تسجيل الدخولRudieloff walked toward them slowly.He was composed. That was the thing that made it worse, somehow, but it was expected. The deliberate composure as if he had already decided that losing himself on a public road was beneath him and he was holding that decision in place with considerable effort. His face was very still, void of any emotions. His steps were measured. Only his eyes betrayed him, and only to someone who knew how to read them.Oliver and Vivienne knew how to read them.Vivienne slipped from the horse the moment Rudieloff was close enough and lowered herself immediately, her head bowing deep. "My prince," she said quietly. Her voice was steady, which Oliver noted with a private kind of pride.Oliver dismounted a step behind her and bowed as well, his hand crossing his chest in the customary gesture of respect, his head lowered at the appropriate degree. "My prince," he said.Rudieloff stopped before them.The silence that followed lasted long enough to make Finn shift his
Rudieloff rode ahead of General Finn with a force that made his horse strain beneath him, its hooves striking the road in a rapid urgent rhythm. The wind tore at his cloak, tugged at his hair, and stung his face, yet he barely felt it. His mind was fixed on one thought alone.What if he was right? What if Vivienne had somehow found Oliver?The possibility was absurd, and yet it would not leave him. It had become certainty without proof, dread without reason, and instinct without mercy. Something inside him had gone taut the moment he saw her running off. Vivienne was missing, and now every passing second seemed to tighten that invisible cord around his neck until it threatened to snap.The modest house eventually came into view at the side of the road. The peacefulness of the place almost mocked the storm gathering inside Rudieloff. He had pushed the pace the entire ride and Finn had kept up without complaining, which was a testament to the man's endurance because Rudieloff had not be
The forest had given them nothing. Rudieloff and all the team.Hours of searching, hundreds of men spread across every section of the trees, and the only thing the morning had produced was a deepening certainty that wherever Vivienne had gone, she had not gone further into the forest or she had just run through it. The soft earth along the bank of the stream showed tracks from the soldiers themselves and nothing else. The scent trails they had followed one by one had led to dead ends, to places where the wind had simply taken everything and left no answer behind.Rudieloff stood at the base of a broad tree and said nothing for a long moment.Around him, men continued to move. Adrian pushed through a thicket, his expression tight with the particular frustration of someone young enough to believe that effort alone should produce results. General Finn stood a short distance away, his arms folded, watching his scouts work a section of ground he had already covered, but he did not stop the
Far across the kingdom in the slave quarters of the Bolivia palace, the morning had brought no peace at all. Monera had not slept. She had sat facing the door of their small room through most of the night, and when morning came she was still sitting there hoping Vivienne would walk in any minute.Her hands were folded in her lap, her eyes red at the rims. Cecilia sat beside her, close enough that their arms touched, and she had not said much since a certain point in the night when words had stopped helping."She'll come back," Cecilia said, because she had been saying it at intervals through the night and it seemed wrong to stop now."I know," Monera replied, the same answer she had given every time, though the line between knowing something and believing it had grown thin in the dark hours before morning.A palace guard appeared at the entrance to their room. "The king sends word," he said. "You are both excused from your duties today."King Reginald himself had ordered that both wom
The night passed quietly as though the world itself had decided to give Vivienne a brief rest from everything that had happened. For the first time in what felt like forever, she slept in a bed that was warm, soft and safe. The blankets were thick and clean, carrying the faint scent of fresh linen, wood smoke, and a scent she recognized so well, Oliver.His scent lingered everywhere. It was on the pillow beneath her head. It clung to the blankets wrapped around her body. It had settled into the mattress itself, the way a person's presence settles into a place over years of living in it. It should have bothered her, should have made her uneasy to be surrounded by so much of him, yet instead it made her feel strangely calm. She hated admitting it, even in the privacy of her own thoughts. She pulled the blanket up closer and stared at the ceiling and tried very hard not to think about why it was comforting, which meant she thought about almost nothing else.Every time she closed her eye
Vivienne lay motionless beneath the moonlight, her silver eyes fixed upon the modest house before her. Every instinct within had her wolf recognized Oliver’s scent long before her mind could fully catch up to what her body already knew. Just the way a person would recognize a familiar voice in a crowded room. This was Oliver's home. The scent pouring from the small house was so strong that there could be no mistake. It was on the walls, it drifted from the windows, clung to the wooden fence and the narrow path leading to the door, wrapping itself around the place as though it belonged there as much as the wood and stone. It was the same scent she had followed for miles without stopping. And now here she was, standing before a door she had never seen before but feeling more certain of where she was than she had felt of anything in her entire life. She stood and began moving. Trotting around the house. Her white body moving silently through the darkness as she circled the property a
Vivienne sat up slowly on her narrow small bed, pulling her thin blanket closer before letting it go. She listened to the familiar sounds of her mother's soft coughing and restless shifting in her small bed as well.The thin blanket fell off her shoulders, showing skin that was far too pale. It was
The doors opened.A hush swept across the hall. Everyone was eagerly waiting for the golden boy.Two guards stepped in, escorting Adrian, now dressed only in a white undergarment cloth wrapped around his waist. His upper body was bare and a nice piece to watch.His skin glowed faintly under the moon
The hours came in slowly toward midnight, as though the moon itself were holding its breath. Everybody waited in anticipation for this memorable night. Adrian was the happiest of them all, He was the only royal transforming that night. However many had transformed a year before him and others were
He stood there in dark training clothes, A sword in his left hand, broad-shouldered, commanding, his presence filling the space like a storm cloud. He smelt like iron, earth and his scent wolf hit her all at once. She froze in place before shaking her head vigorously to reality. She dropped to her







