Lahat ng Kabanata ng Bound by the Cursed Moon: Kabanata 141 - Kabanata 150

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"You should have let him report me tonight." Rhen said it so quietly I almost missed it, and the guilt underneath the words hit me harder than any accusation Dorian could have made.We were back in my chambers, the archive locked behind us, Elara gone to hide the journal somewhere her father would never think to search. I paced the length of the room twice before I trusted myself to answer her, because the truth sitting in my chest was uglier than I wanted to admit out loud. "If Dorian reports this, it is not just my future that ends," I said. "It is yours. My father would not simply forbid the bond. He would remove you from Ashveil land entirely, and Thornwolf territory has no protection to offer you that your own mother has not already fled from once.""So we buy time by letting a man who has known your family longer than I have been alive decide when my life becomes disposable," Rhen said, and there was no anger in it, only a tired, bone deep fear that

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"You will explain to me, right now, why my steward found you missing from your chambers past midnight three nights running." My father's voice filled the council hall before I had even fully crossed the threshold, and every head at that long stone table turned to watch me answer for it.I kept my spine straight, the way he had trained me to since I was old enough to stand at his side during Alpha meetings, though inside my chest was a war I had no intention of letting him see. "I have been investigating a theft from the sealed archive," I said. "Three journals belonging to Wren Thornwolf. Someone with access to that room removed them before we could examine their full contents."My father's eyes narrowed, and beside him Garrick Duskmoor, Elara's father, shifted almost imperceptibly in his seat, a movement so small I would have missed it entirely if Rhen had not trained me to watch for exactly that kind of tell over the past weeks. "The Thornwolf journals,

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"They came in through the eastern ridge, the same weak point Vane used before." My scout's voice was ragged with running, and behind him the horn was still sounding across the training grounds, calling every able wolf to the border.I was already moving before he finished the sentence, shifting my weight toward the armory without conscious thought, twenty years of training taking over where fear might otherwise have slowed me. "Numbers," I said."A dozen, maybe fifteen," the scout said. "Small enough to be a probe, not a full assault. But my lord, they went straight for the kennels. It is like they knew exactly where to hit."My blood went cold, because the kennels were where Rhen spent half her days, where Sable trained her twice daily now, and a dozen armed hunters heading straight for that exact spot was not a coincidence I could afford to believe in. I broke into a run, Dorian falling into step beside me without needing to be asked, the two of us movi

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"I cannot marry you, and I think somewhere underneath everything your father has asked of you, you already know that." I said it standing in Elara's private chambers, two days before the ceremony, my heart hammering so hard I was certain she could hear it.Elara did not look surprised. She set down the embroidery she had been pretending to work on, her hands folding neatly in her lap, and for a long moment she simply studied me with an expression I could not fully read. "I have known since the archive," she said finally. "Perhaps before that. You have never once looked at me the way you look at her, Kieran, not in three years of formal courtship arranged entirely by our fathers. I stopped expecting you to somewhere around the second year.""I am sorry," I said, and I meant it more deeply than the two small words could carry. "This is not the future either of us chose. You deserve a bond built on more than a treaty neither of us had any say in.""I deserve

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"Do you, Kieran Ashveil, accept this bond." The Elder's voice rang out across the packed hall, and every eye in the room turned toward me, waiting for the single word that was supposed to end this ceremony exactly the way everyone in this hall had spent three years assuming it would.Elara stood across from me in her wedding whites, her expression calm and steady in a way that told me she already knew what I was about to do, and had made her own peace with it long before I found the courage to. Behind her, Garrick Duskmoor sat rigid in the front row, his face a mask of polished patience that did not once reach his eyes. And somewhere near the back of the hall, half hidden among the Thornwolf attendants who had come only because pack law required their presence, Rhen stood watching me with her heart written plainly across her face, brave and terrified and hoping all at once."No," I said.The word landed in the silent hall like a struck blade, and for one