All Chapters of Forbidden Under the Blood Moon: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Point of View: WREN THORNE"Something is wrong with the wards," Ronan said before I had even opened my eyes fully, his voice cutting through the tent flap like a blade through cloth, and I knew before I sat up that today was not going to let anyone rest.I found him standing at the northern edge of camp with three other guards, all of them staring at a line of scorched earth that had not been there the night before, a black seam running through the frost like something underneath the ground had exhaled fire and gone still again. Nobody wanted to say what it meant. Nobody had to. Halric was closer than we thought, and he had stopped bothering to hide it."How long has this been here," I asked, crouching to press my fingers near the edge without touching it, feeling heat that should not have survived the cold night."Long enough that whoever made it walked away calmly," Ronan said. "There is no scatter pattern. No panic in the burn. He did this like a man signing his name."The frost ar

Point of View: WREN THORNE"Say that again," I whispered, my whole body gone rigid with a cold that had nothing to do with the winter air, because surely I had misheard something so impossible it could not be spoken calmly in the middle of a frozen field."You heard me clearly," Halric said, unbothered by the ripple of horror moving through the gathered wolves around us. "Your mother was not simply Vane blood. She was my sister. And the woman I lost that same night was my wife, an Ashborn woman nobody ever thought to ask about because everyone was far too busy blaming a pack that had already been destroyed."Kade's father had gone pale beside me, his hand tightening on the hilt of his blade. "You are lying," he said, though his voice had lost its earlier certainty. "The Vane pack started the war. Every record, every witness.""Every witness you allowed to speak," Halric said. "I wonder how differently your records might read if you had ever once asked a Vane survivor instead of simply

Point of View: WREN THORNE"Your mother begged me the night she died," Halric said quietly, his voice suddenly stripped of every performance he had worn since arriving, "to make sure whoever came after her would never have to fight this war blind the way she did."The battlefield around us had gone strangely still, the shapes behind him waiting now instead of attacking, as though even they understood this moment mattered more than the fight everyone had expected."You are saying she knew about me," I said, my voice barely above a whisper, the light beneath my skin flickering uncertainly for the first time since it had surged."She knew she was carrying something powerful enough to end an old lie," Halric said. "She did not live long enough to know it would take the shape of a daughter she never got to raise, hidden inside a pack that never told you the truth about where half of your blood truly came from.""My father knew," I said, understanding landing heavy and sick in my stomach. "

Point of View: WREN THORNE"I choose it," I said, and the words left me steadier than I felt, my whole body trembling despite the certainty burning underneath the fear.The moment I spoke, the ground beneath the entire clearing lit silver, veins of light spreading outward from where I stood like roots searching for something to hold onto, and every wolf present, Ashborn and Thorne alike, staggered back from the sudden brightness of it."Hold onto her," Halric said sharply to Kade, his composure finally cracking under real urgency. "Whatever happens next, do not let go of her hand."Kade's grip tightened around mine until it nearly hurt, and I clung to that small, grounding pain as the light climbed up through my legs, my chest, my throat, filling every part of me with a pressure that felt like drowning and burning and being born all at the same moment.Images tore through my mind faster than I could hold onto them, a woman with my exact eyes standing in a burning village, the same wom

Point of View: WREN THORNE"It is not over simply because he knelt," Ronan said quietly, still watching Halric with open suspicion even as the last of the strange shapes rose slowly from the frozen ground behind him."No," Kade agreed, his arm still steady around my shoulders. "But it is a beginning we did not have an hour ago, and I would rather build carefully on an uncertain beginning than keep fighting a war neither side fully understood."Alpha Magnus called for the packs to gather properly then, no longer as enemies circling each other across a frozen field but as something closer to what they had claimed to want the night before around the fire, and one by one the wolves of both packs lowered their weapons, watching Halric and his kneeling followers with wary, exhausted curiosity instead of pure hatred."What happens to them now," I asked quietly, nodding toward the last remaining Vane bloodline standing uncertainly at the edge of the clearing, people who had spent eighteen yea