جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 80

Sable's POVThe hall didn't hold together long after that. Ophelia's outburst hung in the air, ugly and undeniable, and I watched something shift across the faces of half the Elders present, the last of their doubt collapsing under the weight of her own temper.Halric called for a formal investigation before the session ended, guards posted at Ophelia's chambers, her household attendants brought in for questioning one by one. Nothing had been decided fully yet, no verdict handed down, but the direction of things had turned hard against her, and everyone in that hall knew it.I left before the details got sorted, exhausted in a way that went past the poisoning, past the confrontation, past everything. Yarrow found me back in the guest chamber an hour later, a stack of old texts tucked under one arm."Rook wasn't happy about me coming here," she said, setting the books down on the small table by the window. "Took some convincing. He finally agreed once I pointed out you needed proper re

Sable's POV"So choose it," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. "You just told me it's the only cure. Why are we sitting here talking about it instead of doing something about it?"He didn't answer immediately, and something in that hesitation made my stomach drop before he even said a word."It's not that simple," he said finally."You just said it was. Both of us, choosing it, together. You're sitting here dying, Alaric. What's simpler than choosing to live?""I have a pack to think about." His voice hardened,but I caught the exhaustion still bleeding through underneath it. "I can't just reverse a decision I made in front of the entire territory without consequences. The Elders already have doubts about my leadership after everything with Ophelia. If I stand up and reforge a bond I publicly destroyed, that instability doesn't just disappear.""So your pride matters more than actually surviving this.""It's not pride." His jaw tightened. "It's stability. An Alpha who reverses hims

Corwin's POVThe border patrol brought him in just after dawn, a Vaelor scout caught scoping the eastern approach, close enough to our walls that his capture had to mean something more than routine reconnaissance. Young, maybe twenty-three, twenty-four, his coat still holding the grey coloring that marked him instantly as part of Bastian's bloodline.I had him brought to a small holding room off the main hall instead of the dungeons, figuring a scout desperate enough to get caught this close might talk easier without stone walls and Bern's bitter presence a few cells down reminding him what waited if he didn't cooperate."You know what happens to captured scouts during a declared conflict," I said, standing across the table from him, keeping my voice level despite the exhaustion still dragging at every part of me from the past week.He didn't answer, jaw set, eyes fixed on the wall behind me like refusing to meet my gaze might somehow protect

Ophelia's POVI knew the moment Petra opened her mouth in that hall that my carefully built position was finished. The scout's confession, whenever they'd get around to extracting it, would only confirm what half the council already suspected. There was no salvaging any of it, not the marriage, not my family's standing, not even my own safety inside these walls anymore.So I stopped trying to salvage anything at all.The passage behind the tapestry had been my grandmother's escape route, built decades ago during a different conflict, forgotten by everyone except the small circle of family who passed the knowledge down generation to generation. I used it to slip out unnoticed sometime after midnight, taking what coin I could carry easily, leaving the rest tucked away in accounts my father would help me access once I reached somewhere safe.But the coin alone wasn't going to buy safe passage through contested territory with Vaelor's forces already massing along the border. I needed some

Sable's POVI didn't tell him it was okay. It wasn't, and saying otherwise would have been its own kind of lie, one more thing added to a pile of things unsaid between us that had already grown too tall."That's not something I can just forgive right now," I said, my voice steady despite the chaos still building around us. "Fear or not, you still stood on that platform and burned a mark into my skin in front of everyone I knew.""I know.""I needed you to know that too, before whatever happens tonight.""I understand." He didn't argue, didn't try to soften the weight of what I said, and something about that, about him actually accepting the accusation without flinching away from it, loosened something tight in my chest that I hadn't expected to loosen tonight.Another horn cut through the noise, and shouting spread fast across the courtyard, wolves scrambling in every direction toward the fresh chaos that had just broken loose near the second gate."We need to move," I said."I know."