บททั้งหมดของ Forbidden Under the Blood Moon: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 10

Point of view: Wren“You will marry the Ashborn Alpha before the next blood moon, or this pack burns,” my father said, and for the first time in my life, he actually looked at me.I stood at the back of the pack hall, where Omegas always stood, close enough to hear everything and far enough that no one expected me to speak. My father, Alpha Damian Thorne, was not talking to me. He was talking to Ivy, my sister, the one whose name had been written into the treaty since she was six years old. I only understood, later, that the way he looked at me in that moment was not an accident. It was the first crack in a plan he had not told anyone about yet.The hall smelled like old wood smoke and older fear. Every wolf in that room had grown up on stories about the Blood Moon War, the one that had taken half our pack and left the other half small enough to be swallowed whole by the Ashborns if the peace ever broke. My father was not a cruel man. He was a frightened one, and frightened men make p

Point of view: Wren“You are not Ivy Thorne,” Kade said, closing the study door behind me with a quiet click that somehow sounded louder than a slammed one. “So you can stop pretending, starting now.”My whole body went cold. I had rehearsed a dozen versions of this moment on the ride here, imagined slipping up in front of a servant, a guard, even his father, but somehow I had never once let myself imagine it would be him, this fast, alone, with nowhere to run and no one to blame but myself.“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, and even I could hear how thin the lie sounded.“Ronan pulled the official portrait my father commissioned during the treaty talks two years ago. Ivy Thorne has a birthmark under her left eye. You don’t.” He crossed the room slowly, the way you approach something you are not sure will bolt. “I gave you the whole dinner to correct it yourself. You didn’t. So I’m asking you directly. Who are you?”There was no version of this where lying again would help me. I f

Point of view: Wren“Wrong sister,” a voice hissed against my ear, cold and amused, right before something sharp bit into my shoulder. “Did you really think no one would notice?”I had gone out walking alone, against every warning Briar’s absence and common sense should have given me, simply because the walls of the Ashborn keep had started to feel like a cage built specifically around my lie. The training grounds near the eastern woods were empty at dusk, or so I had thought, right up until a shape dropped down from the tree line behind me, gloved hand clamping over my mouth before I could shout.I fought the way Briar and I used to practice as children, elbow back, heel down hard on an instep, twisting free enough to see my attacker for half a second, a masked figure, human shaped but moving wrong, too fast, too silent, a blade in one hand that caught the last of the sunset with an unnatural, silvery gleam.Silver. My stomach dropped even as I scrambled backward. Silver was not a we

Point of view: Wren“Say it again,” I whispered, my back pressed flat against the cold stone wall. “Tell me I misheard you. Tell me my mother was not the enemy your father swore to kill on sight.”Kade did not look away from me, and that was somehow worse than if he had. “I wish I could tell you that, Wren. I do not have that mercy to give you tonight.”My legs felt unsteady beneath me, so I let the wall hold me up instead. Everything I thought I knew about myself, the quiet Omega daughter, the girl nobody planned around, had just been rewritten in the space of one sentence. My mother had a name before she was Elena Thorne. She had a whole life she buried the moment she crossed into Thorne territory, and she had never told a single soul, not even the daughter who inherited whatever secret she was running from.“Does anyone else know?” I asked. “Besides you and Ronan?”“No one. And it has to stay that way, or my father will not wait for proof before he acts.”I studied his face, search

Point of view: Wren“You’re not wearing her perfume,” Selene said, circling me slowly in the garden like a predator deciding whether prey was worth the effort. “Ivy always wore jasmine. You smell like nothing at all. Careful, or that’s the kind of detail that gets noticed.”I kept my chin level, refusing to let her see how close that comment had landed to something dangerous. “Maybe I just changed my taste.”“Maybe,” she said, though her tone made clear she believed nothing of the sort. “Or maybe you’ve been too busy to remember the small things that would keep you safe.”Selene Draven was beautiful in the effortless way that came from being raised to expect a crown, dark hair falling in perfect waves, eyes sharp enough to cut through every careful lie I had built since arriving. She had been introduced to me that morning as an old family friend of the Ashborns, and it had taken exactly one conversation to understand that Ronan’s warning had not been an exaggeration.“You’ve been star