Novels by MidasPen

Ciara’s POVThe next day.I was coming back from a session with Serafine, my hair still loose, when movement in the entrance hall below caught my attention. I stopped at the railing, looked down and saw a woman.She was tall. Dark-haired, with an elegance that came from years of knowing exactly what effect she had when she walked into a room. She wore deep green, simply cut, and she moved like someone who had never once doubted that she deserved the space she occupied.The guards at the entrance were practically falling over themselves. The older one on the left — the one who had never once smiled at me without prompting — was grinning like she'd just said the funniest thing he'd heard all year. She laughed with them, easy and warm, her hand resting briefly on the younger guard's arm, and every single one of them stood a fraction straighter without noticing they were doing it.I stood at the railing and watched this for longer than I should have.A maid came around the corner behin

Draven's POVMarcus left the report on my desk at midnight with a single line written beneath his summary in his precise, economical hand: *This one is worse.*I read it twice before I set it down.Corvin. Junior aide, twenty-three years old, attached to the council offices for the past fourteen months. The kind of young man who blended into the background of every meeting he attended — quiet, efficient, forgettable. The kind that nobody watched because nobody thought there was anything to watch.The leaks that couldn't have come from Wren pointed directly to him. Meeting schedules that Wren wouldn't have known. Internal correspondence from council sessions. Details about pack resource allocation that lived in exactly one set of documents — the ones that passed through the council offices before they reached anyone else.Corvin had access to all of it.I sat back and let that settle for a moment. Two informants. One a guard with gambling debts and a contact at a tavern. The other a co

Kaden’s POVMy father was still in the chamber when I turned back. He was standing at the window, hands clasped behind him."A word," he said, without turning.I closed the door and waited.He turned and looked at me for a moment before moving to his desk and settling into his chair with the deliberate ease of a man choosing his next words carefully."I've been in correspondence with the Ashvale Pack," he said. "Their Alpha has a daughter. Well-bred, politically connected, the kind of match that would consolidate our eastern alliances considerably." He slid a folded document across the desk toward me. "I'd like you to consider it."I stared at him."You're not serious."His eyes came up. "I am entirely serious.""It has been weeks," I said. "Weeks since the engagement with Ciara ended. You want me to begin courting someone else in the same breath?""The pack cannot wait on your emotional timeline, Kaden—""This isn't emotional." The words came out sharper than I intended. "This is bas

KADEN'S POV The council chamber smelled of old wood and political anxiety, which in my experience were rarely separable. I arrived exactly on time, which meant my father and both senior council members were already seated and had been for long enough to exchange whatever preliminary conversation they hadn't wanted me present for. Councilman Thorne sat to my father's left, his hands folded neatly in front of him. As always, his expression revealed nothing. The man had spent so many years in politics that even his silences felt deliberate. Every reaction was measured, every glance considered. He gave away nothing he wasn't prepared to lose. Across from him sat Elder Cassian. Older. Sharper around the edges. Less interested in appearances. Cassian had survived the reigns of four Alphas, which told me more about him than any title ever could. Men like him did not last because they were agreeable. They lasted because they were useful. And because they knew the differenc

CIARA'S POVDraven stood there with a tray balanced against his hip — bread, stew, the quiet routine he'd built without ever announcing it as a routine."How did training go?" he asked, stepping past me into the room."It changed everything, actually." I shut the door behind him. "Serafine told me the heat isn't separate from my wolf. It never was. She *is* the power. Every time it's surged — the heat I've been describing to you for weeks — that was just her, surfacing."He set the tray down and turned to look at me with real interest. "So when you've been afraid of losing control—""I've been afraid of her. Yes." I sat across from him, still working through it myself. "And every time I pushed it down, told myself to calm it, I wasn't managing some wild force. I was silencing her."Draven went quiet, watching me with the kind of stillness that meant he was actually turning it over rather than waiting for his turn to speak."That changes how you'll have to think about training," he sai

CIARA'S POVThree weeks in, I started to feel the difference.The power used to arrive without warning — a flood, sudden and total, no space between feeling fine and feeling like my skin couldn't hold what was underneath it. Now there was a moment before. A low warmth sitting just beneath my sternum, like a coal that hadn't caught yet.My wolf, stirring before she surfaced."There," I said, sitting up straighter. "Right there — do you see it? Well, you can't see it, but something just happened. I felt her before she rose. A breath of warning. Maybe two." I pressed my palm flat against my chest. "She's awake right now. I can feel her."Serafine's hands stilled over the herbs she'd been sorting. She looked up properly this time. "Describe it. Don't simplify it for my benefit."I frowned, trying to find the actual shape of the thing rather than a tidy version of it. "Before, it felt like something happening to me. Like she would surge up out of nowhere and I'd just be carried along by it