Semua Bab Forbidden Under the Blood Moon: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Point of view: Wren"Someone else is already down here with us." The words left my mouth in a whisper, and Kade's whole body went still against mine, still the way a wolf goes still right before it decides whether to run or fight.For a moment none of us moved. Ronan's hand dropped to the blade at his hip. Ivy pulled Callum back a step, her fingers white around his sleeve. The torchlight bent sideways, pushed by air that should not have been moving in a sealed tunnel."Show yourself," Kade said, his voice low and even, though I could feel the tension coiled through his arm where it stayed wrapped around me.Nothing answered. Only the drip of water somewhere in the dark, and the faint, unmistakable sound of breathing that was not our own."Kade," I whispered, "it is not Garrick's sister. She is already bound. This is someone new.""I know," he said quietly. "That is what worries me."Ronan raised his torch higher, sweeping it across the far wall, and for one flickering second I thought

Point of view: Wren"Briar is here." Ivy said it fast, breathless, like she had run the whole way from the front gate to find me, and my heart lifted for the first time in what felt like days.I was on my feet before she finished the sentence, ignoring the healer's protest about my still healing wrists, moving toward the courtyard where Briar stood clutching her travel bag like it was the only solid thing in a world that had gone strange around her."You look terrible," Briar said the moment she saw me, and then she was hugging me hard enough to hurt, laughing and crying at the same time in that way only Briar ever managed."I missed you," I said into her shoulder. "You have no idea how much.""I got your letter about the tunnel and I nearly turned the carriage around and walked back home," she said, pulling back to study my face. "Are you actually alright? Truly?""I am here," I said, which was not quite the same answer, and Briar's sharp eyes told me she noticed the difference.We f

Point of view: Wren"Say his name." Kade's voice cut through the study like a blade, and his father flinched at the sound of it the way a man flinches from a truth he has spent eighteen years outrunning.Magnus turned from the window at last, his face pale in the candlelight, older than I had ever seen him look in the short time I had known him."Alden Draven," he said finally, and the room seemed to tilt around me."Selene's father," Kade said, disbelief warring with something colder underneath it. "You are telling me Selene's father helped build the lie that started this entire war?""I am telling you he was in that room," Magnus said. "I am telling you he never once corrected the story afterward, even when he had every chance to. Whether he built the lie or simply chose to let it live, I cannot say for certain. I only know he benefited from it as much as anyone."My mind raced backward through every moment Selene had ever crossed my path, her jealousy, her schemes, the desperate wa

Point of view: Kade"Say it is not what I think it is." My own voice sounded foreign to me, rough and low, as I stared at the scorched fence line where my mother's name had once been carved into wood my father built with his own hands.Wren stood beside me, her arms wrapped tight around herself, watching the last of the flames die into smoke and ash. Ronan had already sent guards to search the perimeter, but I already knew what they would find. Nothing. Whoever had done this was gone before the first spark ever caught."It is a warning," Wren said quietly. "Alden wants us to know he can reach us anywhere. Even here, where we should be safest.""He wants you to be afraid," I said."I am afraid," Wren admitted, and something in the honesty of it steadied me more than any brave lie could have. "But being afraid does not mean I am going to run, Kade. I told you that already."I turned to face her fully, needing her to understand what I was about to say before I let the words leave my mout

Point of view: Wren"You will not survive this room if you walk in wearing guilt on your face." Selene gripped my shoulders in the corridor outside the council hall, her eyes fierce despite the exhaustion carved beneath them. "Whatever you feel, bury it until the doors close behind you."I nodded, though my hands would not stop shaking, the Vane blade wrapped carefully in cloth and tucked against my side like the only proof I had that my mother's people deserved more than the story this pack had told about them for eighteen years."Ready," Kade asked, appearing beside me, dressed in formal black, every inch the Alpha his father had raised him to become, though I could see the boy underneath it, the one who had learned only hours ago that his entire understanding of the war was built on sand."No," I said honestly. "But ready has never mattered as much as showing up anyway."He took my hand for a moment, just outside the doors, and I felt the tremor in his fingers matching my own, two