The Ninth Seal Novels & Stories

This time, every word sounded like a threat. Veyra lifted her eyes. "Nine nights." She drew a shaky breath. "Perhaps less." Then she said the part neither of them wanted to hear. "By the new moon, the seal will fail." Her voice dropped. "And the Devourer will walk." A knock struck the door. Once. The impact shook dust from the ceiling and rattled every torch along the walls. Selene flinched despite herself. Nine nights. She thought of Aria asleep upstairs. Of Marcus in the infirmary. Of Lyra still sitting beside him. Of every person in Ashwood who had trusted them to keep the pack safe.

BLURB The night Mooncrest burned, the Moon Goddess wept. As the kingdom fell to betrayal and steel, the last princess was hidden away and her memories sealed, her royal aura erased, and her wolf locked deep inside her soul. Left beneath an ancient oak as nothing more than a lost orphan, Princess Hailey of Mooncrest disappeared from history. Eighteen years later, she is no longer a princess. She is a wolfless girl raised among the Dark Wood Pack, unwanted, overlooked, and never quite belonging. Until the night the seal begins to crack and the past she was never meant to remember comes hunting for her blood. The enemies who destroyed her kingdom still wear crowns. The mate she was born

'Ninth Office. The old woman’s eyes narrowed. 'You know.' 'I know the name.’ 'I know more than most.’ Hennet said as she slumped back into her seat. 'It had the Emperor’s seal. The old one. With the lamp and crown. It stated in dry script, "Mara Albrecht of the Red Quarter to be silenced." Evangeline put her cup down. It clinked against the saucer. She clenched her hands together tightly in her lap so tight her nails dug into her skin.

"Go on." "When the door opens, they go out first." Everything in me stopped. "All one hundred and forty-four," he said. "Not as a concession. Not as a bargain, because I have nothing to bargain with and I have never once needed to. The door opens outward. That is how a seal works. Everything that is caught in it comes out, and I am the deepest thing in it and therefore the last, and if you turn that door those hundred and forty-four walk out of it ahead of me and there is nothing whatsoever that I can do to prevent that."

That was part of the reason he slept separately from the squad, one: They would be on guard in their own way and two so that he could tell the imposter if they were unable to figure it out. “Sixteen men going in, sixteen out.” “Okay, anything else?” “A-a-an owl from the Prince bro-brought this.” The knight, who had had both his hands in view as a show of submission, fumbled with his words then lowered his right hand to his pocket and pulled out a white and red envelope with a deep crimson wax seal that had a figure of the crown embedded in its centre. -The royal seal.- Isaak removed the dagger from the man’s throat and then took the letter.

A breath hitched in his throat as he reached for it. Click. The drawer opened. A slow, agonizing pull, almost to say it wasn’t too late. He needn’t go that far. He could still- And there it was. Nestled among dull ink pots and spare ribbon: Nochten’s royal seal. A small wooden stamp carved into the shape of a crescent moon with bats midflight. The sigil of the Empress. And beside it, the red wax. Bruno stared at it. His pulse beat in his ears, thudding louder than the fire he’d neglected. Louder than the wind scratching against the pane. Louder than reason.

"All I said was, 'You should take a look at this.' You were the one who didn't bother to read it." He kept scanning the document, desperately searching for a loophole. But the terms were ironclad, the legal language precise. And on the final page, there was a crimson mark. When Damon saw the clear, undeniable mark of his Alpha Seal—his own crimson thumbprint, imbued with a trace of his power—his body went rigid.

His hand paused on the black tuxedo waiting for tomorrow; sleek, commanding, unyielding. From a drawer beneath the wardrobe, he drew out a silk bowtie and polished cufflinks. Turning the tie over in his hand, he let the satin catch the light. For him, clothing was never vanity; it was armor, a statement. And tomorrow, every detail of that statement would matter.

The man hung his head low, his fingers buried deep in his hair, carefully considering where I might have gone. As his eyes wandered, they suddenly fell upon the trash can nearby. Those pink fragments looked so familiar that the moment he saw them, he felt like he couldn't breathe. He slowly crouched down, not caring that the cream stains would dirty his sleeves. He picked up the pieces from the trash can bit by bit. Then, he carefully assembled them back together. There were exactly 99 reconciliation vouchers. He remembered five years ago, when he had looked at those vouchers and sincerely promised me, "Cecilia, don't worry. I'll never give you a reason to use them."

Chapter 98: Fire Beneath the Crown (Nikolai’s POV – First Person) The moment I cracked the seal on the ash-scented parchment, I knew. She found it. The note inside was brief, but it might as well have been a gunshot to the chest. She’s awakened the temple. Your window is closing. Move or be erased. I crushed the message in my fist. The ink smeared against my palm, bleeding like a wound. For a long moment, I said nothing. Just stood in the middle of my office, staring out the window at the horizon, watching the sun sink behind the forest that had hidden too many secrets for far too long.