The morning after everything

Selene's POV · Kael's POV · Lira's POVNobody slept well. That was probably fair.Ironmoor had absorbed a lot in forty-eight hours. A freed weapon. A bond manipulator with forty years of maps. A funder who turned out to be Kael's sister. The pack bond-web had that particular stretched quality — not broken, nothing snapped. More like the morning after a long argument. Everything still standing. Everyone aware that some of the furniture had moved.I was at the table in the main hall by the time anyone else appeared. List of six names in front of me. Cold cup of something I'd forgotten to drink.Vael came in first. Sat across from me without ceremony. Looked at the list."We start today?" she asked."Today," I said.She nodded. Pulled the list toward her. Read it. Pushed it back. "The first three — I know their construct architecture. I was linked to their network for months." She paused. "I can guide the inner layers. If that helps.""It helps," I said.That was the whole conversation.

Three of us. Finally.

Selene's POV · Kael's POVNeva had questions.Not many. She wasn't the kind of person who asked questions for the sake of filling silence — she asked when she actually needed to know something, which made each one land with more weight than a stream of them would have. On the first day of riding south she asked about Ironmoor's territory size. On the second she asked about Lyra. Specifically: how long Lyra had been Beta, what she was like under pressure, whether she was the kind of person who said what she thought or the kind who said what was useful."Both," I said. "At the same time."Neva considered that. "Good," she said. "Those are the ones worth trusting."She asked about the dead garden on the second afternoon. I had mentioned it — the yarrow, the rose bud, the way Ironmoor's bond-web felt warmer in that corner of the grounds. She listened with the focused attention she gave everything, and then she said: "How long was it dead?""Four years," I said. "Since Kael's first mate di

The rose, as promised

Selene's POV · Kael's POVSpring came to Ironmoor on a Tuesday.Not officially — officially it had been spring for three weeks, the calendar and the temperature in reasonable agreement for once. But the actual feeling of it, the thing that made you stop what you were doing and look up, arrived on a Tuesday morning when the light changed quality. Lost its winter flatness. Went warmer and more specific, the way light does when it has decided to mean something.I was in the garden when it happened. I was in the garden most mornings now. It had become the kind of habit that reveals something about you when you notice you've developed it — not a decision, just a direction the body keeps choosing.The rose had three buds.Not one. Three. The original dark red one that had been there since November, and two smaller ones that had appeared in the last two weeks with the quiet determination of things that have decided the conditions are finally right. All of them tight. All of them waiting.I c

All Chapters of the last wolf witch.: Chapter 21 - Chapter 23

The morning after everything

Three of us. Finally.

The rose, as promised