Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

Tahlia's POV “You need to stop this before it destroys what’s left of the family.”Nadia’s voice was soft, almost gentle, as she closed the door to her private sitting room behind me. The same room where she had always received compliments, gifts, and visitors while I stayed out of sight in the narrower halls. Soft chairs. Better light. A mirror that reflected her from every useful angle.I didn’t sit.“The account the stolen coin moved into belongs to someone in this family,” I said. “I’ve traced three separate transfers so far. Your name sits on the authorization trail for two of them.”Her expression didn’t flicker. She moved to the small table near the window and poured water she didn’t drink. “Then someone is using my name. It happens more often than people admit. Forged seals. Stolen stationery. Desperate people looking for a scapegoat with a clean reputation.”“Or the name is accurate.”Nadia laughed, light and disbelieving, the same laugh she used when someone paid her a clum

Tahlia's POV “Run and I’ll make it worse when I catch you.”The voice behind me was close enough that I felt the words more than heard them, hot against the cold night air. I didn’t answer. I just kept moving, bare feet tearing on roots and loose stone, lungs burning like they had been scraped raw from the inside, the rope burns on my wrists wet and stinging with every swing of my arms. My wolf was a dim, injured presence under my skin—too weak to force a shift, too stubborn to let me stop and drop. She pushed what little strength she had left into my legs and nothing more. It was barely enough.I had gotten free of the room. I still didn’t know how long the struggle had lasted, how much noise I had made, or whether the person I had trusted had ordered the chase or simply stood aside and allowed it. All I knew was the forest, the dark, the cold air knifing into my throat, and the sound of at least two men crashing through the undergrowth behind me with the confidence of people who ha

Tahlia's POV “You’re back.”My mother’s voice was flat when I stepped into the family sitting room. No relief. No warmth. No rush across the carpet to check the fading bruises on my face or the rope marks still visible on my wrists. Just the same measuring look she had used my entire life, the one that weighed how much inconvenience I was about to cause and whether it could still be managed quietly before word spread further through the keep.I closed the door behind me and didn’t move further into the room. Standing felt safer. Standing felt like the only way to keep the ground I had gained in the archive, in the forest, and in the moment Ronan’s wolf had spoken through him. “I am.”My father set down his glass on the side table with a careful, deliberate click. The sound was the same one he used when he was already disappointed and preparing the lecture. “The healers said you should rest. You look—”“Different?” I finished for him. “Good. I am.”Nadia sat near the window in one of

Ronan's POV"They're not just stealing coin. They're buying my removal."I dropped the succession document Tahlia had found onto my father's desk, hard enough to make the ink pots jump and the map weights rattle. The Alpha King picked it up without a word, read the first page, then the list of supporting names, then the primary signature at the bottom. The temperature in the private study dropped by degrees."Veylan," he said."Veylan, and at least four other senior Alphas across the eastern and northern territories. They've been moving money for years to fund a quiet coalition. The plan is simple on paper. Discredit me. Destabilize your rule through manufactured shortages and 'unavoidable' failures. Replace me with a candidate they can control once the alliance is frightened enough to accept the change." I paced once across the room, because standing still made my wolf worse. The animal wanted blood. It wanted the men who'd put Tahlia in that forest. It wanted the men who'd signed th

Tahlia's POV"That mark doesn't belong on an ordinary wolf."The Alpha King's voice cut through the silence that had held the chamber since the light first wrote itself into my skin. Every eye stayed fixed on my forearm, where the glowing crescent and its thinner companion curve still pulsed with a soft, steady silver that refused to fade even when I pressed my hand over it and tried to smother the glow against my dress.I closed my fingers tighter. The light leaked between them anyway, painting faint lines across my knuckles and the edge of my sleeve, bright enough that the people nearest me shifted, as if the mark might be contagious."What does it mean?" Ronan asked. His voice was tight, stripped of the public declaration he'd made only minutes earlier when he said he'd court me properly. He hadn't moved from where he stood, but his attention had shifted entirely to the mark and the way the Alpha King was looking at me, like a puzzle that had just solved itself and rearranged the b