Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 41 - Chapitre 50

Sienna's POV Damien's weight dropped harder against my shoulders. I shifted my grip to hold him up. Branches had snagged our clothes and roots had caught our feet for an hour. The canopy broke open onto a sky fading from purple to grey. Woodsmoke drifted in the air, mixed with yeast and sweat from the sleeping town. The ground firmed under my boots, packed dirt instead of root and loam. I'd been carrying half his weight since we left the trees. His arm heavy across my shoulders, his ribs grinding against mine with every step. He caught his breath each time his foot landed wrong. He hadn't spoken in ten minutes, his jaw locked against the pain. I could feel the stone through his shirt without touching it. A cold pulse against my side. The tether felt weaker every step. "Almost there," I said, my throat raw, each word costing more than it should. "Town?" He got the word out like it cost him everything he had left. "Yes." He didn't ask how I knew. He trusted my instincts, the same

Sienna's POV Cool air met me at the window, pine drifting up from the forest beyond town with something sour underneath it, smoke from somewhere far off. Behind me, Damien breathed steady in the dark, a rhythm I checked without meaning to, proof nothing had changed while I wasn't watching. A full moon hung too bright in the sky, and my chest caught hard. My father's voice surfaced, clear enough that for a second I turned to check if he was behind me. "Sienna, you're precious to me and your mother. Never forget who you are. Fight hard. Chase what makes you happy." Tears blurred the moon until I couldn't see it straight. Back on that stage, the pack gathered below, my father's hand raised to name me future Alpha of the River Moon Pack. Then the doors slammed open. Morrigan. Ivy. Morrigan's voice cut through the hall, shouting. "This man's a murderer. He killed a Silver Fang guard." Frozen on that stage, I waited for my father to answer, and then Lucas came cutting through the crowd

Damien's POV Sienna on the floor, bleeding, undid something in me I didn't have a name for. Tears ran down my face and I let them. Nothing had ever pulled that out of me before — not my mother leaving, not my father's fall, not years of becoming something the world learned to fear. But this. Blood under her cheek. Skin healing too slow. Marks striping her back where the wire had caught her twice, where bone had cracked against a chair. She'd stepped into something meant for someone else. I knelt beside her. The floor was cold and slick under my knees. Her eyes were closed, her lashes dark against her pale skin. I let that sit a second before I could make myself speak. "Lily." My voice came out rough. "Why would you do this?" No answer. If Lydia hadn't told me what Sienna had poured into me, I'd have taken this for nothing worse than a bad beating instead of a body running on fumes. "Nox," she breathed. I lifted her. She weighed nothing and burned like a fever at the same time,

Damien's POV I sat at the table by the window, both hands around a clay mug I hadn't touched. The warmth against my palms was enough for now. Sienna had still been sleeping when I came down. I'd stood in the doorway longer than I needed to, watching her chest rise and fall in the grey light, her silver hair loose on the pillow, her hand open at her side. The wound on her ribs was closing faster than I let myself question out loud. The angry color had faded, and there was no catch in her breathing, the kind that had kept me up the first three nights. I'd waited until I was sure. Light came through the shutter gaps in thin strips, flat and cold across the floorboards. The room still held last night's chill, old wood and tallow and whatever George had been cooking since before dawn. George stood at the fire, turning a pan with the focus of a man who takes cooking seriously. Oil, crushed herbs, something sweet underneath—honey maybe, or the dark fruit he'd hauled in from market yester

Sienna's POV My heart stopped. Every person on the street stood frozen mid-step, mid-word, the whole town locked in place at once. Cold sat against my skin and refused to lift. Damien's hand closed around mine from behind, two fingers first, then his whole grip, steady. We turned together. Morrigan stood in the road, arms folded, the red silk catching the flat morning light and throwing it back wrong. Her eyes moved between us slowly, the patience of someone who hasn't found what she wants yet but knows it's close. The crack on my face had sealed already. The disguise sat back against my skin, fragile now, one wrong move away from splitting again. I softened my knees, let my whole body go young and unremarkable, and bowed my head. "Is everything alright, my lady?" Her gaze sharpened. "You two. Who are you?" "Foreigners, my lady." Damien stepped forward, drawing her attention off me. "There's war where we come from. We came here for work, and a safer road. Nothing more." She