All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 211 - Chapter 220

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"Look at me and tell me you did not know, because if you knew and said nothing, I will never trust another Enforcer oath again as long as I live."Garrick would not meet my eyes. He sat chained in the same cell where we had once held Malachi Vane's scouts, his hands trembling in his lap, a man who had guarded my father's border for six years now looking like a stranger wearing a familiar face."I did not plan it," he said, his voice cracking. "I swear on the moon, Kieran, I did not wake up yesterday intending to take that girl from her bed.""Then explain to me what happened," I said, "because Sable said you moved like something wearing your skin instead of living in it."Garrick flinched at that, and for a moment his composure broke entirely, his shoulders shaking with something close to sobs. "It felt like that from the inside too. I heard a voice, Kieran. Not out loud, inside my own head, patient and calm, telling me things about my daughter that only

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"You will explain to me, Kieran Ashveil, exactly how an Ashveil Enforcer kidnapped a Thornwolf girl on your father's own land, or I will call this treaty broken before the sun sets."Elara's father stood in the center of the war room, fury barely contained behind a diplomat's calm, and behind him stood three Duskmoor advisors whose expressions promised worse questions than the ones already spoken aloud."The Enforcer was not acting as himself," I said, keeping my voice level though every instinct in me wanted to snap back just as sharply. "He was influenced by something we do not yet fully understand, something connected to the binding beneath the quarry.""That is not reassuring," the advisor said. "That is worse. You are telling me your own people can be turned into weapons against ours without warning, and you expect us to keep our forces standing beside yours."Elara stepped forward before I could answer, her voice sharp with the particular fury she u

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Please, whoever you are, just tell me why everyone keeps looking at me like I am about to disappear, because I am starting to think you already know something I do not."Her name was Mira, sixteen years old, a stable hand two territories from Ashveil land, and she had no idea her blood was the reason three strangers had ridden two days to find her before Cade Halloway's people did."You are not in trouble," I said gently, crouching so I was closer to her height, remembering exactly how it felt to have people twice your age suddenly decide your life mattered for reasons no one would explain. "But you might be in danger, and I need you to trust me long enough to understand why."Mira's eyes flicked to Dorian and Sable standing near the barn door, then back to me. "You are Rhen Thornwolf. The girl from the quarry stories. Everyone says you are the reason the red moon did not rise again.""Some of that is true," I said. "Most of it is more complicated than

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Rhen, wake up, you need to see this now, before I convince myself I am wrong and let another hour pass us by."Sable's voice pulled me out of a thin, restless sleep, and I found her standing over my bed with an old ledger clutched in both hands, her eyes wide with a mix of dread and urgency I had rarely seen on her before."What is it," I asked, forcing myself upright, my whole body aching from a night that had barely qualified as rest."Ysolde found something in the Duskmoor archives," Sable said, setting the ledger open on my knees. "A record of guardian names from three generations back, cross referenced against pack lineage. Rhen, there is a name here I recognize."I looked down at the faded ink, the careful, cramped handwriting of some long dead record keeper listing names beside crests I had come to know too well over the last weeks. My eyes caught on one entry near the bottom of the page, and my breath went entirely still."Sable," I whispered.

Point of View: Rhen Thornwolf"Nothing has grown here in thirty years, child, and I have stopped asking the gods why, because the ground never answers and I have run out of patience for silence."The old woman who said it stood at the edge of the orchard like she had grown there herself, rooted and gray and unwilling to be moved, a rusted hoe resting uselessly against her shoulder as if she still tried some mornings out of habit rather than hope."You must be Tamsin," I said, dismounting slowly, my legs stiff from the long ride north. "Ysolde said you have kept this land since before the last binding failure was even suspected.""I have kept it because no one else wanted it," Tamsin said, studying me with sharp eyes that missed nothing, lingering longest on the locket at my throat. "Though I begin to understand now why the ground refused every seed I ever gave it.""You knew we were coming," I said, surprised despite myself."Ysolde's rider reached me two days ago," Tamsin said. "But