Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 31 - Chapitre 40

Sage’s POVThe hall filled with frightened murmurs as more figures rose from their seats, nearly a dozen pack members now standing scattered throughout the crowd, their faces set with the same unsettling calm Diane wore so easily. I recognized several of them immediately, an elderly healer who had treated me as a child, a young father who ran the pack’s small general store, a woman who taught the youngest pups their first lessons in pack history.None of them looked like villains. That was the most terrifying part.“You see,” Diane said, her voice carrying easily across the stunned silence, “loyalty isn’t always built through fear or manipulation, Ethan. Sometimes it’s built through genuine conviction, through wolves who’ve watched this pack stagnate under leadership too sentimental to make necessary changes.”“Get away from them,” Ethan said quietly to me, positioning himself between me and the nearest of Diane’s supporters, though his eyes never left his mother’s face. “This ends no

Sage’s POVThe moment the elder’s words faded, Diane moved.She was faster than her calm exterior suggested, closing the distance between herself and Ethan in a blur of motion that sent gasps rippling through the watching crowd. Ethan barely managed to sidestep her first strike, twisting away just in time to avoid what would have been a devastating blow to his ribs.I stood pressed against the crowd’s edge, my heart hammering so violently I could barely breathe, watching as Ethan and his own mother circled each other within the marked boundaries of the challenge circle, both of them assessing, calculating, searching for any opening.“She trained him,” Marcus said quietly beside me, his eyes never leaving the fight. “Years ago, before his father died. She knows every technique he’s likely to use.”The realization sent fresh terror through me. Diane wasn’t simply older and presumably weaker than her son. She had shaped his fighting style from childhood, understood his instincts and tend

Sage’s POV The weeks following the tribunal settled into something I hadn’t experienced in longer than I could properly remember, actual routine. I returned to my old shifts at the clinic, working under Redhollow’s newly appointed head healer, a steady, older wolf named Petra who had transferred from a neighboring pack territory to help stabilize things after Jasmine’s departure.“You have good hands for this work,” Petra told me one afternoon, watching me carefully clean and dress a young pup’s scraped knee. “Ever considered formal training? Becoming a healer yourself?”The question caught me off guard, something I had never seriously considered given how much of my adult life had been consumed by grief and blame rather than genuine thought about my own future. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve mostly just helped where I could, restocking supplies, basic care. I’ve never thought about it as something more permanent.”“Think about it,” Petra said simply. “This pack needs steady hands

Sage’s POV“There was a woman,” I said, my eyes still scanning the emptying square. “She was just here, Ethan. Right beside me. She said she knew my grandmother, said there were things about our family’s history I needed to understand.”Ethan’s expression sharpened immediately, protective instinct overriding the relaxed warmth from moments earlier. “What did she look like?”“Older, maybe seventy or so. Grey hair, kind face. She said her name was Eleanor.” I turned in a slow circle, searching the thinning crowd, but there was no sign of anyone matching that description anywhere near us. “She just vanished. One second she was standing right there and the next, completely gone.”“Did she threaten you?” Ethan asked, his hand tightening around mine.“No,” I said slowly, trying to recall the exact tone of the conversation. “If anything, she seemed gentle. Sad, almost. But something about the way she brought up my grandmother, about founding history and bloodlines, it felt significant in a w

Sage's POVWe stood in the clearing for a long moment after Eleanor vanished, nobody quite ready to speak, the weight of everything she had revealed pressing down heavily on all three of us. Marcus finally broke the silence.“We should get back,” he said. “Standing out here in the dark, discussing ancient protections and outside threats, doesn’t feel like the safest choice given everything we’ve just learned.”I nodded, still clutching the old book tightly against my chest, its worn leather cover carrying a strange weight that felt disproportionate to its actual physical size. Ethan took my free hand as we walked back toward the car where my mother waited anxiously and I could feel the tension radiating from him, his mind clearly already working through the implications of everything Eleanor had suggested.My mother’s face paled as we relayed the conversation during the drive home, her hands gripping the steering wheel tightly as she processed this fresh, unexpected complication layer