บททั้งหมดของ Forbidden Under the Blood Moon: บทที่ 211 - บทที่ 220

POV: KADE ASHBORN"You have been standing outside my door for an hour," the old woman said before I had even raised a hand to knock, "and you still have not decided whether you trust me."The cottage squatted at the edge of the strip of land neither pack claimed anymore, too close to the old Vane border for Ashborn wolves to settle and too close to our scent markers for anyone still loyal to what remained of Vane pride. Thatch sagged over the roofline. Smoke leaked from a crooked chimney, and the yard smelled of wet earth and woodsmoke and something sharper underneath, like a coin held too long against the tongue. Bram had found her three weeks ago. He had said almost nothing about her since, only that she was old enough to remember the purge firsthand and that her name was Maren."I trust very little these days," I said, ducking under the low lintel with Wren close behind me. "It has kept me alive."Maren laughed, a dry sound like leaves scraping over stone. She waved us toward a tab

POV: KADE ASHBORN"There were tracks," Ronan said, dropping a folded map onto the war table hard enough to rattle the candle stand beside it, "and they did not belong to anyone Maren has agreed to trust near her land."We had ridden back from the eastern treeline with almost nothing to show for an hour of searching: broken grass, a scuffed patch of bark, and half of a print pressed into soft mud. Whoever had watched Wren train was long gone by the time the guardian led us to the spot. The ride home had been quiet. Wren had said nothing at all, one hand on the ring, her eyes fixed on the road ahead as if it might try to escape her.Now the war room smelled of tallow and old ink and damp wool. My father sat at the head of the table wearing the particular stillness he saved for moments when he was working hard not to look as frightened as the rest of us felt."Show me," I said.Ronan spread the map flat. Torbin's careful ink was still there, but a second set of marks had joined it, Ronan

POV: KADE ASHBORN"Everyone keeps saying it does not matter," Cody said, "and everyone keeps acting like it decides everything anyway."His hands were shaking. I had just finished telling him, crouched to his eye level in the training yard, that nothing that happened in the circle would decide who he was. It was true. It was also the kind of true that means very little to a fifteen-year-old boy about to be judged in front of every elder in the territory. I hated that I could not tell him why every adult in his life had suddenly begun watching him like something precious about to break.I had no answer that would not have been a lie, so I rested a hand on his shoulder, squeezed once, and stepped back into the ring of watching adults.The circle had gathered at midday, elders and rank holders forming the outer ring as tradition demanded. The yard was scrubbed clean, the sand raked smooth, the sun hard and white overhead. Ronan stood near the eastern edge, where he could keep an eye on t

POV: KADE ASHBORN"His son," my father repeated. The words dropped into the war room like stones into still water.Wren had ridden back from Maren's cottage well past midnight to deliver the news. Exhaustion was carved into every line of her face, mud dried to her boots, and yet she had insisted on gathering us at once rather than waiting for morning. I understood why the moment she finished explaining. If Corvyn's own blood had married into a family close enough to Ashborn territory to walk our halls freely, then Ivy's return was not simply a complication. It might be an opportunity Corvyn himself had engineered.The lamps had burned down to their last inch of oil. Nobody had thought to trim them.I had spent most of the last three nights in this room, one way or another, and I knew every crack in its plaster. It had never felt small until now. Everyone sat a little too close and a little too stiff, like mourners at a funeral who did not yet know who had died."We need to consider,"

POV: KADE ASHBORN"You cannot go anywhere near the fourth site." I heard my own voice crack on the words, and I had not meant to let it show.I had rehearsed this argument all afternoon, pacing the wall, pretending to inspect the sentries. In my head I had won it.Wren stood across the war room with her arms crossed, exhaustion and stubbornness warring in equal measure across her face. Two days of training with Maren and one long conversation with Ivy had left the whole manor on edge, and left Wren looking as though she had been carved down to the bone. Ronan and Selene had tactfully excused themselves the moment the argument began. That left the two of us alone with the map, a cold pot of tea, and everything neither of us wanted to say plainly in front of an audience."You heard Maren," Wren said. "The ritual needs my blood specifically. Every hour I stay hidden inside these walls is an hour Corvyn spends finding another way to force what he wants without my cooperation. I would rath