Mag-log inHe spoke first, his tone low but firm enough to carry. “We can wait,” he said. “Children will come when they’re meant to. The Pack already has its heart.” The room stilled for a breath. Mara looked over her shoulder, her hands still sunk in flour, her eyes soft and startled. “You mean me?” she asked
LILAThe house woke before dawn. Old wood shifted, the hearth whispered, and the air felt different—alive again. I stood at the foot of the stairs when I heard them coming. Two sets of steps, uneven from the road, but in rhythm all the same. When the door opened, cold air rushed through the hall. Ga
“I thought I had to be perfect,” she said. “Every step, every word. Like one mistake would make them lose faith in me.”“Then let them,” I said. “Let them see we bleed too. Let them see what real looks like.”Her eyes lifted toward the sky, catching the first streaks of gold between the branches. “T
GAVINHer breath came out in bursts, sharp enough to cut. She pressed her palm to her mouth, like the words might spill if she didn’t hold them in. I moved before I thought, closing the space, catching her hands in mine. Her fingers were cold and damp, her pulse racing under my thumb.“I can’t be wh
GAVINThe scent hit me before I saw the gate—hers, faint and fading, scattered by wind. I caught it the second I stepped into the hall, and everything in me snapped to attention. The council chamber still echoed in my head, the droning voices, the talk of territory lines and alliance disputes. I had
MARAI knelt beside a pool fed by a narrow stream. Moonlight rippled across its surface, silver on black. My reflection flickered there, the same face that wore the Luna’s mask every day, only softer now—bare, unsure, alive. I cupped my hands in the water and let it run down my wrists. The cold snap
LILAThe room they placed me in smelled like lavender.Warm light spilled across the stone walls from a low-burning fireplace, and the bed beneath me was too soft, like clouds spun from wool. Every breath I took hurt. Something was broken inside me—cracked ribs, they said—but the ache in my skull wa
LILAThe inn hadn’t changed.Still perched like a forgotten thought on the slope of the mountain, its wooden beams worn by years of weather and silence. The kind of place people came to disappear, if only for a night.I hesitated outside the door, hood pulled low, hands shaking inside my sleeves.I
LILATyler touched my back when we walked into council meetings. He brought me tea without asking. He kissed my temple when I woke from nightmares, even if I never told him what they were about.We were a picture of reconciliation. But inside? Inside I was rotting in pieces no one else could see bec
LILAThe road curled like a ribbon around the base of the mountain, the path lit only by the moon and the faint headlights of the Pack’s discreet car I had borrowed without permission or explanation.Tyler didn’t ask where I was going. I hadn’t met his eyes since dinner.The Inn hadn’t changed; same







