All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

POV: Kieran"You can stop looking at me like I'm about to slap you," Elara said, arms crossed tight over her chest, "because the only person I actually want to hurt right now is my own father, and he isn't in this garden."I hadn't expected her to find me here, tucked behind the east wall where I used to hide as a boy whenever the pack house felt too loud, and I liked even less that she'd found me the same night Malachi Vane's threat was still sitting in my chest like a stone."I owe you an apology," I said. "Whatever you think of me after last night, you deserved better than being humiliated in front of both packs.""I deserved better than being handed to you like a border deed in the first place," Elara said, "so save the apology for something you actually control." She sat down on the low garden wall, some of the ice in her posture cracking just slightly. "For what it's worth, Kieran, you didn't ruin anything I wanted. You ruined something my father wanted, which isn't the same thi

POV: Kieran"Get her inside, now," my father said, voice sharper than I had ever heard it, "because whatever that is nailed to the fence post, it was not left there by accident."I reached the border before the sun had fully cleared the ridge, drawn out of an uneasy half sleep by an Enforcer pounding on my door with news that made my blood run cold before he'd even finished the sentence. The fence line Rhen and Sable had walked two nights ago was marked now, a single silver blade driven straight through a scrap of dark fabric, and pinned beneath it, a scrap of parchment bearing Malachi Vane's seal."What does it say," Dorian asked, already scanning the tree line for movement, hand resting on the hilt at his belt.I pulled the parchment free carefully, mindful of the silver, and read the message twice before I trusted myself to say it out loud. "Three days. He wants an answer in three days, or he burns the eastern grazing fields and every farmstead attached to them, starting with the o

POV: Kieran"Sable's not answering," Rhen shouted over the wind, "and that patrol route doesn't take this long even on a bad night, Kieran, something's wrong."We broke through the tree line together and the smell hit me before the sight did, smoke thick and acrid, curling low over the fence line where Malachi Vane's mark had been nailed only hours earlier, and beyond it, flames already licking up the dry grass of the eastern grazing field exactly the way his letter had promised."He didn't wait three days," I said, horror and fury tangled so tight in my chest I could barely separate them. "He wasn't giving us a deadline. He was giving us a distraction."Rhen didn't slow down. If anything, the sight of the fire seemed to strip away whatever hesitation had been left in her, and she moved through the smoke with a speed and certainty that had nothing to do with training and everything to do with blood finally waking all the way up."There," she said, pointing toward a cluster of shapes n

POV: Kieran"You will sit down and let the healer finish," my father said, in the voice he used on council members who had already lost an argument and simply had not accepted it yet, "before you say one more word to me about tonight."I did not sit. The healer's needle was still working through the gash Vane's blade had left in my forearm, and every stitch felt distant compared to the fact that a man who had advised my father for eleven years had just stood in a burning field and called himself an ally to the enemy."Renwick sat in this hall three nights ago," I said, "and told you personally that hunter activity along the border was slowing. He looked you in the eye and lied to your face while he was already feeding Vane everything he needed.""I am aware of what happened," Alaric said, and for the first time since I was a child I heard something in my father's voice that was not command but something closer to fear. "Do you understand what it means if a man that close to this counc

POV: Kieran "You should hate me," Elara said, standing in the doorway of the empty council hall with her arms crossed tight over her chest, "and yet here you are, letting me back inside your home the same night a councilor tried to burn it down." "I do not have room left tonight to hate anyone who is not actively holding a blade," I said. "What are you doing here, Elara. It is the middle of the night, and the last time we spoke you could barely look at me." "I know," she said, and something in her voice cracked slightly around the edges. "I have rehearsed this conversation a dozen different ways on the ride here, and every version of it still starts with me admitting I have not been honest with you since the day my father announced this engagement." "Most people in this hall have not been honest with me lately," I said, more tired than bitter. "You would not be the first." "I would like to be the last, though," she said. "If that means anything at all." "I could barely look at yo