Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 171 - Chapitre 180

Letty’s povThe deeper we went beneath Black Ridge, the colder the air became and it wasn't an ordinary cold. Ordinary cold bit at your skin and left it be, but this cold crawled beneath mine and stayed there, settling into my bones like it meant to take up permanent residence, whispering along the edges of my mind in a language I almost understood and didn't want to.My senses had always been sharper than most. Down here, in the dark, they felt almost unbearable. I could hear the slow grinding shift of stone settling somewhere far above us. Water, dripping in some hollow I couldn't place. The breathing of Mason and the warriors at my back, careful and controlled, the way soldiers breathe when they're trying not to show they're afraid.And beneath all of it, so faint I nearly mistook it for my own pulse.a heartbeat.It was weak, slow and unmistakably familiar.I stopped so abruptly that Mason nearly walked into me. My chest went tight, a vise closing around my ribs.I knew that heart

Letty’s povThe eye beneath the stone was gone.But I could still feel it. Watching and waiting, with the patience of something that had already waited a thousand years and had no reason to think a few more minutes would matter.The ground kept trembling beneath my feet as the cracks spread wider across the chamber floor, threading outward like veins of molten silver catching fire from the inside. Light poured up through them, washing over the ancient markings carved into the walls and making them seem, for one terrible heartbeat, as if they were moving.My mother's hand closed around my arm, weaker than I remembered a mother's grip should be, but no less urgent for it."Letty, we have to leave. Now."I looked at her, really looked, past the terror and the silver light, at the woman I had spent years longing. "Can you walk?"She managed a smile that didn't reach anywhere near her eyes. "I've survived worse than a little rubble.""That isn't an answer."She tried to prove it anyway, pu

Letty's POV"The First White Wolf…"Caelan's voice barely made it past his lips, as if saying the words too loudly might make them more true than he could bear."…has returned."For several long seconds, nobody in the chamber moved.The fortress had gone strangely quiet, not peaceful, never peaceful, not with silver light still pouring up through the cracked floor and the smell of blood and scorched stone thick in the air. This was the kind of silence that only followed something impossible. The kind that needed a moment to be believed before anyone dared disturb it.Every ancient wolf in the mountains around us had bowed.To me.I could still feel them out there, their presence pressing gently against the edges of my mind like a hundred distant whispers, patient and watchful and entirely, unnervingly mine now in some way I didn't yet understand.The Hollow had stopped mid motion as their hooded faces turned toward me as one. The First Blood warriors behind Mason had lowered their wea

Edwin looked past me to her, something raw and unguarded moving across his face. "I loved her more than anything I have ever held in my life. Before the power, before the crown. Before any of it."My mother closed her eyes slowly. "Then why, Edwin?"His face twisted with a pain that looked entirely genuine. "Because I was never satisfied. Never for once, I told myself power would keep us safe, and then I told myself more power would make us untouchable, and then somewhere along the way I convinced myself that if I simply controlled everything, I could never lose either of you again."He looked at me, voice cracking on the next words. "But every single time I chose power over the two of you, I lost something anyway. Every time. Without exception."My mother's whisper carried clearly across the silent chamber. "You lost me."He nodded slowly, eyes bright. "Yes.""And our daughter." She continuedHis eyes closed. "Yes.""And yourself, somewhere along the way."He didn't answer that one a

I understood, standing there, exactly what this choice might cost. If I sealed the gate the way my mother meant, I might lose everything I had only just discovered I carried, the connection threading through the mountain and the wolves and the earth itself, the power that had let me stop an army of Hollow with a single raised hand, maybe even the White Wolf herself, the part of me that had finally, after a lifetime of fear, started to feel like mine.After everything I had just found, I might have to give all of it back.I stepped toward the gate anyway.Mason's hand caught mine before I'd taken a second step. "No."I looked at him. "No, what?""You're not doing this alone." His grip tightened, steady and certain. "Not this. Not after everything else you've carried alone your entire life.""Mason, this isn't something you can…""No." His voice didn't waver. "You've spent your whole life shouldering things that were never fair for you to carry by yourself. Your blood, your mother's dis