ログインJeremy's POVThe report from the mansion reached me before dawn, delivered by a messenger too winded to soften any of it.The assault had failed to secure its target. Kael had escaped capture. And Fred—one of my more reliable Watchers for longer than I cared to count—had turned his blade on one of his own in full view of soldiers and Watchers both.I didn't feel the surprise the messenger clearly expected me to feel. I'd watched loyalty erode all around me for months now. Selene first. Now Fred. A garden untended long enough eventually stopped being a garden at all."Anything else," I asked."No, my lord.""Then leave me."I visited Elias before I did anything else, some old, worn habit of using his suffering to steady my own resolve. Tonight I let the corruption go further than I usually allowed myself—not out of strategy, but out of something rawer, something closer to fury than I liked to examine too closely. I watched it take his voice from him entirely, the words he'd always
Matthew's POVThe quiet reached me before anything else did.I noticed it the way I noticed most things now—not with my ears first, but with whatever had been sharpening in me since the bond with Rebecca finished settling. A wrongness under my skin before my mind caught up to naming it. The eastern watchtower, which should have called its hour a few minutes back, hadn't.I was moving before I finished deciding to.The second tower was already dark by the time I reached the wall—not extinguished violently, just gone quiet, the two men who should have been posted there nowhere in sight. No blood. No struggle marks. Just absence, precise and deliberate, the same wrongness we'd walked into on the ridge weeks ago, except this time I understood exactly what silence like this usually meant before something worse followed it."Sound the alarm," I told the nearest guard, low. "Quietly, if you can manage it. I don't want them knowing we've noticed yet."He didn't manage it quietly enough.
Rohan's POVI found her in the healer's room after most of the mansion had gone quiet for the night, restocking shelves that didn't need restocking, the way she did when her hands needed something to do and her mind wasn't cooperating."You're still up," I said."So are you." She didn't turn around right away. "Camille's settled, if that's what you're here about. Sleeping, finally. I gave her something mild.""That's not what I'm here about."That got her attention. She set down the jar in her hands, careful, deliberate, and turned to face me properly, something in her expression bracing for whatever came next."We've been doing this a long time," I said, "without ever actually saying what it is.""Rohan—""I'm not asking you to define it tonight if you're not ready. I just—" I ran a hand through my hair, feeling less composed than I usually let myself feel in front of anyone. "I watched you today. With Camille. The way you sat with her without needing to fix anything, just let h
Rebecca's POVThe gate guard found me in the training yard, breathless in the particular way that meant the news wouldn't keep. "There's a woman at the gate," he said. "Says she knows you. Says her name's Camille."My whole chest went tight around the name before I'd even processed hearing it.I arrived at the gate quicker than I intended to, quicker than dignity would have let me, and there she was, thinner than I had thought, with her short dark hair grown out into an untrimmed mass of tangles. She turned her head at the sound of my feet, and froze."Cam.""You're alive." Her voice cracked on it. "They said you might be here. I didn't let myself believe it until I saw you."I bridged the gap and drew her to me, and for a minute it was pure relief—the comfort of having a body that I had known all my life, tangible and real, finally in my reach. She held onto me so tightly that it hurt, but I didn’t pull away, knowing that whatever it meant for her, I instinctively knew
Jeremy's POV Information, properly used, was worth more than an army. I'd built my entire reign on that principle, and tonight it was paying dividends I hadn't expected quite this soon. The report came through three separate channels before I trusted it enough to act on—Kael, the man Garrick had once broken, was the reason Garrick now knew where to hunt the second marked girl. A man who'd already cracked once under pressure wasn't a wildcard. He was a door that had already been shown to open. I found that almost amusing. Almost. "You look pleased with yourself," Elias said, before I'd even stepped fully into the cell. He'd stopped bothering to hide his contempt weeks ago, which I permitted, mostly because breaking a man's spirit too completely made him useless for the small, specific pleasure of watching him fail to hide his hope. "I have reason to be." I let the silence stretch, watching him brace for it. "Your daughter's little band has a weak point. A man named Kael. Broken o
Jeremy's POV Men mistook control for something you seized once and kept forever. It wasn't. Control was a garden, not a fortress—something that needed tending daily, pruned the instant weeds threatened to take root, or the whole thing overgrew you while you weren't looking. Lately, I'd been looking away too often. The report on Selene had finally arrived, weeks late and worthless for it. Not missing, as I'd assumed. Not captured, not dead. Defected. Traveling south with the man who'd once occupied a mansion I'd wanted for myself, who I even thought was working for me last time I saw him, offering him her magic freely, the way she'd once offered it to me. I sat with that for longer than I wanted to admit. It wasn't the loss of her power that unsettled me—witches were replaceable, in the end, however unpleasant the process of replacing them. It was the precedent. Loyalty that walked away once could convince itself it was allowed to walk away twice, and I had built everything I cu
Rebecca’s POVI couldn't stop staring at him. He was undoubtedly more handsome than the last time I saw him. His brown hair was wet, which gave off the fact that he had just taken a bath. His strong masculine scent was quite literally breathtaking. “Rebecca?” My thoughts halted, and I came right b
Rebecca’s POV“Rebecca, wake up, you can sleep through a storm.” My mother opened up the curtains and exposed my room to sunlight. She wouldn't understand that I spent the whole night thinking about the mating proposal I got from Tyler.Tyler wanted to mate with me? Why? He bullied me when we were
Alpha Kings POV“There are rumours about it,” One of the Advisers said. The Alpha Kings sat on their thrones listening to the report. “We need accurate information, not speculation,” Matthew said sternly.“The possibility of war happening is greater than it not happening,” another adviser said, a
Rebecca’s POVIt was morning already. I could hear the chirping of the birds as they sang their melody. I just wanted to sleep today, and I can still remember the look on Tyler’s face.It is still as clear as day. I was relieved I finally got the words out, but that feeling was short-lived as a gen







