جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 60

ELARA..It happened during breakfast.Aria wanted my plate. I was eating eggs. She decided she wanted them too."No, baby. You have your food." I pointed to her mashed bananas.She didn't want bananas. She wanted my eggs.When I said no again, she started crying.Normal baby crying at first. Frustrated, angry, loud.Then something shifted.The crying became something else. Something that hit every wolf sense I had like a physical blow.*COMFORT ME.*Not words. Pure compulsion wrapped in a baby's distress.I dropped my fork, stumbling toward her. Had to comfort her. Had to make her stop crying. Nothing else mattered—Kael reached her first, picking her up. But his face was blank. Compelled.Through the pack bonds, I felt it. Hundreds of wolves all responding to the same overwhelming command.*COMFORT THE BABY.*Footsteps thundered through the estate. Pack members running toward the nursery. All of them. Security, kitchen staff, warriors training outside. Everyone within a mile radius

ELARA..The "easier path" Theron showed me the next morning was still a six-hour hike.But at least it didn't require climbing vertical rock faces."Stay on the path," Theron instructed at dawn. "Don't deviate. The forest has... protections.""What kind of protections?""The kind that kill trespassers." He handed me a carved stone. "This will let you pass safely. Don't lose it."I pocketed the stone carefully. "Thank you for your help.""Thank me by bringing those children back. I want to see what all the fuss is about." He returned to his cabin without another word.I started hiking. Following the narrow trail through dense forest.The first attack came at hour two.Three wolves. Not pack wolves—rogues. Wild. Dangerous. They emerged from the trees, circling me."I don't want trouble," I said, backing toward a large rock. "Just passing through."The largest one snarled. Lunged.I shifted. Barely. My wolf still felt rusty from months of not shifting. But instinct kicked in.We fought

The morning air inside the Blackwood estate's lower training hall was cold and still, carrying the faint smell of earth and old stone. Elara stood at the edge of the wide circular room, arms crossed over her chest, watching.Theron Ashveil stood in the center.He was old. Not in the way normal people aged, with soft wrinkles and slower steps. No. Theron's age lived in his eyes, a deep, heavy darkness that came from centuries of watching the world turn. He was the oldest living Alpha elder on the continent, summoned personally by the Council after Elara's shift at the summit. His white hair was pulled back severely, and his posture was straight as iron.Beside him stood Lena and Luca.Elara's twins.Three years old, and already the most powerful supernatural children anyone in the Council had ever encountered. They had stopped their mother mid-shift at the summit with nothing but their voices. That fact alone had shaken every elder present. And now they were here, in training clothes t

The file Nyx dropped on the table was thick.Not digitally thick. Physically thick. A printed, bound collection of documents, photographs, surveillance logs, and intercepted communications that landed with a heavy slap against the conference room table and made everyone in the room go quiet.Nyx stood at the head of the table with her arms crossed and her expression doing what it always did when she had information that made her furious. It went very still. Controlled. Like a blade that had been sharpened so many times it no longer needed to announce itself."I want everyone to understand what they're looking at before I start talking," she said. "Because once I say these things out loud in this room, we cannot pretend we don't know them. And knowing them means we have decisions to make that cannot be unmade."She looked around the table. Kael sat at one end, his posture deceptively relaxed in the way it always was when he was actually at his most alert. Elara sat across from him, han

The call came at 3:17 in the morning.Elara was asleep when her phone went off, the sharp buzz pulling her out of a dream she couldn't remember by the time her eyes opened. She reached for it automatically, the habit of a mother who had spent three years sleeping with one ear open.The name on the screen was Nyx.She answered before the second buzz."They moved," Nyx said. No greeting. No preamble. "Tonight. Multiple locations simultaneously. We have confirmed raids on the Ashford Creek settlement in Connecticut, the Hollow Ridge community in upstate New York, and the Grey Pines estate in New Jersey." A pause. "There may be more. We're still getting reports."Elara was already out of bed. "How many taken.""Confirmed captures so far, thirty-one. Mostly from Ashford Creek. They hit it hardest. It's a smaller settlement, less pack infrastructure, fewer trained fighters." Another pause, shorter this time. "Elara. There were families there. Children."She stopped moving for exactly two se