All Chapters of Marked by the Lycan King: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

For two weeks they had been safe under Ashdale protection as promised that was the deal I made when I left Ashdale: twins remain with him while I went to Vael for questioning. I was moving before Sera finished the sentence. Jasper did not try to stop me. He fell into step beside me, which I noted without commenting on, and we walked through the palace corridors at a pace that was not running and was everything running was in terms of urgency.The palace gates were in the outer courtyard, heavy iron things that were open now with six of Jasper’s enforcers positioned around them in the specific formation that meant they were managing a situation rather than preventing one. Rowan stood on the inside of the gates. He had clearly been travelling road dust on his jacket, the particular fatigue of someone who had pushed through the night to arrive somewhere before a deadline he was not sure he would beat.He was holding both twins.One in each arm, both of them awake and regarding the palace

I did not allow myself to be afraid. This was different from not being afraid. The fear was present, specific, and entirely reasonable given the available information. I simply did not allow it to speak for me, which was a discipline I had been practicing since I was nine years old in an Ashcroft pack house where fear was the only response available and also the most dangerous one.The healer’s station was ready. The Ashdale wolves had integrated with Jasper’s security in the quiet professional way of wolves who understood their assignment. Sera had commandeered a section of the palace kitchens to pre-prepare the silver-neutralizing compound in quantities that the palace healers had not thought to produce, because the palace healers had not anticipated the volume of silver wounds that Darius’s intelligence suggested were coming.I had been thinking about it since Jasper told me about the attack.Lady Oriane found me in the station in the afternoon. She moved slowly, still recovering f

I put both hands on his chest before he was fully on the table.I did not think about the cost. I did not calculate the risk to the twins or the risk to myself or the hours of sustained work that had preceded this moment; I had already taken more than I had intended to spend. I thought about none of it. The moon-born gift moved, I moved with it, and the space between intention and action collapsed to nothing, which was the only way this particular thing could be done.The silver was deep. Deeper than Oriane’s had been at its worst. More acute, because a blade delivered it directly rather than the slow accumulation of compound in food. It was in his blood and moving, doing what it was designed to do, and what it was designed to do was kill a wolf who could not be killed by most ordinary means.It met the moon-born warmth in my hands, and the warmth said: no.I pulled. The burning was immediate and total, worse than anything I had felt in the healing night, worse than the silver-compoun

I was still on the floor when they came in.I want to be clear about that. The Elder Council of the Vael Kingdom filed into the healer’s hall in their formal robes while I was sitting on the stone floor with my back against a table leg, my hands trembling in my lap, blood drying on my upper lip, and Jasper’s hand in mine from where he had reached down from the bed and found me. I did not get up. I had assessed the available options, and the floor was working fine.Jasper had said they could speak to us here. They were going to have to.Elder Voss spoke first. He was the oldest of them, the most traditional, the one who had filed the formal challenge to my right to be named Luna on the grounds of Omega birth status and lack of noble standing. I had not forgotten this. I suspected he had not expected me to still be present to remember it.‘The battle has changed the calculation,’ he said. His voice was measured. Careful. The voice of a man choosing his words with the awareness that they

Jasper decided without hesitation. The ceremony would not be postponed.He told me himself, in the corridor outside the ceremonial hall with twenty minutes to midnight and the intelligence report in his hand. He said, " Whatever comes next, this happens first. The threat is contained, the battle is over, and we are not going to let someone’s last attempt at disruption take this from us.I looked at him. I said, " Agreed.He looked slightly surprised. I think he had expected an argument. I had spent enough energy arguing about the situation. Tonight, I was done arguing.The ceremonial hall was the same.I walked into it and felt that fact in the specific part of me that kept records of things that had cost something. The same stone floor. The same high windows through which the same moonlight came at the same angle. The same arrangement of torches along the walls produces the same quality of flickering warm light. The same hall in which, nine months ago, a king had looked at me and call