جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 50

ETHANPain was the first thing I was aware of.I felt it everywhere, so deep in my bones.The second thing I was aware of was Freya's voice."You stay with me. Do you hear me? You stay with me right now."She was close. Very close. I could feel her hands on my face, and underneath the pain, there was something else. Something warm and pulsing, like a current running through the bond between us. It was keeping me from going under. I could feel it.Later I found out what she'd done. Omegas with strong enough resonance could push stability through the bond in a crisis. It wasn’t healing exactly, but something close, and it managed to buy some time. She held me together in the field while Fen and two doctors got there, and she didn’t let go even once.I didn't remember most of the next few hours.I regained consciousness in a bed in the Northern Pack's main lodge, with a doctor checking my shoulder and Freya sitting in a chair directly beside me. She looked like she hadn't moved in hours

ETHANEverything happened in under ten seconds.Corin moved way faster than I expected, which was saying something because I'd trained with him for years. He knew my moves. I knew his.But he went for Freya first. That was his mistake.I got between them before he made contact, and the fight that followed was brutal and short. He got in two good punches before I ended it. The last one put him on the ground. He didn't get back up.As I stood over him, breathing hard, one of the pack's oldest laws flashed through my mind. He'd moved against his Alpha and Luna. He'd poisoned my mother. He'd been feeding Lena information from inside these walls for months.I gave him one more second. One more breath. He didn't beg. He didn't even look surprised.It was done quickly. It was clean too. I made sure of that.Then I heard Freya behind me.She didn’t make a sound exactly, just a sharp breath. When I turned around, her hand was pressed against her side as blood spread out between her fingers.My

ETHANI woke up alone. And I wasn’t just alone, but everything felt wrong.The space beside me was cold and from the bond felt, I could tell Freya was far away and moving fast. I was on my feet before I was fully awake, pulling on clothes as I moved to the window.Her scent was still in the room, but it was already fading."Fen!" I was out the door before he could even answer.He met me in the hall, half-dressed, clearly already awake. One of the outside guards had noticed the side door. He held up his phone. "She went south." His jaw was tight. "Toward the border."The border meant Brian's Pack. My whole body went cold immediately."Don't tell anyone else," I said. "The only people who just know about this are just you and me.""Ethan, we should—""Just us," I said. "If we go in with too many men, people will get hurt. She's trying to trade herself and if Brian sees a war party coming, he'll move the others somewhere we can't find them." I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door

ETHANI didn't sleep.I drifted in and out for maybe an hour or two before I gave up entirely and went to the war room. The maps were already spread all over the table. Fen had been up all night marking positions."The east side's been holding," he said when I walked in. "The west side is messier. Whoever's coordinating this knows our patrol routes.""Someone fed them intel," I said. It wasn't a question."That's what it looks like." He pointed to two spots on the map. "They've been careful not to breach these parts. They're just sitting there, waiting."I looked at the map for a long time. "They want us to make the first move.""Or they're waiting for a signal from someone inside."Neither option was good.We spent the next three hours going over everything, fortifying the grounds, moving the non-fighters to the center of the pack, and getting the soldiers into rotation so nobody would be burned out before the fight even started.***Freya was in the training grounds when I found he

ETHANBrian was alive.I kept reminding myself of that while the doctor worked on him. The shot had gone through his shoulder cleanly, missing the artery. He'd lost a lot of blood but he was stable. He was going to be okay, which meant he could finish telling us what he'd started.I stood outside the door of the room with my arms crossed, listening to the pack settle around me. The fighting had stopped when Brian went down. Both sides had pulled back by instinct. The single combat had been witnessed by enough people that it carried its own weight, and when I walked back through the courtyard covered in blood, nobody tried to start it up again.Fen came to stand next to me. "Lena’s gone," he said. "We have people looking but she had a head start and she knows how to move without being detected.""She'll surface," I said."Yeah." He paused. "Ethan, she's completely lost it. She shot the man she's been chasing for two years. Whatever her plan was—""It changed," I interjected. "Brian was