Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 171 - Chapitre 180

Ronan’s POVSomething unreadable moved across Kieran’s face. Gratitude maybe. Or shame sharpened by mercy he had not expected.Robert, damn him, tried to use the crack.“If you support him, then remain and strengthen the transition. You can help stabilise the pack while leadership is formalised.”I looked at him with flat disbelief.“You people truly don’t know when to stop.”Jorren rose this time. Not fully, but enough to lean heavier on his stick.“Ronan, listen to reason.”“No,” I said.“The pack needs time.”“It should have thought of that before.”“Your mate would be honoured here now,” Robert said, desperation making him stupid.That did it.I stood.Fast enough that two of the elders flinched.The tea things rattled softly on the table. Kieran rose too, not in challenge, more out of instinct because the room had suddenly tipped into something sharper. My mother stayed seated, calm as winter.“Honoured?” I repeated.The word came out low.Dangerously low.Robert realised too lat

Nyra’s POVIt was easier to say it looking at Ronan than it would have been saying it into the elders’ faces. Easier because he already knew what the locket meant. Easier because he had been there when I opened it, when the world tilted, when grief changed shape inside me.“She left me that for a reason,” I said, one hand rising to the locket at my throat. “She did not leave so I could run. She left it because there is something I have to do.”His expression darkened, not at me. At the reality of it. At the path opening under my feet that he had probably already seen and hated for the danger in it.Behind him, someone shifted.That was when the elders saw their opening.Of course they did.Elder Jorren stepped forward half a pace, his face arranged into something that might have passed for respect if I had not spent my life learning what their respect really cost.“Nyra,” he said, voice measured, almost careful. “If that is your decision, then perhaps there is another matter we can re

Nyra’s POVThe room changed the second Elara said it.“The Prima Society is on their way to Vandwood.”No one moved at first. It was strange how one sentence could do that, how it could turn a room that had already been tense into something tighter, colder, meaner. The air seemed to pull thin around all of us. The elders looked like people who had been handed another problem before they had managed to swallow the first one. Kieran’s shoulders went stiff. Ronan’s hand at my back did not move, but I felt his body sharpen beside me all the same. I looked at Elara. She had already lowered the phone, her face composed in that frightening way of hers. She did not look alarmed. She looked alert. Measuring. As if the arrival of the Prima Society was not a surprise she feared, but a complication she had already begun arranging inside her mind.For me, the words landed differently. Prima Society. The name itself dragged too many things behind it now. Elaine. The things she knew and never said i

Nyra’s POVKieran’s love had always felt like hunger hidden in shadow. Like hope whispered behind closed doors while daylight was reserved for someone stronger, cleaner, easier to claim. Ronan’s felt like a storm holding itself back with visible effort because it knew I was already wounded. That difference lived in my body even when I did not want to admit it. I felt it in the way his arms held me now. Fierce without crushing. Possessive without making me smaller. Devoted in a way that did not need secrecy to survive.My breathing grew steadier against him. His hand moved to the back of my neck then, fingers threading into my hair, and he gently drew me back just enough to look at me. He lifted my chin. Slowly. Like he wanted to be certain I would not flinch from the weight of his eyes.I looked at him. That was the mistake. Or maybe the mercy. Because once I met his gaze, the room seemed to fall away again. There was too much in his face. Too much he was not saying because he did not

Nyra’s POVFor a little while, the world stopped pressing. Not because it had become kinder. Not because anything had been solved. But because I was in Ronan’s bed with his arm around me, his body warm against mine, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I was not bracing against the next blow. The room was quiet except for our breathing and the faint sound of morning moving outside the windows. The sheets were twisted low around us, the air warm with the scent of him, of skin, of water from the shower we had not yet taken, of something deeper and quieter that felt like new memory settling itself into the room.I lay with my cheek on his chest and listened to his heartbeat. Strong. Steady. There. My fingers rested over the centre of him without thinking. His hand moved slowly over my back, not in hunger now, not in urgency, just in that same careful way he always touched me when he wanted me to feel him there without words. The locket hung at my throat, cool where it had sl