All Chapters of THE ALPHA WHO SCENTED MY SECRET: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Wren's POV"Hello, little ember," Voss says again, savoring the silence that follows like it's something she's been waiting decades to taste. "You've grown into your gift beautifully. I confess, I'm almost proud.""Don't call me that.""What would you prefer? Wren feels so small for what you are. Adaline's daughter feels like grief I don't think either of us wants to carry into this conversation." She tilts her head, studying me the way you'd study a piece of art you'd commissioned years ago and were finally seeing finished. "Little ember suits you. I'll keep calling you that, I think, regardless of your preference."Around us, the ambush is thinning, wolves peeling away into the trees now that whatever signal Voss required has apparently been given, and I understand, watching the battlefield empty itself with unnerving efficiency, that none of this was ever really about winning a fight. It was about getting her close enough to speak to me directly. Somewhere behind he,r the remaining

Wren's POVThe ground beneath us shifts before I understand what's happening, a low tremor rolling through the clearing like something ancient waking from a long sleep, and Voss's expression shifts for the first time since she stepped into view, satisfaction giving way to something closer to genuine anticipation. The wolves still scattered around the edges of the clearing, wounded, exhausted, fall silent almost in unison, as though some instinct older than language has warned every one of them that whatever comes next matters more than the fight that already exhausted them."The convergence arrives early," she says, tilting her face toward a sky that's gone strange and gray despite the hour, clouds curling in patterns that don't match any weather I've ever seen. "How fortunate. I do so hate waiting once I'm this close.""What is she talking about?" I ask Rhydian, though some cold, certain part of me already suspects the answer."The hollow moon," he says grimly, positioning himself be

Wren's POVThe journey back to Nightfall passes in a haze of exhaustion, my whole body aching from a use of fire more sustained than anything I've attempted before, and I ride most of the way in silence, watching my brother's bound, defeated figure carried at the center of our formation like a piece of evidence rather than a person. Every so often he lifts his head, meets my eyes for the briefest moment, and looks away again before either of us has to decide what that glance is supposed to mean.I don't feel triumphant. I thought I might, imagining this moment during the darkest of my five years scrubbing floors in a house that used to be mine. Instead, I feel hollowed out, grief finally allowed to surface now that fear no longer occupies every available space in my chest. Five years of believing myself a murderer, and the actual truth turns out to be so much larger and stranger than anything I ever imagine:, a war that predates my own birth, a woman patient enough to wait twenty-two

Wren's POVThe council deliberates for nearly two hours, three separate cases tangled together by shared circumstance but weighed individually, and I sit through every minute of it with my brother's bound figure in clear view, trying to feel something more settled than the strange, hollow ache that's followed me since Miller's Ridge. I watch the chamber empty and refill with whispered rumor, watch Sable pace near the door unable to sit still, watch Rhydian's jaw stay tight the entire time, and understand that none of us are finding this waiting any easier than I am.I spend the hours turning over every memory I have of Callum before any of this began, small kindnesses buried under five years of cruelty, a brother who once carried me on his shoulders through Ashgrove's summer fields before ambition hollowed something out of him that never grew back. I don't know what to do with those memories now, whether holding onto them is a kind of weakness or simply an honest accounting of a perso

Rhydian's POVShe finds me on the eastern wall as the sun starts sinking low over the border land, the same stretch of stone where nearly everything important between us has happened since the night she first arrived, and something in the deliberate choice of location tells me before she says a single word that this conversation matters more than most. Sable trails a short distance behind her, offering me a small, knowing smile before retreating back down the stairs to give us the privacy this moment clearly needs."I have an answer," she says. "About Ashgrove.""Tell me."She does, laying out the shape of it carefully, the regent council, the seat claimed but not occupied, the choice to stay here rather than return to a house full of five years of grief and lies, and I listen to every word with a hope I don't quite let myself trust until she finally reaches the part that actually matters most to me.I find myself holding my breath without meaning to, watching her work up to whatever