91. The Weight of Vengeance

Kyla’s cottage smelled of smoke and dried herbs, a herb-scented sanctuary hewn out of the mountain’s ribcage. Bunches of roots and bundles of sage swung from low rafters, catching the weak light and throwing crooked shadows across the stone. The hearth breathed a thin, steady glow, its embers a white-gold, as if the room itself tried to warm something that had burned raw.Ragnar carried Freya across the threshold like a relic: careful, reverent, hands iron but gentle. Ash dusted her hair; a crimson smear stained the corner of her mouth. Up close, she was too warm, an inner heat humming under her skin that no poultice could wholly quell. She smelled of smoke and iron and something softer beneath it, a faint memory of rain against hot stone.Kyla moved with the slow certainty of someone who had mended worse wounds. Her fingers were steady as she laid warm poultices of crushed shadow-herbs against Freya’s scorched skin. Nyra worked the edges of the fever with quiet incantations, her brea

Last Updated : 2025-09-15

92. Shadows Of Doubt

The journey down from the mountain was heavy, not with silence but with weight. Each step Ragnar’s horse carried them closer to the castle, the air thickened with questions that clung like smoke. Freya sat pressed against him in the saddle, her body still bruised, her flame restless beneath her skin, humming like a caged storm. Every breath she took made the air shimmer faintly, heat leaking from her veins into the world around her.When the gates of the castle loomed, their iron teeth stretched wide, the guards stiffened as if the air itself pressed against their lungs. They bowed to Ragnar, but their eyes slid warily to Freya, lingering too long, too sharp, as though watching not a girl but a weapon.She felt it. The mistrust. The fear. The way whispers followed her steps like shadows.Inside the great hall, the throne room’s fire pits flickered low, casting long waves of flame across the cold stone. It should have felt familiar, but it didn’t. To Freya, it was a cage made of memory

Last Updated : 2025-09-18

93. Shadows Of Betrayal

The moon hung pale and thin above the castle, its light spilling like milk through the carved arches of the royal balcony. Freya stood alone in its glow, the night pressing against her like a second skin. Her silver hair shimmered as though spun from the moon itself, strands shifting with the wind that carried whispers from the forest below.But the silence of the castle was a lie. She could feel the weight of it, the listening walls, the watching shadows. Whispers threaded through the stone like smoke, voices too soft to catch yet too persistent to ignore. They always circled back to her flame. To her curse. To the prophecy that haunted her every breath.Her chest ached with the phantom sting of an old wound, a cut not made of flesh but of fate. The words that had chased her since childhood echoed in her bones: Betrayal will come not from your enemies, but from the one you trust most.She turned the thought over and over in her mind like a blade in her palm, sharp enough to draw bloo

Last Updated : 2025-09-19

94. Wolves In Silk

The chandeliers burned brighter than stars, their crystal arms dripping with candlelight that fractured into a thousand shards across the polished marble floors. Every spark of light danced like fire caught in glass, dazzling, blinding. Music swelled from the far end of the grand hall, violins and harps entwining in a melody spun with elegance, though beneath its sweetness pulsed an undercurrent sharp as a blade.The royal ball had begun.Freya entered at Ragnar’s side, her every step echoing like a declaration carved into stone. The gown clinging to her was not cloth but night itself, shadows stitched with silver embroidery that shimmered each time she moved. The air shifted around her, thick with attention. She had never felt so seen, and yet so dissected, as though each gaze sought to unravel her flame and measure its worth.The sea of dominant alphas turned toward her. Some watched with reverence, awe softening their predatory stares. Others cloaked suspicion in smiles, while more

Last Updated : 2025-09-25

95. After The Ball

The ball ended not with music, but with a silence so sharp it cut like a blade.The last chords had died beneath the vaulted ceiling hours ago, yet tension lingered, clinging to the stone walls like smoke after a fire. Every step Freya had taken through that hall had been shadowed by whispers, thin and venomous, curling in the corners where wolves gathered in knots of silk and steel. Only Ragnar’s presence, his looming, unbending aura, had kept the hungriest predators at bay.Now the alphas were gone, their laughter brittle as glass, their polished smiles thin masks stretched over teeth. As the great doors slammed shut and the echoes faded, the castle itself seemed to exhale. Chandeliers still dripped with wax, goblets lay overturned on marble steps, and servants moved like hushed ghosts as they wiped wine the color of blood from the floor.But peace did not come.“Ragnar.”The voice struck like an arrow.Sharp. Cold. Commanding.At the edge of the dais stood his mother. Midnight silk