Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

KIAN POV"Say it to my face, Torren. Everything Magnus claims you did."My Beta stood across the war room table from me, hands flat against the wood, and for a long moment he didn't deny a single word of it."You want to know why," he said finally. "Not whether it's true. You already know it's true, or you wouldn't have called this meeting with Silas standing behind me instead of beside me.""Then why," I said, my voice dangerously quiet."Because I watched your father die by inches for three years after your mother left, and I swore I would never let this pack be destroyed by a mate bond again." Torren's jaw worked once. "Then you brought home a woman with Ironfang blood and a target painted across every generation of her family, and I did what I thought this pack needed. I fed Magnus information because he promised the threat could be contained quietly, without war, without exposing Ashgrove to three territories' worth of enemies.""You sold out your Alpha's mate to a man plotting h

KIAN POV"An Alpha who cannot secure his own household has no business dictating alliances to this council."Alpha Dorian Vask said it loudly enough for the entire chamber to hear, arms crossed, clearly relishing every second of my week's worth of chaos laid bare in front of the assembled packs."My household is secure," I said evenly, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. "The threats have been identified and contained.""Your Beta sold pack secrets for a year," Dorian shot back. "Your senior advisor turned out to be a splinter Ironfang loyalist funding assassins. And your mate is apparently the last heir of a bloodline this council spent generations believing extinct. Forgive me, Voss, if I question whether Ashgrove is fit to hold territory this close to my own borders anymore."Murmurs rippled through the chamber, and I felt the ground shifting under my feet in a way that had nothing to do with silver or gunfire and everything to do with the much slower, much colder

KIAN POV"Whatever happens on that field, you do not come down from that ridge. Promise me."I said it low, urgent, my forehead pressed against Elira's in the grey half light before dawn, both of us fully aware of exactly how much we were risking by even having this conversation this close to the dueling ground."I promise to try," she said, which was as much honesty as either of us had left to offer.The field spread out below the ridge, mist still clinging low to the grass, Dorian Vask already waiting at the far end with his second, an unreadable calm settled over his features that I trusted even less now that Callum's financial trail sat heavy in my mind."Whatever he's planning," I said, "I'll see it coming.""You'd better," Elira said, and kissed me once, fierce and quick, before I turned and walked down onto the field alone.Dorian watched me approach without expression. "No entourage, Voss. I'm almost disappointed.""I don't need one," I said."We'll see."The council's neutral

KIAN POV"You nearly died an hour ago, and he wants to parade you in front of every territory before you've even finished healing."I said it through gritted teeth, testing the strength in my shoulder against the healer's insistence that I stay seated a moment longer."He's not wrong that waiting makes us more of a target, not less," Elira said, though the tightness around her eyes told me she liked this plan exactly as little as I did. "Every day we sit on this secret, more people find out anyway. Torren. Dorian. Whoever bought his loyalty. At some point, the truth spreading in the open is safer than the truth spreading in whispers we can't control."Marcus entered the tent without waiting to be invited, Ren Achara a step behind him, both of them scanning the scene with the particular calculation of people who measured every room for tactical value before anything else."I'm glad to see you're recovering," Marcus said to me, and I heard the genuine relief underneath the careful diplo

KIAN POV"Wasn't alone when he did it. Say the rest of it, Ren."She pulled me and Elira further from the dispersing crowd, voice pitched low enough that only the three of us could hear."Two guards are dead. Whoever helped him escape knew the rotation schedule exactly, down to the minute." Ren's jaw tightened. "This wasn't opportunistic. It was planned before the duel even started, which means someone always intended for him to walk away from this, win or lose.""A contingency," Elira said slowly. "Whoever's really behind this expected the possibility that he'd fail, or get caught, and built an exit strategy in either direction.""That level of planning," I said, "isn't Magnus's style. He's methodical, but he's not that far ahead of events. This is someone else."Ren hesitated, glancing toward Elira with an expression I was beginning to recognise as the specific discomfort of someone about to deliver news they didn't want to be the one saying out loud."Marcus asked me to hold this u