جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

Dawn came. I hadn't slept, and Adrian hadn't touched me.He sat all night in the chair farthest from the bed, like a stone statue guarding the door.The first morning light slipped through the silver-inlaid window lattice, cutting the shadows on the floor into strips.I pushed the door open. At the end of the corridor, two Omegas were talking in lowered voices, their eyes sweeping toward me without bothering to hide it. "An orphan girl, standing in the Luna's place. As if she deserves it."The remark pricked between my shoulder blades like a needle. I didn't turn around. I only straightened my spine a little more.It didn't take me long to find out about the woman Damian had taken with him.Her name was Lydia Voss, and she came from the Redfang Pack.Redfang. When those two words hit my ears, my hand clenched tight.Twelve years ago, it was Redfang wolves who razed my home and slaughtered my parents.My parents, Daniel and Evelyn Ashford, were Blackmane warriors. That night, they threw

I didn't sleep. Before dawn, I had turned the manor's old storehouse upside down for the pack chronicle, the one buried under years of dust.My fingertips moved over page after brittle page. The dust made my throat itch, but I couldn't stop.The chronicle gave the Redfang night raid twelve years ago only one offhand line: Heir Damian Blackwood shielded the orphan Vera Ashford in the crisis and was wounded.Wounded? But Damian didn't have a single scar on his body.I grew up beside him. I'd cleaned the scrapes that branches left on his arms. His skin was clean, without one old wound to be found.The person who had actually carried that silver scar for twelve years was Adrian.I closed the chronicle, my fingertips trembling.I had loved Damian for twelve years, and the deepest part of that love was gratitude so profound that I would have given him my life.But he had never saved my life at all. The god I had worshipped in my heart was hollow.I couldn't name what I felt. It was as if som

Damian stood in the bridal chamber for a long time, his face white as paper.At last Damian understood that his attempt to be clever had cost him the entire game."You knew all along." He stared hard at me, his voice trembling."I did." I looked at him calmly. "You couldn't even be bothered to attend our mating ceremony. Why would I keep playing my part in your little performance?""I cried for you for five whole days," I said, one word at a time. "And you spent those five days lying beside the enemy who slaughtered my family."He whipped around toward Adrian like a beast backed into a corner and snarled, "Make her perform the rejection ceremony with you! If she rejects you in front of everyone and severs the bond, the position is mine again!"My chest went cold.The rejection ceremony is the cruelest punishment werewolves have.In the instant the bond breaks, both souls are torn open inch by inch, as if by claws. The pain is like dying.Some wolves' spirits shatter on the spot when th

By the time we reached the moon hall, Alpha Theron was almost gone.He lay beneath the statue of the Moon Goddess, his breath thin, his withered hand clamped around a scroll: Blackmane's sealed oath of succession."V-Vera." He forced his eyes open, his clouded gaze searching my face for a long moment. "Your parents died for me. I never finished repaying what I owed them."I knelt at his bedside and took his freezing hand.Most of twelve years' resentment fell away in that single moment."Alpha, you knew who let Redfang in all those years ago, didn't you."He closed his eyes, and a single tear slipped from the corner of one eye. "I knew."His voice trembled almost past hearing. "I've heard the crying from that night in my dreams for twelve years. Your parents, with their last breath, pushed you into my arms and begged me to protect you. But he is my blood, the heir I chose. I couldn't bring myself to do it. To shield him, I let Damian dress himself up as your savior, and the lie ran on

Three months later, beneath the blood moon, the Blackmane Pack welcomed its new Alpha.Adrian stood before the temple of the Moon Goddess and received the oath of succession, and the black wolf's bloodline brought the whole pack to its knees.And I stood at his side. Not a Luna tucked safely behind him, but the woman who ruled this pack shoulder to shoulder with him.The Omegas and Elders who had once gossiped about me in the corridors no longer dared to raise their heads in my presence.I no longer needed anyone to fight for my place in this manor.The defenses, the hidden passages, the schemes tucked away in people's hearts. I saw them all more clearly than anyone now.From then on, half the board at Blackmane was mine to command.The night he took his seat, he leaned close to my ear and whispered, "This time, I am never letting go."I looked up at him, and suddenly remembered things from many years ago, things I had never managed to make sense of."Adrian," I asked, "when we were ch