Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

Sienna's POV My knees hit the stone with a crack that shot pain up through my thighs and into my skull. The weight came down from every direction and squeezed the air out of me. I couldn't turn my head and couldn't blink. Something pulsed behind my eyes, slow and heavy, nothing to do with fighting. I tried to speak, and nothing came. She was asleep. Nothing I did woke her. The old wolf had shut down completely and left me on my knees in front of our creator. I'd have given anything for even a scrap of her strength right then, but she couldn't give me a single word. Blood dropped from my nose and hit the white marble by my cheek, filling my mouth with sharp metal. I tried again to lift my head. The light burned through my closed eyes and was too heavy to push against. My mother's voice came to me from the southern ridge, from a time when the worst thing I had to worry about was whether I'd finished my chores before dark. No one looks upon the Mother, Sienna. Not the Alphas and not e

Damien's POV For two days I'd heard Kael's boots in the corridor outside my chambers, back and forth more times than I wanted to count. The succession trial started the next morning. I didn't know exactly what he intended, but I knew this: he wouldn't take my birthright while I was still breathing. I stood in front of the mirror and buckled my leather armor piece by piece. My reflection looked tired, and the color that used to run under my skin when the bond was whole was gone now. I thought about the hours I'd lost to the feral state, the blank stretch where my memory should have been. Even now I couldn't picture her face clearly, just a shape where she should have been. I remembered one thing clearly from the feral days: a hand on my arm, small and cold and gripping hard enough to leave marks. I didn't know whose hand it was. I just knew it had been there, and then it wasn't. In front of me, the glass flickered. I put my palm against it. "Sienna." My wolf growled low in my che

Damien's POV "Where do you think you're going?" My arms closed around Sienna before my brain finished processing the sound. She was trembling, or maybe that was me. I turned, putting my body between her and Clara. My chest tightened. Clara walked toward us with no limp, no pallor, none of the fragility that had kept me at her bedside for three nights holding her hand while she described the sacrifice she'd made. She held my eyes the whole way across the floor, her chin level. "Don't you want to see me?" Her lips curved, nothing soft in it. She stepped between us and the exit, blocking it without hurry. Sienna went still against my arm, her breath catching. Hair rose on the back of my neck. "Don't tell me you were pretending." My voice scraped raw. "All this time, Clara. You're supposed to be in bed. After everything." I stopped, my stomach turning. "The priest confirmed it. He said you were dying." Her laugh was short, almost pretty. Her eyes stayed flat through it. Behind her,

Sienna's POV He was still breathing. That was the only thought I let myself carry while I dragged us both toward the treeline. I heard the river before I saw the trees. I steered us toward the sound because water meant cover, and cover meant time we hadn't earned yet. My boots kept sliding in the wet grass. His arm was heavy across my shoulders, heavier than a man his size had any right to be. My hands wouldn't stop shaking, worse than when running from the rogues. I lowered him against an oak wide enough to hide behind and knelt in front of him, my hands going to his face. "Damien." His lashes moved. A thin line of blood ran from the corner of his mouth, already drying. I wiped it away with my thumb and felt the muscle in his jaw shift under the contact. His skin felt cold under my palm. Not dangerously cold, but colder than it should have been. "We're safe," I said, without much right to say it. Behind us, the treeline stayed quiet, the rogues nowhere in sight. For now, that wa

Damien's POV My knees hit the cold ground. Sienna trembling under my palm as I held her by the waist, both of us staring toward the tree line where Lydia's voice still hung. "Damien." Barely above a whisper. "Who is she?" My throat tightened. I cupped her face, her skin too warm, feverish from whatever the fight had burned out of her. "Honey, don't worry." The word came out before I'd planned it. "Whatever's coming, I don't want you near it." Facing Lydia alone wasn't a choice I liked, but it was the only one I had. Not with the stone still eating through my chest and my real strength locked behind whatever the ritual had wrecked. I reached inward. Wake up. I need help. My wolf answered sluggish and unwilling. She's dangerous. Superior. Careful. I don't have a choice. Does she have a weakness? A frustrated snort came through the mindlink. No. Trained out of emotion. She doesn't understand humans. Not really. Sienna's voice cut the connection. "Damien, please." She