All Chapters of Dagger of the Blood Moon: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Kai POVThe knock at the door sounds like a hesitant heartbeat against the wreckage of my study.​I have spent the last hour pacing this ruin. Splintered oak crunches heavily under my boots. Ink-smeared maps curl like dying leaves on the floorboards. The air is thick with the metallic bite of my own blood and the sour, suffocating tang of unbridled rage. Atlas prowls relentlessly in my chest, his rumble a low, fractured thunder that vibrates the shattered glass at my feet.​The frayed end of the mate bond is a constant, bleeding laceration. Liora's presence is nothing but a distant flicker in my veins. Her final, choked whisper of my name claws viciously at my sanity.​"Enter," I rasp. My voice is pure gravel, scraped entirely raw.​The door creaks open. Ophelia's scent blooms first—mugwort and sage, a healer's balm cutting through the decay of the room like moonlight through fog. She stands in the threshold, her grey hair pinned loose under her kerchief. Her lined face is etched deep

Queen Lirien POVThe glade-vein trembles in the foul aftermath of his stench.​The luminescent moss carpet recoils like flesh from a hot blister, its sapphire pulse stuttering under the sheer weight of my fury. A storm of starless voids swirls in my chest. Wicked black thorns unfurl from the vines surrounding my throne, violently raking the empty air where that rotten, rogue wolf hybrid just dared to stand.​Cassian.​The name slithers across my tongue like spoiled nectar. His violet eyes had gleamed with a gnat's pathetic cunning. The talisman's throb was a mocking heartbeat against my ancient wards as my vines dragged him to his knees.​Did he truly think to play me? Me? Lirien of the Eternal Thorns. The weaver of the veils between the wild and the whisper. The Queen whose court once bent the moon's silver to our absolute will.​His arrogant boldness curdles the jasmine breeze. The witches' nightshade clings to his heavy leathers like plague-filth, reeking of bubbling cauldrons and

Kai POVThe packhouse library is a forgotten sanctum this evening.​Its heavy oak shelves groan under tomes of faded lore and treaty scrolls that gather dust like the ghosts of old pacts. The air is thick with the musty whisper of parchment and the scent of beeswax from the single candle flickering on the table.​I chose this room deliberately. There are no war room echoes of frenzy here. There are no splintered ruins of my study to actively fuel the blaze building in my chest. Atlas prowls low, his silver rumble a contained, suffocating thunder. The severed mate bond is a constant knife-twist that violently sharpens every sense: Liora's distant pulse is faint but fierce, and Aria's whine threads through the silver tether like a desperate plea.​The blood moon crests in two days.​Every single search and rescue attempt we has launched so far has led to a dead end. Cassian and his fae-tainted cronies vanished completely into the labyrinth of the Iron Fang tunnels, swallowed by shadows

Kai POV​I leave the freezing stench of the silver cells behind me, taking the stone steps two at a time.​The frantic, suffocating despair that had chained me to the floor of my ruined study is completely gone. It has been burned away, replaced by a cold, calculating, and utterly lethal clarity. Atlas is no longer thrashing blindly in the dark. He has a scent. He has a target.​I push open the heavy double doors leading out to the packhouse courtyard.​The crisp night air hits my face, but I barely register the chill. The courtyard is packed. Over a hundred Blood Moon warriors are gathered under the bleeding light of the waxing moon. They are restless, pacing the dirt, their scents heavy with grief for the fallen and an agonizing, restless need for vengeance.​The moment I step onto the stone veranda, the murmurs instantly die.​Every head snaps toward me. I don't have to roar for their attention. I let the Alpha aura bleed freely into the pack link. It rolls over them like a heavy,

Liora POVThe cursed silver cage swings gently over the yawning, bottomless chasm at the edge of the glade-vein.​Every tiny shift of my weight sends the thick root-bars groaning. The air rushing up from the black void beneath me is freezing, carrying the ancient, suffocating scent of rotting earth and crushed bones. I sit perfectly still in the dead centre of the suspended prison, my knees pulled tightly to my chest, my arms wrapped around my shins.​Above me, the subterranean ceiling is webbed with jagged cracks. Through the fissures in the stone, the bruised, rotting crimson light of the waxing blood moon bleeds down into the cavern. It bathes the pulsing emerald moss and the hovering amber orbs in a sickly, violent red hue.​The magic in the air is growing impossibly heavy. It presses against my eardrums like the pressure of a deep ocean dive. The blood moon is reaching its absolute zenith. The rite is imminent.​I close my eyes, burying my face in my knees, desperately reaching i