All Chapters of The Omega's Crown: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Selene's POVRiven found her in the north.He had not been looking. He had been in the northern territory for two months, building the life he had decided to build, and Seraphine Cole had come to the same territory through a route no one had anticipated — the old coven network that had been officially disbanded and had apparently continued informally through two members who had not been on the documented list.He had sent the letter to Kael first. Then to me.The letter was three sentences long.Sir. I have her. What do you want me to do?Kael and I sat with the letter at the east wing kitchen table.My mother was not in the room.She had gone when Kael had said we needed to discuss the letter, which meant she understood what the letter was about without being told, which meant she had been expecting this possibility."He found her," I said."Yes.""In the north. Where he went to rest.""Yes."I held the letter.I thought about Seraphine Cole. The forty-year campaign. The hex was plac

Selene's POVThe baby was asleep at the second hour.I knew because the bond between me and the wolf was quiet in the specific way it went quiet when Lirien was sleeping — not the absence of her, the settling of her, the specific frequency she went to when she was in the deep sleep of a baby who had been awake for a long time and had finally run out of things to assess.I was at the Luna chambers window.Not anxious. Not managing anything. Just awake — the specific awake of the late hours that had become, in the last few months, a time I used for the kind of thinking that didn't have a task attached to it. Just thought. Just looking at the pine line and the lake and the eastern wall and the moon.Kael was beside me.He had come to the window without being asked, the way he came to most things now — aware of where I was and present when it mattered. He stood to my left. He was in the shirtsleeves, the first two buttons open, the hair that he had run a hand through before he came.We st

Selene's POVLirien was walking.Not steadily — she had been walking for three weeks and had the specific confident wobble of a child who had decided she was going to walk regardless of whether her legs had fully committed to the project. She walked the way she did everything, which was with complete conviction and the expression of a person who had decided what was happening and was waiting for the room to catch up.She had her grandfather's eyes.She had his quality of decision, too, which my mother had been noting for months with the specific expression she wore when she was watching something she had seen before.It was a Thursday morning in the second year.I was at the writing table in the east study with the Council correspondence and the second cup of coffee and the specific rhythm of a working morning that had been my working mornings for two years now. The border adjustment had been extended to four more territories. The spring session had produced three new precedents I was

Selene's POVThe wolf and I have a conversation sometimes.Not the quick exchanges — the one-word certainties and the wag and the there she is and the home. A real conversation. The kind that requires sitting down.We have them late at night, when the building is quiet and the bond is at its resting frequency and I'm at the window watching the pine line. They have been happening since the second year of the marriage. Sometimes once a month. Sometimes twice a week. Never on a schedule. They come when she has something to say, or when I do, and the other one is ready to listen.The conversations have a quality the day-to-day exchanges do not. The day-to-day exchanges are the running of the bond — the small constant communication of two animals sharing one body, the wag at the breakfast table, the home when Kael takes my hand, the pressing forward when I walk into a room that needs me. The conversations are different. They are what happens when she sets the work down for an hour and we l

Kael's POVSet during Chapter 10 — the night of Selene's nightmare.I was half-asleep when he stirred.He had been silent for three years.Not absent — present in the way of a wolf who had been there continuously and was, for reasons of his own, not speaking. The kind of silence that was its own statement. I had stopped expecting to hear from him in the second year. By the third I had stopped checking.He stirred at the third hour.She is afraid.I lay still in the dark."What."She is afraid. Go to her."Why."Because you should.I lay still for the count of five.I had not heard him speak in three years. I had not been certain, in those three years, that he was still there. The hex on me had been working — I had not known it was a hex, then, but I had known what the absence felt like, the slow thinning of presence, the way the world had gone quieter around me, the way the brandy had stopped working and the sleep had stopped working and the fire had stopped warming. I had thought it