Library

Search

Home / Werewolf / A Luna for the Lycan King / Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

All Chapters of A Luna for the Lycan King: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

186 Chapters

Chapter 163

Allissa“They named it for the grief. The Weeping Moon. I have seen one,” she said, and the whole terrace understood at once how old that made her. “One, in all my years. The night it came, every beast in the world went mad and then went silent. The tides forgot their schedule. And those of us who could feel the deep magics felt the oldest law in the world go thin as river ice in spring.”“Explain that,” Darren said quietly. “The law going thin.”“Your blessings, Lycan King. All of them.” She lifted a trembling claw toward where Thorin sat, then let it drift toward me. “The fire in his line. The silver in hers. The sanctity that makes a fated bond unbreakable. These are gifts of the gods and of the Moon Goddess, sealed by her light, and on every ordinary night that light h

Chapter 164

LyleMy brother left to find his daughter and left his two youngest to me. He didn’t have to say it. He knew I would take care of everything while he was gone, the way I had before, during the war. I knew what needed doing. I didn’t need orders for it. There was only one thing that mattered now, and it wasn’t the kingdom or the council or the crowns still under our roof. It was keeping the ones we had left safe. We were not going to lose anyone else. Not while I was breathing. So I did what I knew how to do. I checked the guards on the twins several times a day, though I didn’t need to. Ivan had not left their side since the night it happened. The great polar bear planted himself by their cribs and refused to move, and I’ll admit the sight of him there did more to settle me than any roster of soldiers could. Nothing was getting to those babies without going through a shifter the size of a carriage first, and nothing was getting through Ivan. The twins had taken to him, too, even S

Chapter 165

Lyle Mira had decided, somewhere in the first day, that the world had done something unforgivable. She was right. She just had no way to say it except at volume. She didn’t want Hessa. She didn’t want me. She didn’t want the nursemaids or the rocking or the songs, and when I tried Darren’s ridiculous porridge verses in a voice nothing like his, she screwed up her face and howled louder, because I wasn’t him. The only thing she wanted in the world were her parents. She knew something was wrong and she wanted their comfort. “She knows,” Evette said, rocking her granddaughter slowly. “They always know. She can feel the shape of who’s missing.”

Chapter 166

Lyle Dayanara found me that night on the nursery balcony, where I’d gone to breathe the cool night air. “Your mother put the fear of every god into Corven,” she said, leaning on the rail beside me. “I almost applauded. I’ve wanted to set him on fire since the council.” “Don’t set the nobles on fire, Nara. We’re short on nobles.” “We’re short on good ones.” She bumped h

Chapter 167

AllissaWe flew north until the world ran out of green.The pines thinned to scrub, and the scrub gave way to stone, and then there was nothing under us but gray rock and old snow going on forever. The cold seemed to freeze everything … including time. I lost track of the days on purpose. Counting them meant counting how long my daughter had been gone, and I could not carry that number and keep moving at the same time.Thorin gave his report every dusk, the way Darren had asked him to. He would press his hand flat over his chest, close his eyes, and read the pull like a little soldier giving the day’s news. She’s angry today. She’s bored. She made somebody sing again. Every scrap of her came out of that boy’s mouth, and the rest of us leaned in without meaning to.Smoke rode inside my coat, over my heart, warm the way he is always warm. Some mornings that little dragon was the only heat in the whole north. He belonged in a three-year-old’s arms, not mine. I intended to put him back.W

Chapter 168

AllissaThat was all. Her breath rolled over us, and the world went white with cold and slammed us flat. My lightning grounded out on her scales like rain off a roof. Eira’s wall froze solid in the air and dropped on us in pieces. Squall was knocked spinning by one beat of her wing and hit the shelf hard enough to shake it. I struck the rock and lost the sky, and when I found it again Darren was mid-leap in his white lycan shape and she caught him out of the air under one talon and pinned him to the stone the way a cat pins a leaf.“Enough.”Her cold pressed down on all of us like a hand. Smoke burned like a live coal against my sternum, one point of heat in all that white.“Do you feel it now, little king?” She leaned, only slightly, and the stone cracked under my mate, and the scream tore out of me before I knew it was mine. “This is the lesson the blind one should have taught you at her pools. I was flying before your gods thought to write their rules. If I wanted your deaths, you

Chapter 169

OnyssaThe little prince growled at me.I have been threatened by gods and their weather. I stood in the first dark and watched the world learn what burning was. And on that ridge, a whelp the size of my foot put himself between me and his people, bared his milk fangs, and told the last of the First what she would not be taking, and of everything I left lying in the frost that day, he is the only part I carried home.The rest of them behaved as expected. The pup king got up twice, which I will grant him, since his line has never learned the mercy of staying down. The mother threw her small lightning at me and watched it fail. The water child built her pretty wall, and the soldier put his own body over the boy, which was the only intelligent act performed on that ridge, my own attendance included.I was careful with them. A breath, no fire, weight measured to a hair. They will ache and they will live, and someday, if any of this is ever understood, someone will notice that the monster

Chapter 170

OnyssaI think about this plainly, since no one else alive is old enough to.The gods sealed their bright experiment to my kind’s own heir. A god-sealed bond is a seed, and a seed does what seeds do. In a grown pair it has roots down through everything the two of them are, and pulling it out takes the ground along with it. Their own mongrel histories teach that lesson, the throne that broke such a bond with a blade and bled for it down a hundred years of sons. But in a child the seed is new. It sits shallow, barely beneath the surface of two small hearts. The weeping sky thins the seal, the old words lift the bond out whole, and the wound closes clean because there is hardly any wound to close.That is why it must be now, while she is small. Not cruelty. Every season I wait, the roots go deeper and the kindness costs more, until on

Chapter 171

LyleDayanara and Gunnar had been gone longer than anybody had said out loud the night they left. My mate has never once in her life come home early just to ease a man’s chest. But the sky over the southern hills stayed empty morning after morning, and I was getting anxious.I was waiting and guarding the castle. I just didn’t know what I was guarding it from.The children stayed in the heart of the castle, in the warded room with no windows and one door, where the walls hummed with everything my mate layered into them before she flew. We made it a world instead of a shelter, because children can smell the difference. Evette read to them in the mornings and Hessa kept the meals coming. The room that the crown keeps for its worst hour was filled up with blocks and blankets and children’s stories.Kieran ran the place like a very small garrison commander. He posted Ember at the door each night, which Ember understood not at all and performed beautifully, and he gave me reports when I ca

Chapter 172

LyleI sent the word down myself. All clear. Come up. It’s over.Kieran came out of the doors first at a dead sprint. He saw his mother, launched off the top step, and Dayanara caught him out of the air and went down on both knees in the yard dirt to hold him. She shut her eyes and didn’t let go for a long time. My chest finally loosened, watching them.Ember came galloping out next and went straight for Gunnar, who put the little one up on his shoulder. Somewhere above us Ciera laughed, and I realized I hadn’t heard her do that since the night of the party.Gunnar watched his youngest chew on his shoulder guard and made no move to stop it. “We flew through two nights,” he told me. “We weren’t going to camp twice.”

PREV

...

14 15 16 17 18 19

NEXT

SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP

DMCA.com Protection Status