Chapter Twenty -one

Chapter Twenty-One POV: Inez I pressed the phone tight against my ear and kept my voice low, my back against the cold stone of the servant's corridor where no one passing through would think to stop and listen. "It went well today," I said. "The picnic. Nothing seemed out of place." "Good," Zara said. Her voice was calm the way it always was, unhurried, the voice of someone who had never once needed to raise it to get what she wanted. "Your only job right now is making sure that the wedding happens as soon as possible. Once Damien and Sera are bonded, Kael will finally stop looking backward. He will let go of her completely. That is all I need from you." "You are certain of that," I said. "That he will let go, once the bond is formed." "I am certain of very little in this territory," Zara said. "But a completed bond changes what is possible and what is not, even for a man like Kael. He will not spend the rest of his life reaching for something that no longer belongs to reach fo

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty-Two POV: Kael Dravon "Cursed." Kelvin said the word like he hated having to repeat it to me. "That is what they are calling it in the lower district. That the Moon Goddess turned her back on you the night you rejected your fated mate, and now she is letting the pack bleed for it." "And the council believes this." "The council has each lost someone," Kelvin said. "Warriors. Cousins. In three cases, children. They do not need to believe in curses to be afraid of you right now. Fear does not require logic, it only requires loss, and every one of them has plenty of that." "So they sit in my council chamber and nod along while I speak, and then they go home and whisper about curses to their households." "I did not say it was fair," Kelvin said. "I said it was what was happening." "What do you suggest I do about it? Stand in front of them and declare the Moon Goddess has nothing against me. Convince five hundred grieving people that superstition is not the reason their

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty-Three POV: Sera Ashwood My father found me in the east hall, surrounded by three maids and a stack of linens I had been pretending to inspect for the last ten minutes. He waited until the maids stepped away before he spoke. "Are you certain about this," he said. Not a question really. He had asked it three times since the engagement was announced and each time his face carried the same worry,folded into the lines around his eyes. "I am certain," I replied. "You do not have to rush this, Sera. Take more time. Know him fully before you sign your life to him." "I know enough father." I set down the linen I was holding. "He is not like the others, Papa. He does not look at me and see the Veilborn. He looks at me and sees me." My father studied my face for a long moment, and whatever he found there made him nod once, slowly, though the worry did not leave him. He kissed my forehead and walked back toward the courtyard, and I went back to pretending the linens needed m

Chapter Twenty -Four

Chapter Twenty-Four POV: Inez I watched from behind the stable wall as they led the household out in chains, Sera among them, her chin still up even with her wrists bound in front of her. The other staff walked behind her in a ragged line, some of them crying openly, some of them silent in the particular way people go silent when they have decided that making noise will only make things worse. Tears ran down my face and I did not bother to wipe them away because it did not matter anymore who saw. Damien was left standing free at the gate. He had made sure of that before any of it started, some threat about war if Sera was not returned within three hours, and Kael's men had not touched him. I watched him watch her go, his jaw set in a way that could have meant anything, and I wondered, not for the first time, how a man with no pack and no history had managed to make himself the one person in this entire courtyard that Kael's soldiers were not permitted to lay a hand on. I was the o

Chapter Twenty -Five

Chapter Twenty-Five POV: Damien I was three reports into a briefing on the outer packs when my guard came in without knocking, which told me before he even spoke that whatever he had to say was not going to wait. "Reuel came to see Sera." I did not put the report down. "And." "He left before you arrived. Did not stay long." I was not surprised, and I was not worried either. I had spent the better part of two weeks quietly building a file on Reuel Ashton, the same way one gets built on anyone who spends too much time circling something they cannot have. Old debts. A moneylender he had been visiting more often than a man of his standing had any reason to. A pattern of questions asked to the wrong people in the wrong taverns, questions about my finances specifically, dressed up as concern for Sera's safety when anyone paying attention could see what it actually was. What I had on him now was enough to make Sera stop looking at him like an old friend and start looking at him like a

Chapter Twenty -Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven POV: Damien My mole inside Kael's ranks sent word an hour before dawn, a short message routed through three separate hands before it ever reached me, the way everything from inside his household had to travel if it wanted to arrive without a trail behind it. Kael had found nothing on Sera or her household. No connection to the missing men, no evidence, nothing his own council could point to and call proof. And still he was holding everyone. I read the message twice and set the phone down slowly, because reading it a second time did not change what it told me. It confirmed something I had already suspected but had not wanted to be true, that this had never been about guilt or innocence at all. Kael was not a man conducting an investigation. He was a man buying hours, and every hour he bought was one less hour I had before the moon came up without her. My own people were pressing from the other direction. The full moon was three hours out and the voice on the enc

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven POV: Damien My mole inside Kael's ranks sent word an hour before dawn, a short message routed through three separate hands before it ever reached me, the way everything from inside his household had to travel if it wanted to arrive without a trail behind it. Kael had found nothing on Sera or her household. No connection to the missing men, no evidence, nothing his own council could point to and call proof. And still he was holding everyone. I read the message twice and set the phone down slowly, because reading it a second time did not change what it told me. It confirmed something I had already suspected but had not wanted to be true, that this had never been about guilt or innocence at all. Kael was not a man conducting an investigation. He was a man buying hours, and every hour he bought was one less hour I had before the moon came up without her. My own people were pressing from the other direction. The full moon was three hours out and the voice on the enc

Chapter Twenty -Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight POV: Sera Ashwood I stayed against the wall, arms still folded, watching the two of them wait for their own reasons to hear the same answer, my wrists still stinging faintly where the iron had bitten into them before I finally broke it. Kael found his voice first. "You are dreaming," he said, looking at me but speaking loud enough for the whole room, loud enough for Zara to hear every word of it clearly. "I could never love you. My love is Zara. She is standing right beside me." He kept talking before I could respond, explaining something about Kelvin, about how Kelvin would not stand a chance against my power if I decided to use it against Zara on the road home, that it had to be him, personally, who stayed close enough to subdue me if it came to that. Practical. Strategic. Not a single word, anywhere in it, about wanting to stay for reasons that had nothing to do with strategy at all. Something in my chest went dim when he said it, small and quiet, and I hat

Chapter Twent-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine POV: Sera Ashwood Something throbbed low in my veins, insistent, like my wolf had found a door inside me I had not known existed and was leaning her whole weight against it, testing the hinges one at a time. "Do you really think bringing me to the middle of nowhere will stop me," I said, turning to find Kael watching me with an expression that did not match the confidence still sitting in his voice. "Give up being tough, Sera." But there was something underneath the words, a thread of uncertainty he was not quite able to smooth away no matter how level he tried to keep his tone, and I heard it clearly even if he thought he had hidden it. I watched him guide Zara toward a waiting speedboat, Kelvin already seated at the controls, Zara hesitating at the edge of the deck the way someone hesitates when they are not entirely sure the ground beneath them is solid. Kael helped her down. The boat pulled away from the ship a moment later, cutting a white line through the

Chapter Thirty

Chapter ThirtyPOV: ZaraI watched him walk away and I stood in that corridor and I felt everything I had been holding together with both hands for months come apart at once and I let it come apart because there was nobody watching and I was done performing composure for a room that was empty.Last night had meant nothing to him. That was the thing sitting in the center of everything else, sharp and immovable, refusing to be filed away or managed or reframed into something less painful than what it actually was. I had given him last night and I had told myself it would change something, that proximity and warmth and the thing between us that was real regardless of everything else would be enough to shift the direction he was moving in, and he had walked away this morning toward her like last night had not happened at all.I went to my room and the door closed behind me and I stood in the middle of it and looked at everything arranged exactly as I had arranged it and felt something snap

Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 21 - Chapitre 30

Chapter Twenty -one

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty -Four

Chapter Twenty -Five

Chapter Twenty -Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty -Eight

Chapter Twent-Nine

Chapter Thirty