LOGINRowan's POVI'd been there since the start.Tucked in the shade of the treeline where neither of them would think to look, close enough to hear every word, I didn’t know why I was hiding. I had a lot of duties to attend to in the pack house, but Raven has been a constant in my mind, and it was getting suffocating. The need to see her, to touch her, to know what was going on with her every hour of the day. It was maddening. This thing called a bond was nothing short of madness. I'd had to stop myself more than once from stepping out of that shade and putting a hand on his shoulder before he threw her again.Asher was hard on everyone. That much was true, and it had always been true, long before Raven walked into our lives. He'd trained that way with soldiers twice her size and never blinked. But I could feel the difference in this. He was harder on her than I'd ever seen him be on anyone, and I understood why, even as it made my jaw ache from clenching it.He didn't believe in co
Asher's POVHer first attack came slowly. Sloppy. I saw it coming three seconds before her fist even left her side. She was thinking too much; her eyes were everywhere except on me. Was she scared of looking at my face? How then did she expect to win this battle? It was obvious she already expected to fail, so she wasn’t trying at all.I caught her wrist and pushed her away, barely a flick of effort."Pathetic. Again."She scrambled up, dirt on her palms, and came at me a second time. Same mistake. I let her get close enough to feel like she'd earned it before I put her on the ground again.Through the bond, I felt her anger flare, hot and useless, burning through her chest like a fire with no fuel. It didn't scare her the way I wanted it to. It just made her sloppier."Again."The third time, she actually managed to touch me. Her knuckles caught my jaw, a glancing blow, nothing that would have bothered a trained wolf. But that touch made every hair in my body rise. Her soft hands, t
Raven's POV He stopped in front of me, arms still crossed, studying me like a problem he was tired of solving."If you can't shift. Fine." He rolled his shoulders. "Let's test your physical strength.""Attack me."I blinked. "What?""You heard me. Attack me."I gasped, feeling fear running through my veins. "I can't even shift; how am I supposed to..." "I know. So use whatever you can to survive. This is a battle, so use your hands. Your feet. I don't care." His eyes narrowed, and something sharp moved behind them. "Or do you want me to think my mate is prey? Weak?"That word again. He knew exactly how to make me upset. Being called weak was my injury; it hurt. I lunged at him, sloppy and too fast, my fist swinging wide before I'd even decided to throw it. He smirked at my hesitation. He moved aside like I was underwater. His hand closed around my wrist and twisted, and the ground came up to meet me hard, knocking the breath out of my chest. He wasn’t even trying to be merciful be
Raven’s POVI was still very much asleep when the blankets were ripped off me.“Get up!”The cold slapped my skin. I stirred groggily, dragging myself up through layers of sleep that clung like wet mud, my eyes barely open, my mind three counties behind my body.“I said up! We don’t have time for this.”I snapped upright immediately, my heart slamming wildly in my chest. I raised my head slowly, coming face to face with a handsome, godlike face that set the butterflies in my stomach in a frenzy, but the scary look on his face was enough to kill them immediately. Asher.He stood over the bed with my blankets bunched in one fist, dressed for training in dark fitted clothes that showed off his muscles. This man was built like a mountain, bigger than anybody from my previous pack.Every line of him radiated impatience; he was a warrior done to his bones. His green eyes swept over my disheveled hair, my creased dress, my bare feet curled against the cold floor…and from the look on his fac
Raven’s POV I rested my chin on my palm, absorbing the information like a sponge that had gone too long without water. Fourteen hundred years. And twelve packs."But this pack has one major problem," Ansel said, leaning back in his chair. His eyes had gone flat, the warmth from before shuttered behind something older. "Do you know what it is?"I hummed in thought, turning it over. Something that would make the royal family this tense, this careful. Something that couldn't be fought with swords or borders."The illness?" I guessed.He nodded, slowly, like he was relieved I hadn't needed it spelled out for me. "A curse. We don't know why we're cursed. We don't know who it started with, only that it wasn't Nicklaus Lysander." His jaw tightened. "Although the curse does follow the royal bloodline."The words landed in my chest as stones dropped into still water.I gasped softly, my hand dropping from my chin. "Does that mean you and your brothers?"He shook his head, and the stones sett
Ansel’s POV I was supposed to be teaching her.Preparing her for what was coming. If she was going to survive being our mate at all, she needed to know this world, not just live in it. But right now, she wasn't being helpful.How could someone so far from the royal bloodline be this beautiful?I didn't use that word lightly. Crescent Silver had no shortage of beautiful women. But Raven was something else entirely, and the worst part was she didn't seem to know it. That made it harder to look away.How had that idiot alpha of Shadow Claw thrown her out? Rejected someone this rare?I made a mental note to have someone look into that pack. A leader who couldn't recognize what stood in front of him wasn't fit to hold a border, let alone a bloodline.She gasped.The sound pulled me back into the room. She'd stumbled onto something in the book, her tongue poking out between her teeth, her dark eyes narrowed in concentration as she flipped through the pages. She looked younger like that. So







