جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

Brenda’s POVThe citadel was falling and it was perfect. Screams carried down the halls like music. Steel rang against steel. Somewhere far below, Xander was roaring and tearing things apart, and every second he was distracted was a second I was free. No one was watching me. No one was watching the Consort. That was the problem. For weeks I’d watched him get fatter, softer, more beloved, while I was left in the council room to sign papers and smile like a good little advisor. The raid gave me what months of poison and whispers couldn’t. Chaos. I moved through the servant passages with my head down and a guard’s cloak over my shoulders. Blood on the floor, but not mine. A dead body in the corner, but not one I knew. The forged key was heavy in my palm. Iron, filed down in secret three nights ago by a smith who owed me coin and didn’t ask questions. It fit the lock to Ashton’s bathing room. Of course it did. I slipped inside and shut the door behind me. The smell hit me fi

Xander’s POV Today the sky over Noctaryn was gray and low, like the gods were pressing down on us. The wind moved through the field of stones and carried the smell of smoke, iron, and wet earth. Forty-seven cloaks. Folded. Laid out in a line. At the front, the largest one. Deep blue with silver trim. Lord Mirelle’s. He had taught me how to hold a sword when I was ten. He had told me to never turn my back on an enemy, and to never turn my back on my people. Yesterday he had done both and died with a Crescent wolf claw wound in his chest. I stood at the head of the line. Ashton was beside me. His hand was in mine, small and cold. He hadn’t slept. I could see it in the bruises under his eyes. But he stood straight. For me. For them. Behind us, the whole of Noctaryn had come. Servants, guards, mothers, children. Hundreds of them. No one spoke, no one cried out loud, but you could hear it. The moaning in their hearts. The priest raised his hands. “We send them to the stars

Ashton’s POVThe paste burned. It had been a week since the burial. Since I watched forty-seven cloaks burn and felt Xander’s hand go cold in mine. He had been gone for two days, returning only yesterday with news of an alliance.The palace was too quiet now. The halls that used to be full of guards were empty. The kitchens were half staffed. Everyone was waiting for something bad to happen. Xander was busy at the war room.I stood in front of the mirror in our room and lifted my shirt. There it was, a small curve. My stomach was not flat anymore. It rounded just under my ribs, like I had swallowed something warm and it decided to stay. I pressed my hand to it and felt a kick. Stronger than last week. Alpha babies grew fast. Everyone knew that, but I just didn’t think it would be this fast. The problem was not the bump. The problem was the heat. For weeks the paste my aunt made me had worked. Gray and thick and smelling like ash. It dulled the scent. It hid the light. Now i

Brenda’s POVI did not slam the throne room doors, but I really wanted to. What I did instead was smile, curtsy low enough to be respectful, and walk out with my spine straight and my hands steady. The kind of performance that made the council remember my mother’s name and my father’s gold. But the moment the doors closed behind me, the smile fell off my face like a mask. They had looked at him. Both of them. Xander with that thumb on Ashton’s cheek, like the red mark I left was a claim he needed to soothe. And Zeth, the Sun King, bare-chested and gilded, staring at Ashton like he had seen a ghost he intended to keep. My Consort. My title. The man who should have been standing beside me at every state dinner, not trembling for a stupid omega in red velvet with a secret curving under his ribs. I hated him. Not because he was poor. Not because he was an omega. I hated him because Xander chose him anyway. “Brenda.” Lord Merrick’s voice cut through the corridor before I

Xander’s POVI saw his hand move.It was a small thing. Half an inch. The barest lift from the table toward Ashton’s wrist.But I saw it.Zeth Aurelian did not touch people without reason. He did not reach. He took. And in that half-second, with wine on his chest and Ashton’s fingers hovering there like they’d been burned, I knew exactly what he was doing.Testing.My jaw locked so hard my teeth hurt.Across the table, Ashton made a sound. Soft. Choked. His hand jerked back like he’d been scalded. Good. Run.“Go,” I said. My voice came out lower than I intended. “Now.”Ashton didn’t argue. He set the decanter down with hands that were shaking too badly to lie about anymore and walked. Fast. Head down. Red coat catching the torchlight with every step.The doors closed behind him. The room exhaled.I did not sit.I kept standing, both hands flat on the table, and I looked at Zeth. He was still leaning back in his chair like he owned the wood beneath him. Wine drying on his chest, over t