chapter 131

Calla's POVJade showed up with takeout and wine before I'd even finished texting her the full story, like she'd heard the shake in my voice through the phone and decided this one needed to happen in person."Okay." She set the containers down on my coffee table, pulling off her jacket. "Say it again, slower this time. I want to make sure I heard you right.""You already heard it right the first time. I could hear you stop breathing through the phone.""I needed a second to process before I showed up and said something unhelpful." She dropped onto the couch beside me, bumping my shoulder gently with hers. "So. Slower.""Ronan wants me to publicly acknowledge some kind of bloodline. In front of both packs. At the assembly, probably, once Daven gets it scheduled." I sat across from her, knees pulled up to my chest. "In exchange for the rest of what he knows about Mara's inside contact.""The bearer bloodline. The one his father spent forty years chasing." Jade said it slowly, like she w

Last Updated : 2026-10-11

chapter 132

Calla's POVI rounded them all up in the living room because secondhand news was always distorted by whoever delivered it first.I wanted them to hear this from me, in my words, before anyone else reacted to a rumor instead of the reality."Ronan had Mara's inside contact," I said when we'd all occupied the seats.Daven on an armchair, Calix pacing back and forth in the space in front of the desks, Knox on the sofa next to me, Soren in the corner that he always claimed when he wanted to take up a room but have someone else watch him. "A steward, Voss. He's got proof. Border logs, cheating patrol reports, enough to bring him in.""That's good news." Daven leaned forward. "Why do you look like you're about to tell us the part that isn't?""Because there's a price attached. Ronan won't hand over the rest of what he knows unless I publicly acknowledge something. In front of both packs." I made myself say it plainly, the way Ronan had said it to me. "A bloodline. The one his father spent f

Last Updated : 2026-10-12

chapter 133

Calla's POVThe apartment felt different when I was alone at last.Quiet, but my space again, with opinions no longer surrounding the air.Simply me, and that one question I hadn't posed to myself.I made tea I didn't really want yo occupy my hands on the kitchen table where I'd had this chat with Daven a couple of weeks ago, before someone decided to give this whole thing a name.The face of my mother followed me like a name, the way it always does now.More memory than image, frayed at the edges, years I'll never recover. I'd built her whole up in my mind around the things I'd mourned.I'd mourned her voice, her hair braided too tightly by force of habit and delayed apology, the final time we spoke, an utterly mundane exchange we'd never guess was our last.I'd never even once let myself consider her as a person who had ever carried this weight ahead of me.As a child, I'd always assumed the holes in what I knew about her were just life's usual comfort holes. A mother who was gone

Last Updated : 2026-10-12

chapter 134

Ronan's POVI checked my phone forty times before noon, which was a ridiculous number for a man who prided himself on patience, and I knew it was ridiculous even while I was doing it for the forty-first time.She'd said she needed time. I'd told her to take it, meant every word of that when I said it, and now I was sitting in my father's old study at nine in the morning, staring at a silent phone as it owed me something it hadn't agreed to give."You're doing the thing again." My cousin Freya leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, a knowing look on her face that I'd long since stopped being able to hide anything from. "Pacing. Checking your phone. Pretending you're reading whatever's on that desk when you haven't turned a page in ten minutes.""I'm working.""You're waiting." She stepped further into the room, settling into the chair across from me like she intended to stay until I admitted it. "For Calla's answer.""For Calla's answer," I agreed, because there was no point lying

Last Updated : 2026-10-13

chapter 135

Calla's POVI chose the house this time, not the overlook, because whatever happened in this conversation, I wanted it happening on ground that was mine.Ronan arrived precisely on time like he always did, and I watched him as he absorbed the one sheet of paper that sat on the kitchen table between us before he sat down."You've written it out," he said, a little painstakingly."I wanted to be accurate. No risk that we would both forget what we'd agreed to afterwards." I pointed to the chair before me. "Sit. I'll read it through carefully."He sat there, hands folded, looking at me as he spoke, steadying something in my chest that I'd somehow forgotten was unsteady."Before we begin," I said. "I want to make sure you're actually ready to hear the terms and not just agreeing to anything I say out of guilt for asking in the first place.""I'm prepared." His eyes bore into mine. "I'm not going to commit to this and then let you down later to smooth things over. And if one of your terms t