MasukMelindaEvery instinct I had screamed at me not to walk through that door. Carl's grip on my hand tightened the moment the woman…my grandmother, some impossible, rearranged part of my brain kept insisting, disappeared back into the shadow of the tower. He didn't say anything, didn't try to order me back or override me with some Alpha command.He just held on, like he could anchor me to the ground through sheer stubbornness, like if he squeezed hard enough I wouldn't do the thing we both already knew I was going to do."Don't," he said finally, his voice low. Just one word like he couldn't bring himself to construct the full sentence around it."My son just called for me." My own voice came out steadier than I felt, which surprised me. "That's not a choice, Carl. That's just a fact.""Then I'm going in with you.""She said…""I heard what she said." His jaw was set, that hard line I'd come to recognize as Carl at the edge
Carl The black feather stared back at us from the phone screen, and for a moment nobody in that chamber said anything at all, the weight of it crashing down harder than anything else the night had already thrown at us. "That's the same mark," Melinda whispered. "The same feather from the nursery the first time." "Your father's old guard," Voss said slowly, his brow furrowing. "The ones who supposedly died protecting your mother the night she ran." "They didn't die," Melinda said, her voice shaking with fury and fear both at once. "Or some of them didn't. That's what Petra said earlier tonight, before any of this happened. Someone from that old guard is still alive, still working for whoever's behind this." "The silver-haired man is in custody," Kian said. "So whoever took them just now is someone else entirely." "Which means this was never a one-man operation
MelindaThe chamber went dead silent, every eye swinging between the silver-haired man standing in the doorway and the small group of us gathered near the podium. My stomach dropped straight through the floor."Guards," the presiding elder barked, though his voice wavered with uncertainty. "Seize him.""Before you do that," the silver-haired man said calmly, not moving an inch despite dozens of council guards suddenly converging from the chamber's edges, "you should hear what I actually came to say. Unless, of course, you'd prefer to remain ignorant of the true danger standing in this room.""You murdered two elders," Voss said, his voice hard. "You have no standing to demand anything here.""I didn't murder anyone," the man said, and something in his tone made my skin crawl, calm and certain in a way that suggested he actually believed it."I removed two individuals who discovered my operation and threatened to expose it before
CarlAshley stood in the doorway, pale and trembling, her clothes still torn from the chapel, dark circles bruising the skin beneath her eyes. For a long moment nobody moved, all of us frozen in the grey morning light, staring at the last person any of us expected to be waiting on the other side of that door."Ashley." Her name came out of me rough, disbelieving. "How did you even get here before us?""I ran," she said, her voice hoarse, cracked from exhaustion or crying or both. "The second Petra had the twins safely in the car, I ran here. I couldn't go home, I couldn't face any of this pretending I didn't know what I know." Her eyes shifted to Melinda, something raw and desperate behind them."I had to warn Voss myself before the council convened. I had to try to fix at least part of what I helped break.""You could have gotten yourself killed," Melinda said, though her voice held none of the fury I expected, only something closer to e
MelindaThe car jerked hard as Kian slammed the brakes, tires skidding against loose gravel, and we all lurched forward against our seatbelts. My heart shot straight into my throat as the headlights swept over the figure standing motionless in the middle of the road."Don't," Carl said quickly, his hand already braced against the dashboard, his body angling protectively in front of me even in the cramped back seat. "Everybody stay calm. Kian, can you see who it is?"Kian squinted through the windshield, his hand hovering near the door handle. "It's not one of ours and it's not moving like a threat, not yet."The figure stepped closer into the wash of the headlights, and my breath caught.It was a woman, tall, cloaked in dark travel clothes, her hood pulled low enough to shadow most of her face but there was something in the way she carried herself, steady, unhurried, that made every strategist instinct in me scream that this wasn't a rand
CarlEvery instinct in me screamed to lunge, to close the distance and tear that blade away before it could so much as nick her skin, but the cold press of steel against Melinda's throat froze me solid, half in and half out of the car, my claws digging deep grooves into the doorframe."There," the silver-haired man said, his voice shaking despite the composure he was clearly fighting to hold onto. "Good. Stay exactly like that."I forced myself to shift back, slow and deliberate, my human voice rasping out low and steady even though my heart was slamming hard enough to crack a rib. "Let her go, you don't need her dead. You said it yourself, you need her alive for whatever ritual you're planning.""I need her alive, yes," he said, his eyes darting between me and whatever was happening outside the car, where I could hear Kian and Rowan finishing off the last of his guards somewhere behind me. "I didn't say I needed all of her intact. A shallow cut t
Carl’s POV You’ve been staring at that report for ten minutes Carl." Damon, my Beta, stood across the room with his arms tightly crossed over his chest. His posture was rigid, his jaw set in a hard line that had become permanent over the last seven days. I had not slept properly in the past s
CHAPTER FOURMelinda’s POVI sat on the edge of my small bed, staring blankly down at the wrinkled white paper in my hands. Hours had passed since the council meeting, yet my mind still replayed every second over and over again like torture.Carl’s freezing disappointment. I squeezed my eyes shut,
Melinda’s POV“Dr. Thomas," I breathed relieved, rushing to him.“Please tell them what you told me just twenty minutes ago in your office."He stiffly turned away from me refusing to meet my eyes, Fear crawled into my chest like ice. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.Sweat glistened along his
Melinda’s POVI pushed the door open.Every single head in the room snapped towards me.My heart was pounding so hard against my ribs I felt like a trapped animal. The large office felt suffocating.The council elders sat around the long dark table near the fireplace. Their expressions shifted the







