LOGINSienna's POV Lucas and Ivy were laughing with a guest near the far end of the hall, their wine glasses catching the candlelight, and I walked toward them with my hand in Damien's and my face arranged into something that had never met either of them before. The hall smelled of roasted meat and melted wax, the torches along the walls throwing long shadows across the stone floor. My boots found the marble in a steady rhythm. I kept my chin level and let my eyes move at the pace of someone with nothing particular on their mind. I had bled on this floor. Not in the way that left a mark. In the way that leaves something else behind, something that lives in the specific weight of the air in a room where you once believed you were safe. I felt it the moment we crossed the threshold and I had been carrying it quietly ever since, underneath everything else, underneath Lily, underneath the invitation card and the spell and the name that kept me alive in this place. Nobody here knew my face.
Silver Fang Pack: Full Moon Sienna's POV The black wolf's paws hit the earth in a steady rhythm beneath us, the forest rushing past on both sides in the dark, the cold wind coming sharp against my face carrying the smell of pine and wet soil and something faintly sweet underneath it that I couldn not place. The dizziness arrived without asking, the way it had been doing since the council meeting, tilting the world sideways for two or three seconds before releasing it again. I pressed my palm flat against the wolf's spine and breathed until it passed. I didn't know what it was. I only knew it kept coming back. "Are you alright?" Damien's arm tightened around my waist from behind, his palm warm and steady against me. "I'm fine," I said. I reached down, pulled his hand further around my waist, laced my fingers through his, feeling him press closer in response. I turned my head and found him already looking at me. "We're going to get through this," he said. "I know." I meant it.
FULL MOON ARRIVED Sienna's POV The heavy oak doors of the grand hall didn't just open. They seemed to bleed into the room. A sudden, cold draft cut through the scent of roasted meats and expensive perfumes, carrying the bitter odor of damp earth and crushed winter leaves. "The Shadow King." The whisper started near the threshold, a low friction of sound that caught in the throats of the lower-ranking wolves before it amplified into a restless, shuffling tide. The crowd pressed backward, their fine silks rustling as they tried to clear a path away from the shifting violet darkness pooling at the rear entrance. Damien didn't shift his stance, but his hand moved to the small of my back. His palm was warm, solid, and completely steady against my spine, grounding me against the sudden drop in temperature. We both watched the center of that black mist begin to solidify into a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette. "He didn't look like this before," Damien said. The words barely left
FULL MOON ARRIVING Sienna's POV Nobody moved. Not the branches, not the nobles, not even the Celestial Pack standing at the far end of the hall. The voice had come and gone and left the room holding itself like a breath it had not yet released, and I stood in the middle of it and felt the silence press against my skin from every direction at once. Then Juvien stirred. Not the slow turn she made when something passed close. A full waking, sharp and immediate, and I felt her settle into the back of my skull with the particular alertness she reserved for things that required both of us. *He's here.* Her voice was low. Certain. *Who?* I asked, though something in my chest had already begun answering before she did. *Duke.* I did not move. I did not change my expression. I stood in the center of the hall with that name sitting inside me, and kept my face exactly where it was. Duke? I already knew. The moment the voice came through the dark I had known, and knowing it and hearing
MUM? NOT MUM. Sienna's POV The name came out of me like something torn. Blood hit my lips before I registered the pain, warm and copper-sharp, and my eyes snapped open to a ceiling I did not recognise for a full second before the hall crashed back around me, the noise, the heat of too many bodies, the smell of wolves who did not trust each other packed into a space that was not built for this kind of tension. George's hands were on my back, steady, pouring what he had into me in slow careful increments. A figure stepped down from somewhere above. My vision was still blurring at the edges, slow to clear, and I could not make out the shape of it before Damien was crouching beside me, his eyes moving over my face the way they moved when he was checking for things I was not going to tell him. "Lily." His voice was low. "You alright?" I nodded once. "Lydia is here." He said it close to my ear, barely breath. "I think she can help." His eyes moved toward the far end of the hall and
FOUR HOT SLAP!!!! Sienna's POV Every eye in the room landed on me. I stood frozen, my hands doing the thing hands do when the rest of the body has decided to betray itself — fingers closing and unclosing against my sides, the breath not coming at the right speed. Juvien snored somewhere in the back of my skull, completely unbothered. Keep quiet. Can you not see what is happening? I directed the thought inward. She stirred once, turned over, went back to sleep. Mindlink: "Damien. How did she know? What do we do now?" He sat at the center of the dais, perfectly still, not a muscle moving. I tried again. The connection cut. Clean. Immediate. Like a door pulled shut from the other side. My heart moved in a way it had not moved in a long time — not fear, something older than fear, the particular sensation of reaching for someone and finding nothing there. I looked at the side of his face willing him to turn, and he did not turn. The memories arrived without being invited: the morn
Sienna's POV The marble felt like a sheet of ice, biting through the damp silk of my gown and sinking into my knees until the bone ached. My legs simply quit while white static flickered across my vision, hot, fat tears carving tracks through the powder on my cheeks. Was this the grand opening of
Sienna's POV My pulse hammered a frantic rhythm against my throat, a drumbeat for a war I was not prepared for. I pressed a hand to my chest to anchor myself, feeling an unfamiliar heat radiating from my skin as fire tried to escape through my throat. This wasn't just adrenaline. It was the pressur
Lucas's POV "What!" The sound ripped out of me before I could catch it. Something inside me shifted, my wolf collapsing into the back of my mind with claws scrabbling before going completely silent. My knees found the floor, palms slapping the tile, the cold biting through the fabric of my pants.
Sienna's POV The air hit me first. Clinical and sharp, thick with the industrial rot of bleach and old iron. I tried to drag oxygen into my lungs but my chest was pinned under an invisible weight, my body heavy, my eyelids rusted shut by dried salt. I tried to shift. A loud clang echoed through t







