LOGINChapter Sixty ThreePOV: Kael DravonI came to her door that morning because I had spent the entire night telling myself I was not going to and had failed completely at convincing myself of that, and I stood there and knocked and when she opened it the first thing I noticed was that something in her face had changed since the campaign ended.Not dramatically. Not in a way that announced itself. But I had been studying Seraphine Ashwood's face since we were children and I knew every version of it and what was on it right now was a version I had not seen before, something composed and deliberate and pointed inward in a way that gave nothing away and was doing so on purpose."I thought we could train together," I said. "The border sentries are reporting unusual activity three miles east. I want to run the outer perimeter."She looked at me for a moment and then she smiled.Not the warm real smile. The other one. The one that sat perfectly on her face and reached absolutely nowhere near he
Chapter Sixty Two POV: Sera AshwoodI walked away from the campaign site with my wolf settled and my power fully present and my chest carrying something that felt dangerously close to hope, and I killed it before it could breathe properly because hope was the thing that had gotten me into every single situation I was currently in and I was done letting it make my decisions.Kael had fought beside me for six days. Six days of him keeping the line between me and everything trying to reach me, six days of his wolf warm and certain at my left side, six days of the mate bond doing things I had spent months trying not to feel and finally stopped pretending I was not feeling. Six days of him being exactly what I had always known he was capable of being when he stopped converting everything into strategy and just let himself show up.And I was going to do absolutely nothing with any of it. Yet.I sat in my room that first night back in Pack Ironveil and I looked at the ceiling and I thought a
Chapter Sixty OnePOV: Sera AshwoodThe first tear closed under my hands like a wound sealing and I stood in the middle of the borderlands with my wolf fully forward and my chest heaving and thought, I can do this, I can actually do this, and then I turned northwest because the second tear was pulling at me the way the first one had pulled and it was bigger and I could feel the difference in the pull the way you feel the difference between a stream and a river when you are standing in both."We are moving northwest," I said to the two guards Kael had assigned me, and they moved without asking questions because they were good wolves and good wolves did not ask questions when the Veilborn had that expression on her face.The borderlands were loud around us. The sound of the campaign, eight hundred wolves and the specific chaos of a rogue force being hit from three directions simultaneously, pressed in from every side and I moved through it with my wolf pointing me northwest and my Veilb
Chapter SixtyPOV: Kael DravonEight hundred wolves behind me and Sera to my left and the borderlands ahead of us and I thought that was the first time since the night of the shift ceremony that everything I needed was arranged exactly right and the only thing left to do was move.Kelvin appeared at my right shoulder with the tactical map and that focused expression he wore when something important was about to happen and he had already thought through every angle of it twice. "Columns are ready," he said. "Waiting on your signal.""Walk me through the final formation," I said."Left flank through the lower borderlands to cut the eastern supply lines," he said. "Right flank takes the ridge approach to block the retreat path. Center column goes directly through the main approach to the command structure. The moment we breach the outer perimeter the rogue force will have two options, fight on our terms or scatter, and we are positioned to make scattering impossible.""Sera," I said.Sh
Chapter Fifty NinePOV: Sera AshwoodMordecai was already at the edge of the clearing when I arrived and I stopped at the center of it and looked at him and felt my wolf do that thing it had been doing since the first day he walked through my gate, that old cold recognition pointing at him like a compass needle that had finally found its north, and I was done managing it, done trying to understand it, done doing anything except letting it tell me what it had been trying to tell me since the beginning.Kael was standing at the eastern tree line.I had told him last night that I needed him in the clearing at dawn and I had not told him why and he had not asked and he had come anyway and he was standing right there at the edge of the trees with his arms at his sides and his wolf fully present and his face doing that thing it did now when he was trying very hard not to make something about himself that was not about him, and I thought that was possibly the most significant thing he had
Chapter Fifty Eight POV: Sera Ashwood I opened the door before he knocked and we stood there looking at each other and my wolf did that thing it always did when he was near, that old cold recognition pointing at him like it had been pointing since the first day he walked through my gate, and I was done pretending I did not feel it. "You know why I am here," he said. "Come in," I said. He sat across from me and the room felt smaller with him in it the way it always felt smaller with him in it and I looked at him directly and said, "Tell me everything. From the beginning. What the curse actually does, what it needs, and whether there is a version of this where you walk away from this territory alive without bonding with me." He looked at me for a long moment. "There is not." "Tell me anyway," I said. "Because I am not agreeing to anything I do not fully understand and I need every piece of it before tomorrow." He started talking and I let him talk without interrupting because int
Chapter EighteenPOV: Kael DravonThe last rogue went down at the eastern border just before dawn and I stood over him in the cold morning air and looked at the pattern of the attack still laid out across the tree line and felt something sitting in the back of my skull that had nothing to do with th
Chapter SeventeenPOV: DamienI sat in the holding room they had thrown me into and stared at the wall and replayed everything that happened in that room last night from the moment the door flew open and I watched it all move in slow motion inside my head and the longer I watched it the clearer one
Chapter Sixteen POV: Sera AshwoodThe elders were already seated in my front room when I came downstairs and I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked at all four of them sitting there in their white ceremonial robes with their serious faces and I thought, not today, I genuinely cannot do th
Chapter FourteenPOV: Sera AshwoodI forgot my wrap and went back for it and I wish for every single thing holy that I had just let the cold night take me instead because nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for what I walked into when I pushed that door open.I stood there and stared







