All Chapters of The Lullaby of Wolfbane: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

72 Chapters

Chapter 41 — The Queen’s Room

The hallway to the royal infirmary feels like a different wing of the palace, same marble, same gold-trimmed doors, same guards standing like statues, yet the air is wrong. It smells like boiled herbs and hot cloth and something thin and metallic underneath, like sickness has soaked into the stone itself. Adrian walks beside me, close without touching. His presence is a steady pressure at my side, quiet, controlled, watchful. The King leads us. He’s regained his posture, but not his ease. I can see it in his shoulders, in the way his jaw tightens like he’s bracing for a blow he’s taken before. Two guards open the doors. We step inside. The Queen’s chambers are dim, curtains drawn to a dull gray light. A low fire burns, more for comfort than warmth. Chairs sit near the bed like people have been rotating through them, keeping watch in shifts. And there she is. Not the Luna from the portraits. Those paintings show a woman carv

Chapter 42 — Bars and Bloodlines

Morning comes in pieces, warmth first, then weight, then the faint ache in my thighs that makes my wolf purr smugly before my mind even catches up. Adrian is half propped against the headboard, sheet low on his hips, hair mussed in a way the palace never gets to see. One hand idly traces along my shoulder as if he’s memorizing the shape of me in daylight. I should feel embarrassed. I don’t. I feel… claimed. Safe. Sated. Like the world can scream outside these doors and it still can’t get in unless he opens them. He leans down and presses a slow kiss to my forehead. “I’ll be gone today,” he says. The words snap me awake fully. I lift my head off his chest. “Gone where?” His eyes don’t soften, Adrian’s eyes rarely do, but the tension underneath him shifts into something sharper, more focused. “Rogue movement,” he says. “Scouts reported a pattern. We think they’re probing the outer routes, looking for weak points. We’re intercepting.” My stomach drops as if the bed tilts. “

Chapter 43 — Blood at the Candlelit Table

The abandoned building looks like nothing from the outside, just a gutted shell on the edge of the capital’s older district, windows boarded, stone dark with soot and age. The kind of place the palace pretends doesn’t exist. Inside, candlelight flickers. Not scattered. Arranged. A long table sits in the center of the open floor like someone is hosting a dinner party in a ruin, candles in uneven clusters, wax spilling down glass holders, flames bending in drafts that slip through cracked boards. Boxes of takeaway food are laid out with absurd care, lids folded back like a feast is about to begin. My boots scrape over dust and splintered wood. My wolf presses forward, teeth bared. Because I can smell them. Not one. Not two. Many. Hidden in the dark rafters. Behind broken pillars. Down the hall to my left where a doorway has collapsed. They’re holding still, controlling their breathing, but they can’t hide what they are from a wolf who’s finally awake. And underneath it all, like a

Chapter 44 — The Choice They Gave Me

I don’t remember the walk back. I remember pieces, my boots hitting stone too hard, the cold air slicing my lungs, my cloak snagging on a nail and the sound making me flinch like it was a scream. I remember the package in my hands, heavier than it should be, like it’s filled with lead instead of poison. And I remember my bond. Still taut. Still pulsing. Adrian alive. Close enough to feel, far enough to not reach. That thread is the only thing keeping me upright. If it snapped… I think I would too. I use the corridor Lia showed me, the one that lets you move like a ghost through royal wings. I don’t go to my room. I don’t go to Adrian’s. I go straight to the clinic because Melody is the only person in this palace who can look at horror and immediately start turning it into solutions. The moment I push through the clinic doors, the brightness hits me like a slap. Clean white walls. Neat shelves. The illusion of control. Melody is at a desk with papers spread in front of her. S

Chapter 45 — Precision, Not Panic

I don’t sleep. I sit in Melody’s clinic office with my hands wrapped around a mug I never drink from, staring at the wrapped package like it might start breathing. Melody moves like a storm contained in a human body, fast, exact, furious in the quiet way that means she’s already decided she will win.“Start from the beginning,” she says again, voice clipped. “Every word he said. Every smell. Every person in the room.”I try. I really do. But my mind keeps snapping back to one image like a broken compass needle: Adrian on his knees. Silver cutting into his wrists. Blood on his mouth behind that gag. His eyes angry, alive, begging me not to trade my soul for his skin.Melody asks something and I blink, realizing I’ve stopped answering. Her jaw tightens. She leans down, catching my face between her hands, gentle, but immovable.“Abby,” she says, forcing me into the present. “I need your brain. Shock later. Survival now.”My throat works. I n

Chapter 46 — The Empty Chains

Night makes the capital quieter, but it doesn’t make it safer.It just hides the teeth. Lia walks beside me like we’re on an evening stroll, cloak neat, posture composed, face calm enough to fool any passing eyes. But her fingers are close to the knife at her hip, and I can feel the tension coiled under her elegance. My bond pulls forward. Not straight, never straight in this city of stone and turns but insistent, like a compass needle that keeps snapping back to one direction no matter how many walls try to confuse it. Adrian is close. Close enough that my wolf starts to pace inside me. We cut into a narrow alley where the buildings lean together like conspirators. A shadow detaches itself from the darkness ahead and becomes Logan. He isn’t dressed like a prince tonight. No crest. No bright royal cloak. Just dark clothes and quiet violence in his eyes. Behind him: four men, all carrying themselves with the stillness of t

Chapter 47 — The Prince Who Stayed

By the time we slip back into the palace through the service entrance, the cold has settled into my bones like it intends to live there. I keep Adrian’s ring clenched in my fist so tightly the edges bite my skin. I need the pain. It keeps me from floating away into shock. Logan doesn’t speak as we move, just stalks forward like fury given legs. Lia stays at my shoulder, steady and watchful, her calm so practiced it feels like a weapon. We don't go to the King. We go to Melody. Because the last thing we can afford right now is a roar that alerts every hidden ear in the palace that we’re moving. Melody takes one look at our faces and doesn’t bother asking for pleasantries. “What happened?” she demands, already stepping toward us. Logan’s voice is clipped, controlled with effort. “They moved him. Before we got there.” My bond pulses in my chest, answering like a cruel echo: alive, alive, alive, fa

Chapter 48 — Quarantine

The plan looks clean on paper. In real life, it feels like trying to hold back a flood with my bare hands.We crowd into Melody’s office, me, Melody, Lia, Logan, and now Nate, shoulders too close, voices kept low, every word chosen like it might be overheard through the walls.Adrian’s ring sits on Melody’s desk in a sealed evidence pouch. Even trapped in plastic, it smells like him. My wolf presses against my ribs, restless and furious, and the bond pulls east like a hooked chain.Melody taps her pen against a list of names Nate provided, then looks up at him. “You’re certain?”Nate doesn’t blink. “Certain enough to bet my throat.”Logan’s gaze stays hard on Nate, like he’s still deciding whether to trust him. “No betting. We verify.”“We verify by tightening access,” Melody says, decisive. “Starting now.”She slides a document across the desk, formal, stamped, clinic authority. The words are simple and brutal:

Chapter 49 — The Prince Who Lied Best

The pain through the bond hits again, less like a knife, more like a pulse of electric heat straight under my sternum. I gasp and grab the edge of Melody’s desk.Lia’s hand is on my back immediately. “Abby. Breathe.”Melody doesn’t waste time asking if I’m okay. She’s already moving, two fingers at my wrist, eyes narrowing as she tracks my pulse like it’s a monitor.“That wasn’t panic,” I choke out.Melody’s jaw tightens. “No. It wasn’t.”My throat burns. “They hurt him.”Logan’s face turns to stone. Nate goes still in a way that makes him look older, like something finally snapped into place inside him and it isn’t going back.“We move,” I say.Logan’s voice is iron. “We move smart.”Before I can argue, Melody is already shoving her quarantine orders into a folder and handing it to one of her clinic guards.“Double the Queen’s door,” she orders. “No one enters without my signature and the Prin

Chapter 50 — The Door That Finally Opens

The clinic clock doesn’t tick like a normal clock. It ticks like a sentence being carried out.I sit on the edge of Melody’s exam table with my hands clenched so tightly my nails cut into my palms. Mary is still strapped to the chair in the corner, silent now, watching me with the kind of hatred that used to be enough to make me shrink.Not tonight. Tonight, the only thing I can see is midnight sliding closer.Melody moves around the room in tight, efficient circles, checking drawers, arranging sterile cloths, laying out instruments like she’s preparing for surgery.“Stop pacing,” I say hoarsely.“I’m not pacing,” she snaps, then catches herself and exhales. “I’m preparing.”My bond pulls east like a hook under my ribs. Alive. Far. Alive. Far. Then, another spike. Hot pain floods my sternum so suddenly I gasp and fold forward, one hand flying to my chest like I can hold the bond in place by force.Melody is at my side in

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