Se connecter~ZaraThe black carriages stopped at the edge of Vesper’s clearing, and from the first one stepped an elder named Marguerite, a tall woman in grey velvet whose face looked carved from ivory and whose eyes had watched six centuries of wars begin and end. She did not look at Kael or at Vesper. She looked only at me, standing in the doorway in a stolen coat with my hair still tangled from the night, and she bowed her head by exactly one inch.“Lyra’s daughter,” she said. “We felt you break the Alpha’s hold from three valleys away. The Coven has not felt a Moonborn wake in twenty years, and the council is divided on whether to kill you or kneel to you.”“Which side are you on?” I asked.“I have not decided.” A faint smile touched her mouth. “Show me something worth deciding on.”I thought of Roman’s hands stroking my hair while he explained how he had murdered my mother, and I answered with the only truth I owned. “Come to the neutral grounds at moonrise and bring your council. I’ll show
~ZaraShe lit candles around the room, and I suspected it was only because she needed something to do with her hands. Kael undressed in the firelight while I watched the long pale lines of his back, where my claws had marked him two nights ago, and when he turned to face me, he stood perfectly still and waited. Vesper let her red dress fall to the floor and stood at his side, pale as moonlight, and for once she did not smile.“On your knees, slut,” I said. They knelt together on the rug before the fire, and I circled them slowly, naked, with my pulse climbing steadily higher. The hook tugged once inside me, a spiteful little pull of warning, and I breathed through it and kept walking until I came to a stop in front of Kael.“You first.”He tilted his head and bared his throat to me. My fangs lengthened of their own accord, sharp and aching, and I realized with a startled thrill that I had never let them show in front of anyone in my life. I leaned down and pressed my tongue to the ski
~ZaraKael moved toward the door, but I reached it before he did and laid my hand flat against his chest to stop him.“If he wanted to break it down, he would have done it by now,” I said quietly.“Zara,” Vesper whispered from the hearth, “please don’t open it.”“I have obeyed that voice for twenty years,” I told her, wrapping my fingers around the handle. “I think it’s time I looked at the face that goes with it.”I pulled the door open.Alpha Roman Ashcroft stood on the porch in a plain grey shirt, as casually as a man who had wandered over for tea. He had silver threaded through his temples, shoulders as broad as a barn door, and eyes the color of old amber; behind him, the pines were crowded with shapes that shifted in the dark. I counted a dozen wolves, perhaps more, and Brannock stood at the front of them with his jaw clenched and his gaze fixed carefully on the ground.“You’ve been busy, little moon,” Roman said warmly.“Don’t call me that.”“You used to love it.” He stepped pa
~ZaraVesper’s cabin was two miles north, buried so deep in the pines that I’d have sworn it didn’t exist. It smelled like old books, woodsmoke, and her. Kael carried me the last half mile, because my legs had stopped taking orders somewhere around “this isn’t wolf blood.”“I can walk,” I told him.“You can’t.”“I can crawl, which is basically walking as well.”He didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched. I counted it as a win. Inside, Vesper lit a fire and dropped a heavy black robe over my shoulders. Then she poured wine into three glasses and set one in front of me like I wasn’t about to throw it at her face.“Talk,” I said.“Your mother.” Vesper sat across from me. “What do you remember?”“Nothing. She died when I was four. The Alpha’s father took me in.” I shrugged, because I’d had twenty years to practice that shrug. “Rogue attack. That’s the story.”“It’s a good story.” Vesper turned her glass slowly. “Your mother wasn’t a wolf, Zara. She was a Moonborn.”Kael became quiet. “That’
~Zara“Get up,” I hissed, yanking Kael off the dirt by his ruined coat. “Say something clever. I need a distraction.”“My own kind is hunting me,” he said. “Clever isn’t available.”“Useless.”“I’ve been told.”The enforcers came through the treeline before I could insult him properly. Brannock led them, a huge male with a scar through his eyebrow and the personality of a locked door. Two others trailed behind him. I’d never bothered learning their names, and they’d never bothered earning it either. They fanned out and sniffed the air—iron, sex, and me.“Zara,” Brannock said. “Jax says you smell like a graveyard.”“Jax is a snitch with a runny nose.” I planted myself in front of the shadows and lifted my chin. “I was hunting. Then I was busy. Is the Alpha’s leash so short now that I can’t finish myself off in peace?”“That’s a lot of blood for one deer.”“It was a big deer.” I countered.“And the cold stink?”I opened my mouth to lie. I had a good one ready, too, something about a de
~ZaraThe howl was too close. My heart was hammering against my ribs, not from fear, but from the sheer, electric thrill of it. I looked at the vampire, his dry skin covered with my blood, his eyes cold and predatory. If the scout saw him, it would be a bloodbath. Not because I cared about the vampire’s life, but because I wasn't ready to stop this. I wasn't done being ruined."Get back," I hissed, shoving him hard. He didn't budge at first, his strength immense, but he saw the look in my eyes. He melted back into the thick, oppressive shadows of the pines, disappearing like a ghost.I didn't have time to cover myself. I stood there, naked and glistening, my thighs smeared with his cold cum and my shoulder still stinging where he’d fed. I wiped a streak of blood from my lip and put on my meanest, most arrogant face just as the scout burst through the brush.It was Jax. He was a lean, twitchy male with a nose for trouble. He stopped dead, his eyes scanning me from my blood-stained cla







