All Chapters of The Silver Fox Crown: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The first thing I notice is the silence.Not the normal quiet of my apartment—the kind I’ve learned to live inside, where the building creaks and the pipes groan and the neighbours music bleeds faintly through the wall at night.This is a silence with teeth.It hits me the moment I step into the hallway outside my door, keys still in my hand, grocery bag biting into my fingers. The air feels… wrong. Like it’s been held in someone else’s lungs and exhaled back out colder.My instincts don’t scream. They don’t even whisper.They just… stall.Which is worse.I stop mid-step, eyes tracking down the corridor. The lights overhead flicker once, steady, flicker again. The old carpet runner—brown and worn thin—still smells like lemon cleaner and damp wool. There’s nothing to see.But my skin tightens anyway.This building has always been safe because it’s boring. Because it’s tucked into the edge of a border city where people are too busy surviving their own lives to care about mine. Because I

The call comes in on a burner that only rings for three reasons.Death. Betrayal. Or her.I’m in the middle of a meeting I don’t give a damn about—territory reports, supply routes, the usual post-war rot that keeps people fed and keeps leaders pretending they’re not one bad week away from collapse. Bramrik is across from me, massive even in human form, arms folded, eyes half-lidded like he’s bored.Soryn stands by the window, watching the street below like he’s counting heartbeats.Elowen is the only one actually listening—chin tipped down, that calm predator focus that makes everyone else in the room feel like prey even if they don’t understand why.The phone buzzes once.I’m already moving.No explanation. No apology. I’m out of the room and into the hall before the second ring finishes, pulse spiking so hard it turns my hearing sharp.I answer. “Speak.”Static. Breath. Then a voice I recognize—one of ours, one of the quiet ones. Informant, paid and protected.“She came out of the t

I wake up like my body is still falling.Not the soft kind of waking—no stretch, no calm, no normal. Just a sharp inhale that drags pain through my skull and makes my stomach flip like I’m back in that van, braced against metal, trying to bite through fear and not puke from the cold burn of brinks.My eyes crack open and the room swims.Ceiling first—high, familiar, carved beams that used to feel like safety when I was twelve and convinced the Ashcroft mansion was the only place in Aurelith that couldn’t be touched. There’s a chandelier above me, dimmed low, throwing warm gold across stone walls and dark wood.East wing.My room.The one that faces the forest.That’s how I know I’m alive. Because my lungs fill with cedar and fireplace smoke and the faint clean bite of whatever herbs the healer rubbed into my temples.Then my head throbs and the memory slams into me anyway.Hands on my arms. Stairs. The brinks clamping around my wrists like cold teeth. Voices—calm, practiced. Like they

The hallway smells like shattered glass and blood and something sharp—chemical, manufactured—like the tranquilizer they used on her was meant for livestock.That detail lodges in my chest and stays there, heavy as a verdict.Bramrik has Seralyth in his arms, her body limp against his broad frame, her hair spilling over his forearm like a dark spill of ink. He moves fast but careful, the way a man carries something holy through a war zone.Vaelor’s already shifted back human, soaked in red, eyes cold enough to freeze stone. Soryn is half-shadow even in skin, knife in hand, gaze scanning the angles like he’s mapping the building in his head.And me?I’m the line between Bramrik and everyone who thinks they can reach her again.“Safe room,” I snap, voice clipped, because if I let anything softer slip out, it’ll crack. “Now.”Bramrik doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. He turns down the east corridor, away from the blown windows, toward the section of the mansion built before the last war

The first thing I pack is nothing.I stand in the center of my room—barefoot, heart hammering, the walls vibrating faintly with distant voices—and I realize how little of my life fits into a bag.How little of it was ever allowed to be real.“Five minutes,” Caelric says from the doorway. He doesn’t look at me when he says it. His focus is elsewhere—down the hall, the stairwell, the approaching pressure of authority that feels like static crawling under my skin.Five minutes to disappear.Again.I move fast after that. Not panicked—trained. Shirts, trousers, underthings rolled tight and shoved into the duffel Bramrik tossed onto the bed. Boots. Knife. The old leather band my father gave me that I never wear but never leave behind.My fingers shake when I grab it.Not fear. Anger.Outside the room, voices sharpen.Measured. Polite. Dangerous.Authority always sounds like it has time.I hear Rhevan before I see him—his voice clipped, commanding, the tone he uses when he’s about to burn a