บททั้งหมดของ Mine to keep, mine to break : บทที่ 121 - บทที่ 130

Nalini The day of the tournament arrived like a held breath finally released—too fast, too loud, too heavy to escape.I woke before the sun, my body already humming with a nervous energy that felt nothing like excitement. It felt like warning. My wolf stirred restlessly beneath my skin, pacing in slow, uneasy circles, as though she sensed something I did not yet understand. I lay still on the narrow dorm bed, staring at the ceiling while the sounds of the academy came alive outside—boots on stone, distant shouts, the metallic clang of training weapons being hauled into place.Today was not just a competition.It was a reckoning.By the time I dressed and stepped outside, Silvermist Academy no longer felt like the place I had known. Banners hung from the high towers, silver and blue snapping sharply in the morning wind. The air was thick with layered scents—adrenaline, wolf musk, iron, old stone warmed by rising heat. Packs had begun to gather around the arena, voices rough with antic

Nalini The first thing I noticed at the ball was the heat.Not the warmth of bodies packed into the grand hall, not the hundreds of candles suspended in floating glass orbs above our heads, but the way the air seemed to tighten around me the moment I stepped inside. It pressed against my lungs like a held breath. Like the room itself knew something fragile had just crossed its threshold.I adjusted the plain fabric of the academy-issued dress at my sides. It was a soft gray, modest, unremarkable—meant to make me blend into the background, meant to remind me of my place. Servant. Omega. Not noble. Not royal. Certainly not someone with two princes orbiting her like moons trapped by gravity.The moonstone pendant rested against my collarbone, warm despite the cool metal chain. Timothy’s gift. I had touched it so many times on the walk here that the stone felt like an extension of my skin now, a quiet anchor against the noise in my head.The ballroom glittered. Gold and obsidian pillars

Alpha King ThaneThe moment the last notes of music faded and the ballroom dissolved into polite laughter and clinking glasses, I knew sleep would not come to me that night.It was not the alliance papers waiting on my desk. It was not Reuben’s measured smiles or the weight of Brownclaw’s victory. It was the girl.Nalini.Her name lingered on my tongue like a prayer I was afraid to speak aloud.I left the ballroom long after the other Alphas had retreated to their chambers, my guards trailing me at a respectful distance. The corridors of Silvermist Academy were quiet at that hour, lit by enchanted sconces that hummed softly with lunar energy. The silence pressed in on me, thick and heavy, the way it had the night Diana died in my arms with our daughter’s name breaking on her lips.I pressed my palm to my chest, steadying my breath.I had seen that birthmark before.Not something similar. Not something close.The exact curve. The crescent-shaped shadow tucked just beneath the ear, fain

Alpha King Thane I had learned, over the years, that a king’s power was not in how loudly he commanded but in how quietly he listened. That night, long after the music had died and the palace corridors had gone still, I listened—to my instincts, to memory, to a wound I had carried so long it had grown ribs around it.Sleep did not come. It never did when the Moon Goddess chose to stir the dead.Nalini’s face kept rising in my mind like a ghost breaking water. Not her eyes—though they were unforgettable—but the mark at her neck. That small, cruelly perfect shape, half-moon, half-claw. Blessed. Cursed. Impossible to forget.I had seen it once before on skin no bigger than my palm.I rose before dawn, when even kings were supposed to rest, and dressed without ceremony. No guards. No announcements. I did not want this investigation known. Not yet. Truth, when handled poorly, became a weapon. And too many people would benefit from this one cutting the wrong way.The first place I went was

Nalini I did not know when fear learned my name, only that it began answering whenever someone whispered it.The house felt different that day—too quiet in the way a forest went still before a predator moved. Even the floorboards seemed to listen as I scrubbed them, my fingers raw from lye and water, my back aching from hours bent low. Selene had woken us before dawn, her voice sharp and thin as a blade, and by the time the sun crept through the narrow windows, my body already felt borrowed—like it belonged to someone else who was being punished in my place.I had felt it first in my wolf.A tightness. A restless curl beneath my ribs. Not pain exactly, but awareness—like being watched from inside my own skin.Julie had been unusually quiet too. She kept glancing at the door, her lips pressed together, her fingers twitching as though they wanted to tear something apart. When she finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper.“They’re asking questions.”I pretended not to hear her. Pret