All Chapters of The Fated Series: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Heavy is the CrownI went back to the window, to the seam of light I had left for myself as if I were a thief in my own home. Below, Evandra passed a bucket up to a she-wolf on the wall, and the woman grinned with the bright, foolish courage of tired people doing difficult things. “Our Luna,” she said again, as if to no one, as if it were a prayer that happened to have a subject.A boy of eleven summers slipped on a pile of broken tile. Evandra was there, faster than any of the men around him, catching his elbow before his head met stone. She said something that made him snort—some joke even the ragged could afford—and when he trotted away, he did it with a chest two inches broader.My chest hurt.“Enough,” I said, to myself this time, not to Storm, not to the air. I’d been hiding under the word tired like it was a fur I had the right to wear. I had used grief as a wedge to keep my ribs from widening around a truth I shouldn’t have needed a battle to learn: if you love a woman made fo

Old LoveI turned before the shaking in my hands could climb my wrists and betray me. The stone steps bit softly into my soles as I crossed back under the colonnade. I kept my spine straight, my shoulders square, until the Alpha house door shut behind me with a click that sounded far too final for a piece of wood and iron.A figure leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, ankles hooked, as if the stone and he were old friends. I didn’t need the scent to know him; the air changed when Tristan entered a room, like someone cracked a window and let in a colder, cleaner wind.“Evie,” he said, and the warmth in it undid me.“I’m fine,” I lied, because that is what we say when we are not, because my mouth could not form any other shape. The lie slid off him like rain off a wolf’s back. He pushed off the wall and came to me, not touching at first, just close, his presence a shelter I didn’t have to ask for.“I know you are,” he said. “You always are. But you don’t have to be right now.

The Scent of LifeEvandra stormed back into the Crescent Pack’s alpha house, her tears blurring the lantern-lit halls. Her hands trembled as she pressed them to her chest, willing her heart to stop breaking. She had thought Balor was finally coming back to her, finally softening — but his rejection cut sharper than any blade.The tears burned until they dried into anger, and anger hollowed into exhaustion. Her chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe.And then she saw him.Tristan was waiting near the staircase, leaning against the banister, his arms crossed. His green eyes softened the moment they fell on her. “Evie.”She shook her head, unable to speak, and all at once her body betrayed her. A wave of nausea rose from the pit of her stomach. She bolted past him, barely making it to the nearest garbage bin before she doubled over. Her stomach heaved, empty but relentless, until she collapsed against its rim.Strong hands caught her. Tristan knelt at her side, sweeping her long dark hair

Stay with MeBalor POVIt was an answer I could have given her, a gift I could have taken. I felt the shape of yes in my mouth, round and ripe and sweet. But the old terror leapt, a last snake striking: if I let her lie next to me and sleep under the roof of my fear, what monsters would curl into her hair? What lies would the Mirror slip into her dreams through the crack I allowed?“Not yet,” I said, and broke on it. “Please.”She did not flinch as if I’d struck her. She did not fling back a thousand deserved answers. She nodded once, eyes steady and impossibly forgiving, as if not yet were an invitation, not an eviction.“I’ll be close,” she said, and kissed my cheek. She left the door open behind her. It would have been kinder to close it. It would have been easier to pretend she hadn’t wanted to stay.I stood there in the lamplight and hated myself more than I had at any other moment of a life I have not lived gently.Coward, Storm said, not snarl but statement.“I know,” I whisper

Thoughts of IronBalor’s POVDawn had not yet decided to exist when I went to the training yard.Storm had woken me thrice in the night by throwing himself against the idea of doors. He would have torn them from their hinges if he had a body. I let him drag me twice around the walls in my mind and the third time, I stopped resisting and took my actual body where it wanted to be—under open sky, sweat burning fear out of me.I did not ask for company. Men who saw a leader bleeding come away with blood on them. There is a kind of mercy in doing some work where no one can witness how hard you are trying to be the man they think you are.The yard was a scar not yet scabbed. The attack had left it in a shape I barely recognized, the rings broken, the sand churned with memories I did not want. We had cleared it enough to lay down mats. I took one and beat it until it stopped pretending it was a man and remembered it was straw in a sack.The rhythm helped. Muscle has its own language; when yo