on the device I carried. This was because three weeks ago, I had put a small tracker in the lining of the baby's primary blanket. The thick
Luella's POV I heard about the ceremony from my mother, who heard about it from one of her contacts in the pack. She came into my room, stood in the doorway, and said, "He announced it this afternoon." I was sitting on my bed. I looked at her and said, "What did you say?" "Dante announced a mating ceremony with Raven," she said. "One week from today at the pack hall." I stared at her, and she stared back. Neither of us said anything for a moment. Then I said, "He can't do that." "He already did," she said. She left after that and I sat on my bed for a long time. Now Dante was going to stand in a pack hall in a week to make Raven his mate, while I sat under pack arrest in my mother's house. I went to Jake the next morning through the same contact who had let him in to see me before. I sat across from him and said, "You have to help me stop this." Jake looked at me with that expression he always had, where you could never tell what he was thinking. Then he said, "What exactly d
Dante's POV Three days later, Raven walked out of that hospital through the east entrance and disappeared into neutral territory. I sat in my father's office and accepted that waiting for her to come around on her own was not going to work. She had Lord Thorne's warriors around that safe house and every time I sent someone to the perimeter, they were turned away. There was nothing I could do about it because Merrow lane was neutral ground and I had no authority there. Pushing further would create a diplomatic problem my father was already warning me about daily. So I stopped pushing in that direction and started thinking about a different angle. One that did not require her cooperation. My father was behind his desk when I came in. He looked up from whatever he was reading and said, "You have that look." "I have a plan," I said. "Sit down," he said. I sat and said, "I need to make the mating ceremony official and announce it publicly." He looked at me for a long moment. "You
Alaric's POV I had not slept properly since the night they walked me to the border and I was not going to pretend otherwise. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought about Raven in that hospital and my son in a room full of people who had no real reason to care about either of them, and that thought would not let me rest for longer than an hour at a time. My father had been working through his contacts since that first night. I had been building my own list alongside his, going through every warrior I had a real relationship with. It wasn't professional courtesy, but actual loyalty. The kind that held up when things got complicated. Men who understood what it meant to choose a side and stay on it. By the third day, I had a group of eleven men who had quietly confirmed they would follow my lead when the time came. I was on the phone with my father that morning when his contact inside the hospital passed word through that Raven was being discharged. She had arranged her own exit th
Raven's POV The doctor cleared me for discharge on the fourth day. I was ready before he finished telling me because I had been mentally packing since the morning Lord Thorne's message came through the nurse. Dante found out about the discharge before I could do anything with the information. He showed up that morning with a bag for me and one for the baby. He set them on the bed and started folding the newborn clothes he had brought over the past few days like it was already decided where I was going when I walked out of here. "I had your room prepared," he said. "My mother aired it out yesterday and we got a crib set up so you don't have to worry about any of that." "I didn't ask you to do that," I said. "I know, but I wanted to make sure everything was ready," he said. "The pack doctor can do your follow up appointments at the house so you don't have to travel far while you're still healing." I watched him fold a small white sleep suit and put it in the bag, then I said, "I
Raven's POV I spent most of the next morning watching the door and trying not to make it obvious, but every time footsteps came down the corridor, I looked up. Every time it wasn't the young nurse, I looked back down at my son and told myself to be patient. Dante came at ten, like he had the two mornings before. He brought coffee for himself, sat down, and talked to me for a while about the baby's feeding schedule and what the nurse had told him about my recovery progress. I let him talk because engaging with him took energy I didn't have to spare right now. He left before noon and about twenty minutes after that, the young nurse came in, but she didn't say anything straight away. She just checked my monitor and adjusted the IV. Then she leaned closer and said quietly, "He got the message." I felt something in my chest shift. "When." "This morning," she said. "My contact passed it through last night and Lord Thorne responded within the hour." "What did he say?" I said. She s
Raven's POV Friday morning, Luna Vera told me I had to attend the monthly pack gathering on Sunday. I tried to get out of it, but she insisted. "You're still part of this family," she said. "People need to see you're not hiding." After she left, I texted Alaric about it. He called immediately.
Raven's POV Thursday morning, I woke up exhausted. I had stayed up until midnight finishing a history paper, then woke up at five to walk Mrs. Chen's dog. After that, I had school, then tutoring sessions, then homework. My body was screaming at me to rest, but I couldn't afford to. At school, I c
Raven's POV Monday morning started badly and got worse. I woke up dizzy and nauseous. My back was killing me, and the baby was pressing on my bladder, making it hard to walk. But I forced myself to go to school because I had already missed too many days. "This is a mistake," Breeze said. "We sho
Raven's POV After Alpha Marcus dismissed us, I went to get some water. My hands were still shaking from the confrontation. Luella followed me to the refreshment table with Laura and Lana behind her. "Nice performance," she said. "But we both know those crystal test results are fake." "They're no







