All Chapters of Marked and Cast Out, She Came Back Untouchable : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Alaric's POVI didn't sleep after the council broke up. I sat in my study with the fire burned down to embers, turning the name over and over in my head until it stopped sounding real.Kestrel. Her family name. A bloodline I apparently helped erase without ever knowing what it actually meant.Corwin found me there at dawn, still in the same clothes from the night before."You didn't sleep," he said."Couldn't."He pulled a chair up across from me, dropping into it heavy, like he hadn't slept much either. "So what's the plan? We can't exactly send a formal request to the Hollow asking if they've got a Moonsworn healer hiding in their camp.""No." I rubbed my eyes, the dizziness from last night still lingering at the edges. "We keep it quiet. Small riders spread across the neighboring territories. Tell them we're looking for any wolf with unusual healing gifts. Don't mention the bloodline name. Don't mention her.""Why not just say what we're actually looking for?""Because if word gets

Sable's POVIvy didn't waste time. She marched straight to Rook's tent that evening, and I trailed behind her, half annoyed, half relieved someone else was going to say the hard part out loud so I didn't have to keep circling it alone."Rook," she said, pushing the flap aside without waiting to be invited in. "We need to talk."He looked up from whatever map he'd been studying, taking one look at both our faces before setting it down. "What happened?""Ironclaw's got riders out looking for a healer," Ivy said. "Word's spreading fast. And Sable was standing at the edge of camp this afternoon thinking about walking straight to their border and turning herself in.""I wasn't turning myself in," I said. "I was thinking about it. That's all.""That's exactly the problem." Ivy crossed her arms, glancing between us like she was done being the only one carrying this weight. "Tell him what you told me."Rook's expression had already gone hard, the easy calm he usually carried nowhere in sight

Sable's POVThe news about the farmstead sat heavy over camp for days, everyone moving through their routines with a new tension underneath, like the war we all been half-expecting had finally announced itself for real.I found Yarrow the morning after, sitting cross-legged outside her tent with a stack of old texts pulled from somewhere I'd never seen before, thick leather covers cracked with age."What's all this?" I asked."Everything I've got on the Moonsworn," she said, not looking up. "Been meaning to go through it properly for weeks. Figured now's as good a time as any, given everything happening.""Can I help?"She glanced up then, studying me for a moment before nodding toward the space across from her. "Sit. Might as well learn about your own blood instead of stumbling through it blind."I sat, and she slid one of the texts toward me, its pages yellowed and brittle, the writing inside cramped and old-fashioned enough that I had to squint to make sense of it."Most of what's

Sable's POV"What kind of help?" I asked, part of me already braced for whatever answer was coming.Petra wiped at her eyes, frustrated with herself for the tears, the same pride I remembered from growing up flickering underneath the desperation now. "Money, mostly. Or advice. I don't even know anymore. I just know I don't have anywhere else to turn.""Start from the beginning," Ivy said, her tone still guarded but a little less sharp than before. "What actually happened?"Petra took a breath, steadying herself before continuing. "After you disappeared, the whole household changed. You probably don't realize how much work you actually did, Sable. Cleaning, cooking, managing half the small tasks that kept things running smooth. Reva never had to think about any of it because you handled it.""I'm aware of everything I did," I said flatly."I'm not saying that to guilt you. I'm saying it because once you were gone, all of it fell on hired help Reva couldn't really afford. She had to pay

Corwin's POVI'd been back from the search three days, and Alaric still hadn't told me what Pell had reported while I was out east chasing a dead-end lead. I only found out secondhand, from one of the other riders, that a girl in the Hollow could heal with her bare hands, and that Alaric had ridden out himself to confirm it before I even made it back through the gates.He hadn't found her. The camp she was hiding in, it hadn't given itself up easily. He came back three days later looking worse than when he left, the tonic barely holding the shaking down anymore.I didn't like how quiet he'd gone about the whole thing. Didn't like how much Ophelia seemed to know about our movements either, given how carefully we tried to keep the search discreet.I was crossing the lower courtyard that morning when I saw the guards dragging Bern toward the dungeon steps.Bern had served as one of our Beta-ranked wolves for going on six years, steady, reliable, the kind of man who never made trouble and