Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 11 - Chapitre 20

I smelled him before I saw him, and my body betrayed me instantly—heart slamming, breath catching, some treasonous part of me still programmed in to find Vaelric Drevane as safe no matter the other hell he'd put us through.It was something I had hated more than anything else in my life.He walked through the gate, unaccompanied—no trackers at his side, not even a pack color on display, just torn ceremonial black paint and features as haggard as someone two years overdue for their second decade. It took Nyra's wolves a split second to fall into formation, becoming a wall of teeth and animus between him and the rest of us, but Vaelric didn't even look at them as an omen. His eyes locked on mine from across the courtyard, and they didn't leave, and for the first time since being in the Great Hall, I bore witness to the true, complete undoing of Ashveil's Alpha."Lunara." He didn't even say my name the way my mother did — with nine years of mourning to her voice, just immediate panic.

I still could not shake the last words of the Warden._Think — what does a patient man intend to do with a weapon he'd rather take whole than destroy?_I rolled that sentence around and rolled it again while Nyra gathered everyone up inside, away from the open courtyard—and whatever else the night still had out there to send marching up the road. The northern hall was smaller than Ashveil's and less clean, oriented more towards defence than ceremony — but it felt, stupidly, safer than anywhere I'd been since the rejection.Or was it safer, because it now contained my mother and my former Alpha—and the man who had apparently spent his entire life hunting for me—all in one room, not a full level of trust between any of them?I spoke louder than needed, "Capture entire," to fill the tension spawned from the long table in the hall. "Kael doesn't want me dead. He wants me intact. Why?"Her voice stayed measured while she worked her way through this line of thought with me: "Because a sov

I didn't sleep well that night, even bundled in furs next to a banked fire in a hold I had never thought to find secure.Staying awake, I could hear the hold slowly settle around me — sentries swapping in and out along the walls, voices still murmuring somewhere down the corridor, too much danger absorbed in one night for all of us to be completely relaxed. I remembered the day in pieces every time I closed my eyes: The ceremony. The change. Kael's flat gold gaze. The Warden's hooded warning. My mother's face when she'd said her, returned_I lost the battle of sleep some time after the moon went down and headed to find a small watchtower in the hold's northernmost point with a narrow stone staircase spiralling up inside it that ended at open air, above dark plains spreading out in all directions below me.My time up there alone wasn't for long."Could not sleep either," Rhaevan said, climbing the last few steps and wedging himself against the other wall without waiting for permission

I had just completed the letter when the bell tolled again, this time audible only to Rhaevan and me.His head shot up, every hint of the soft patience he'd shown just moments ago replaced with something alert and wary."Did you hear that?""I heard it twice now," I said, putting down the quill. "I was convinced I made it up. Or that it was something banal — a hold bell, a watch signal.""It's not ordinary."Rhaevan crossed to the hall's thin stained glass window and peered out into the shadowed tree line beyond the walls."Noctis doesn't ring bells. Horns are used, just like every other pack in the north."Vaelric came up beside him at the window, and I could almost see the return of tension to his shoulders."Something Ashveil, maybe? An unfamiliar pursuit signal?""No," said Rhaevan, his voice low and careful. "I think I recognize it. I just want to be wrong."Before he could go into more detail, Nyra blew back past the door to the hall, breathless now and with all earlier calm eff

I counted my own heartbeats to keep from screaming.Four hours.That was what stood between me and whatever verdict a Council of ancient beings had decided my life was worth, and I'd spent the first twenty minutes of it doing absolutely nothing but breathing, because nobody in that hall seemed to know what a person was supposed to do while waiting to find out if they got to keep existing."You should rest," my mother said, for the third time, hovering near the hearth like she still hadn't decided whether she was allowed to comfort me after nine years of silence."I'm not going to sleep through the last four hours I might have," I said, sharper than I meant to.Then, softer, because none of this was her fault, not really: "I need to move. I can't just sit here waiting for someone else to decide what happens to me. Not again. Not tonight of all nights."Rhaevan looked up from where he'd been pacing a slow, methodical line along the far wall."Then let's move with purpose instead of pani