All Chapters of Bound by the Cursed Moon: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

Female Lead POV: Rhen Thornwolf"Do not you dare close your eyes on me, Sable. Stay with me."Sable's blood soaked through the makeshift bandage faster than I could tie it, and the sight of it shaking in my hands scared me more than anything Malachi Vane had said in that clearing."Hold still," I said, my voice tighter than I meant it to be. "Sable, I need you to hold still.""I am trying." She hissed through her teeth as I pulled the fabric tight, sweat beading along her hairline despite the cold night air. "Rhen, whatever you did back there, the way you moved. I have trained beside you for years. I have never seen you move like that.""Neither have I." My hands were still trembling, though I could not tell anymore if it was from fear or from whatever had surged through me in that clearing. "It felt like something else was moving me. Like my body knew exactly what to do before my mind caught up."Kieran knelt on my other side, gathering the shattered pieces of the burial stone into a

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"You would accuse your own future son of the pack of treason on the word of a man who will not even show his face?" My father's voice cracked through the hall like a whip before I had taken three steps inside.The council chamber was already full. Elders from both packs lined the stone benches, torches throwing long shadows across faces I had known my whole life, faces that were now looking at me the way people look at something that might be dangerous. The air smelled of smoke and old stone, and beneath it, faintly, the copper tang of blood that still clung to my clothes from the clearing. Duskmoor's Alpha stood at the center of the floor, arms folded, a thin smile pulling at his mouth like he had already won.I searched the benches for anyone who might still be on my side, and found mostly downcast eyes, elders who had watched me grow from a boy who followed his father everywhere to a man they now suspected of betraying everything that father had built.

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"How long, Dorian? How long have you known and said nothing to me?"My voice came out rougher than I intended, echoing off the empty chamber walls now that the council had scattered and only the four of us remained, Rhen, Sable leaning heavily on a cane the healer had insisted on, and Dorian standing several feet away like he expected me to strike him. Part of me wanted to. Part of me was still too stunned by everything the last hour had unearthed to feel anything at all beyond a dull, ringing exhaustion.The torches along the walls had burned low, throwing the chamber into a dimness that felt fitting for the conversation we were about to have, one that had been owed for months and was only now, finally, being collected."Since the night I saw the locket," he said. "Months, Kieran. I have known for months.""Months," I repeated, and the word tasted like betrayal in my mouth. "You let me walk toward this wedding, this treaty, everything, while sitting on s

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"Someone closer than she could imagine. Mother, those words have been sitting in my chest for an hour, and I still cannot make sense of them."I paced the length of my father's study while he stood at the window, arms folded behind his back, watching the torches along the wall like they might rearrange themselves into an answer. The study smelled the way it always had, old parchment and cedar smoke, a smell I had associated with safety my entire childhood and now could not separate from every secret it had apparently been hiding alongside the ledgers and treaty scrolls.I had not slept. I doubted I would sleep again until this entire tangled mess had been pulled apart thread by thread, and my father's silence, however brief, was doing nothing to settle the storm still raging in my chest."Sit down, Kieran," Alaric said quietly. "This conversation deserves more than pacing.""I do not want to sit down. I want to know why my own father sealed an archive a h

Male Lead POV: Kieran Ashveil"Kieran. There is something at the gate. You need to see this before Rhen does."Dorian's voice pulled me out of a half sleep I had not meant to fall into, slumped in a chair outside the healer's hut where Sable was finally resting easier, the counter draught doing its slow work against the wolfsbane in her blood. My whole body ached in ways I had not noticed while the adrenaline of the council still burned through me, and for one disoriented moment I forgot exactly why I had chosen a hard wooden chair over my own bed.Then Dorian's face came into focus, pale and tight in the gray predawn light, and every ounce of exhaustion vanished at once.I followed him out into the gray hour before dawn, the air sharp with cold, and found a small crowd already gathering near the northern gate, torches held aloft against the darkness. At the center of it, driven into the wood of the gatepost itself, was a hunting knife, and pinned beneath its blade, a strip of pale cl