جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 50

SLOANE The words barely leave my mouth before the chamber changes, because the shallow pool at the center of the sanctuary suddenly ripples despite the complete stillness of the air, the surface trembling outward in perfect circles until the reflections of Thane and me disappear beneath the water and are replaced by something else. I step closer without meaning to, my attention fixed on the dark surface as an image slowly forms beneath it, blurred at first and then sharpening into the unmistakable shape of a woman kneeling before the sealed gate, her palms pressed against the black stone while blood runs from her fingertips and disappears into the carvings beneath her. She looks young, much younger than I expected the first Unbound to look, but there is something ancient in the sorrow of her face, something that makes my chest burn before I even understand why. “Thane,” I whisper, and he moves beside me immediately, his shoulder nearly brushing mine as he stares into the pool.

— Sloane By the time Thane and I return to Ashborn, the sun has already begun its descent behind the trees, leaving the sky washed in pale gold and orange. The familiar walls of the compound come into view through the windshield, but instead of feeling the relief I expected, I find myself studying them with a strange uneasiness. Three days ago, those walls had represented safety Now I know how easily someone can move through that safety without being noticed, how a single piece of black crystal hidden inside an ancient ward can turn a fortress into an invitation. Thane slows the car as we approach the gates, and I notice immediately that Kieran is waiting there with four guards positioned behind him. He isn’t pacing, and he isn’t wearing the expression of someone expecting an attack, but something in the rigid set of his shoulders tells me that he has been waiting for us longer than he wants to admit. Kieran’s eyes settle on me the moment I step out of the car, moving over

— Roan The message reaches me shortly after sunset, when Duskmoor is settling into the restless quiet that follows the evening patrols. I am in the middle of reviewing a report from the southern border when one of the guards enters my study without knocking, his breathing slightly uneven from the speed at which he has crossed the compound. He bows his head before speaking. “Alpha, a message came from Ashborn. Sloane has returned.” For one second, everything inside me goes still. My wolf surges toward the surface so violently that I have to grip the edge of the desk, and the first thought that enters my mind is so immediate that I almost say it aloud. ‘Go to her’. I am already imagining the journey, already calculating how quickly I can get there, already feeling the old instinct to put myself between her and whatever danger might still be waiting for her. Then I remember the way she looked at me the last time we stood together. I remember that I am not entitled to appear at

— Sloane We reach Duskmoor, the afternoon sun has begun to sink behind the mountains, casting long shadows across the road and turning the trees surrounding the compound into dark silhouettes against the fading sky. I sit in the back seat between Del and one of my betas, listening as Del goes over the same information for what must be the fifth time, although none of us has managed to make the pieces fit together. The sanctuary had given us more questions than answers, but the one thing we could not ignore was the symbol. The black crystal had appeared in the ancient vision, inside the eastern ward at Ashborn, in the dead ward keeper’s hand, and most recently beneath the stone rim of the sanctuary pool. Now Del had found a reference to the same symbol in an old Duskmoor record, written during the period when the Unbound supposedly vanished from history. That was enough to bring us here. I tell myself that is the only reason my stomach feels strangely tight as Duskmoor’s

The silence after Roan’s last words stretches between us, thick with everything neither of us is willing to say. I keep my hand resting on the closed book, staring at the faded leather cover while my mind races through everything we have just discovered. His family had been given a choice. Protect the last Unbound or surrender her. The words should make me think only about the ancient threat, about the creature that had crossed into Ashborn and called me by a name I had never known belonged to me, yet somehow I am painfully aware of the man standing a few feet away. Roan has not moved since stepping back from me, and that distance feels deliberate. I can almost feel the restraint in him, the effort it takes for him not to reach for me, and somehow that affects me more than if he had. “You knew something about this before I arrived,” I say quietly. He looks at me, and there is no point pretending otherwise. “I knew my family had been involved in something connected to the easte