جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 150

DAMIENI read the forbidden record until dawn, then read it again because I refused to accept that a few lines written by some dead physician could decide whether Ava lived long enough to raise our child, and by the time the first light reached the archive windows, I had scattered so many books across the desk that Garrick stopped in the doorway, took one look at the mess, and quietly reconsidered whatever question he had come to ask me.I had spent centuries learning how to kill things that threatened my pack, how to survive wounds that should have ended my life, and how to make enemies regret ever learning my name, yet none of those skills meant a damn thing when I needed to understand the body of the woman I loved. Ava was human, stubborn enough to argue with an entire room of werewolves, and carrying a child whose growth had already begun to frighten the physicians, but she was not some problem I could solve by throwing money at it or ordering everyone around until they gave me th

DAMIENAva's threat followed me out of the bedroom, down the corridor, and into every miserable corner of my mind, because I had spent centuries believing that my identity was the thing that kept people alive, the name that made enemies hesitate before reaching for a weapon, the reputation that stopped lesser Alphas from testing my territory, and now that same identity was standing between me and the woman I loved.She had not screamed at me or thrown anything, which would honestly have been easier to handle, because Ava could swear at me until the walls shook and still crawl into my arms afterward when she was ready. Instead, she had looked me in the eyes and told me she would leave if I lied again, and the frightening part was that she meant every word.I returned to my study and shut the door behind me, then stood beside the desk with both hands pressed against its surface while my wolf paced inside me, furious at the thought of Ava walking away and even angrier that I could not bl

DAMIENI left the mansion before sunrise because the thought of walking into another room and finding Ava looking at me like I had already decided the shape of her future made something ugly crawl beneath my skin, and I knew myself well enough to understand that if I stayed, I would keep trying to convince her that my solution was the only one that mattered.The problem was that I had no fucking solution.I had old records, half-dead accounts written by men who had been buried for centuries, and a possible way to save the woman I loved that could also kill her if I judged the timing wrong. Every time I imagined Ava lying on a bed while her body fought to bring our child into the world, my wolf began clawing at the inside of my skull, demanding that I do something before the danger came close enough to touch her. Yet the woman I wanted to protect had looked me in the face and told me she would not surrender her humanity simply because I was terrified of losing her.She had every right

DAMIENThe name Cassian Veyr sat on my desk beneath a weight of old paper, and every instinct my wolf possessed was telling me that the bastard had finally stopped hiding behind other men.I had spent centuries burying enemies who believed they could take what belonged to me, but this was different because the evidence Isolde brought had dragged my father's death out of its grave and placed it directly in front of me. The council that had served him, the gates opened from within, the information passed to rival wolves, and the blood spilled afterward had never been separate pieces of a tragedy. Somebody had connected them, and now that somebody was reaching for my territory again.Garrick entered my office while I was studying the seal on the oldest document, carrying a tablet displaying reports from our northern patrols and wearing the expression he usually reserved for news that would ruin an otherwise perfectly miserable day."We have three patrols reporting unfamiliar wolves beyon

AVAThe hospital's name kept staring back at me from the tablet, and the longer I looked at it, the more the little details began crawling into place in ways I desperately wished they wouldn't, because the payments weren't random, the maternity wards weren't random, and the company paying for private security around those buildings had been registered under three different names within the past two years.I pulled the report closer, scrolling through the attached invoices while Garrick leaned over my shoulder, his expression hardening each time another payment appeared. Some of the money had gone toward medical transport, some toward maintenance contracts, and some toward security personnel assigned to hospital entrances, which might have looked harmless if the same company hadn't been paying people to study the routines of doctors, nurses, and emergency staff.My hand drifted to my stomach, where the baby shifted gently beneath my palm, and a cold feeling spread through me as I remem