All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 191 - Chapter 200

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Say her name again," I whispered, "because I need to hear it more than once before I believe she is actually real and not just a story Vane invented to break me."My mother sat across from me in the small study off the east hall, her hands folded so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone pale, and for the first time since the chapel confession, she looked less like a woman protecting a secret and more like a woman finally allowed to grieve one."I do not know her name," my mother said. "Not the one she was given at birth. I only know I was told she was placed somewhere far from Ashveil land, somewhere no one would think to look for a Thornwolf child.""You had two daughters," I said, "and you only kept one.""I did not choose to keep you over her," my mother said, her voice cracking in a way I had never heard from her before. "I was not given a choice at all. The elders who helped hide our bloodline decided one daughter staying with me and one d

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Do not touch that page again until you tell me why your hands are shaking, Rhen, because that is not how you usually react to old paper and older handwriting."We had stopped at a border safehouse to wait out the last hour before dawn, and I had spent it hunched over a guardian journal Alaric had given me before we left, its pages brittle and smelling faintly of cedar and something older I could not name."It talks about pairs," I said, my voice unsteady. "Guardians working in twos, the way Dorian said the creature implied about us. But it also talks about what happens when one half of a pair is turned against the other."Sable set down the cloth she had been using to clean a small cut on Dorian's arm and moved closer, her expression sharpening with the same alertness I had come to recognize whenever something threatened him directly."Turned how," she asked."It does not say exactly," I said, scanning the faded lines again. "Only that a broken pair ca

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Please do not come any closer," the girl said, her voice shaking as she pressed herself against the cabin wall, "because I do not know who any of you are, and I do not understand why you keep saying my mother's name like you knew her."We had found the address from the registry just after dawn, a small cabin at the edge of the hunter territory, and the girl inside had opened the door expecting a delivery, not four strangers claiming to know something about her own bloodline she had never heard before."We are not here to hurt you," I said carefully, keeping my hands visible and my voice low. "We only want to ask you a few questions. About your birth mother. About where you came from before you were placed here.""I was not placed anywhere," the girl said. "I was adopted. Legally. My parents have papers, if that is what this is actually about."Something in her tone caught wrong immediately, too rehearsed, too quick, the kind of answer someone gives whe

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Tell me the archive is the only thing we lost tonight, Alaric, because I do not think I can hear anything worse than that after the ride we just had."The old records hall stood scorched and hollow when we finally reached it, smoke still curling faintly from the collapsed section of roof, Enforcers moving through the wreckage with lanterns while Alaric stood at the entrance, a bandage wrapped tight around one forearm."No one died," Alaric said. "Voss got everyone out before the fire reached the council chamber itself. But the archive, Rhen. Everything about the Vaelwood line we had not already copied. Gone."The relief of no one dying barely had time to settle before the weight of the second loss crashed down behind it, decades of guardian history reduced to ash while I had spent the entire day chasing a girl who was never my sister at all."They knew exactly what to burn," I said. "The same way they knew exactly which cabin to send us to. This was ne

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Marta is alive," Alaric said the moment he returned, dust still clinging to his coat from three days of hard riding, "and she is willing to talk, but only to you, Rhen, and only in person."Three days had passed since my mother handed me the letter, three days of careful waiting that had worn on all of us more than open danger somehow always managed to, and hearing Marta's name confirmed real finally loosened something tight in my chest I had not realized I was still holding."Why only me," I asked."She said she owes your family a truth she has carried too long to hand off through a messenger," Alaric said. "She also said to come quickly, because she is not certain how much longer she will be safe where she is."Kieran was already moving toward the armory before Alaric finished speaking, and within the hour we were riding again, the four of us plus two Enforcers Alaric insisted on sending along after the ambush near the hunter cabin.The western borde