Mag-log inMona's POV The bone jutted through Derek's shoulder at an angle that made my stomach turn, white and sharp against his torn flesh, while his wolf form flickered in and out like a broken television signal."Don't shift!" Sophie screamed, her hands pressing against the wound as blood pooled beneath him on the Bloodrose courtyard stones. "If you shift now, the bone could pierce your heart!"But Derek couldn't control it. The injury from the territorial dispute with the Western Packs had damaged something deeper than flesh—it had severed his connection to his wolf. His body kept trying to transform, caught between human and beast, each attempt tearing the wound wider."Mom," Cassian knelt beside me, his twenty-one-year-old face carved from stone. "The Western Pack Alpha did this deliberately. He knew exactly where to strike to cause a shift-lock."Shift-lock. The condition every wolf feared more than death. Trapped between forms, unable to complete the transformation either way. Most die
Mona's POV The contraction hit Lyra like a freight train, and through our pack bond, I felt it three hundred miles away."She's not ready," Selena said, her hands glowing with green healing light as she worked over Lyra's swollen belly in the hidden medical facility. "The twins are coming too fast. Their energy—it's unlike anything I've ever felt."My sister had arrived minutes before me, her witch-sense detecting the labor before Rose's emotional perception could pinpoint it. Now Selena stood as the only thing between my daughter and whatever these twins truly were. One child, Althea, had taught Selena to balance motherhood with power. But this—delivering the twins everyone feared or coveted—this tested even her evolved abilities."Where's Corin?" I asked, knowing her husband's calming presence helped stabilize her power."Teaching at the Academy. Althea's with him." Selena's hands trembled slightly. "Mona, these babies—their energy is rewriting the room's molecular structure. Look.
Mona's POV The scream that tore from Myra's throat wasn't human—it was phoenix, pure and primal, as flames erupted from her seven-year-old body and consumed the First Pack warrior who'd grabbed her."Nobody touches my daughter," Nova snarled, her own transformation instant and devastating. Where my sister-in-law stood a heartbeat ago, now a creature of living flame roared into existence, her phoenix form magnificent and terrible. The funeral hall's temperature spiked twenty degrees in seconds.The First Pack warrior stumbled back, his ancient flesh regenerating even as it burned. These weren't ordinary wolves. They were the originals, the ones who'd walked the earth before civilization tried to tame us. And they'd come for the children—all of them."Protect the twelve!" Derek's command cut through the chaos as our pack shifted in unison. But the First Pack moved like synchronized death, each warrior three times the size of our largest wolf, their eyes holding centuries of cunning.No
Mona's POV Aria's hand felt like paper in mine—thin, translucent, the veins blue rivers beneath skin that had weathered eighty-seven years of secrets."Stop looking at me like I'm already gone," she whispered, her voice still carrying that teacher's authority even as her chest barely rose with each breath. "I have something to tell you first."I'd driven through the night when her assistant called. Aria Torres, the woman who'd guided our kind through integration, who'd built bridges between worlds, was dying. Not from violence or betrayal, but from the simple cruelty of time. The monitors beeped steadily in her private room at Sanctuary General, the hospital she'd helped establish for our kind forty years ago."Lyra's safe," I said, thinking she worried about my pregnant daughter, hidden somewhere even I didn't know. "The twins she's carrying—""Not about that." Aria's fingers tightened slightly on mine. "About your mother. About what really happened the night she died."My breath ca
Mona's POV The letter arrived on a Tuesday, carried by a crow that shouldn't have been able to find us through Derek's new protective barriers, but Leon always had a way of making the impossible happen.*Mona, Sophie's in labor. Complications. We need you.*I left Rose sleeping, her emotional exhaustion from last night's revelation still weighing her down. The twins were never alone—those words haunted me during the entire drive to Leon's territory. But my brother needed me now, and some things transcended even apocalyptic warnings.I found Leon pacing outside his bedroom, his Alpha composure shattered. "Three hours. Sophie's been screaming for three hours. The healers say the baby's turned wrong, and Sophie keeps losing consciousness between contractions.""Where's Aeron?""With the neighbors. He doesn't need to hear his mother—" Leon's voice broke. "Mona, I can't lose her."I pushed past him into the room. Sophie lay drenched in sweat, her face gray with pain. The healers looked up
Mona's POV The scream tore through the house at three in the morning—not Rose's scream, but somehow coming from her room.I found her curled in the corner, hands pressed to her temples, tears streaming down her face. "Make it stop, Mom. Please. I can hear them all.""Hear who?" I knelt beside my twelve-year-old daughter, but when I touched her shoulder, pain shot through me—not mine, someone else's. Fear. Desperation. The metallic taste of blood that wasn't in my mouth."Everyone." Rose's marks weren't just glowing now; they pulsed with each heartbeat, each pulse bringing another wave of foreign emotion. "The pack. The prisoners at the Academy. Lyra—God, Lyra's so angry. And Jin... Jin's dying."Derek burst through the door with Cassian behind him, but Rose held up her hand. "Don't touch me. You'll feel it too.""Feel what?" Derek asked, but I saw him stagger as he got too close, his face contorting with phantom pain."Everything." Rose's voice was older than twelve, older than any c
Mona's POV The dress shouldn't have existed. Marcus Blackstone had burned everything of my mother's—or so I'd thought. But hidden in a sanctuary trunk, wrapped in tissue paper that crumbled at my touch, lay her ceremonial dress. White silk that caught light like water, embroidered with silver pho
Mona's POV The scream that ripped through Silver Moon's main hall made everyone freeze. Then the sound of shattering wood, followed by Leon's voice, deadly calm: "Get out. Now."I found him standing over the splintered remains of what had been Marcus Blackstone's throne—a massive oak chair that ha
Mona's POV The scream reached us three miles from Nightshade territory.Derek's entire body went rigid beside me in the car. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, and the speedometer climbed past ninety. That scream carried a message meant for him—pain shaped into sound, suffering desig
Mona's POV Amaya's golden eyes stared through me like I wasn't there."Amaya?" I whispered, reaching toward her, but she jerked back with inhuman speed. Her body moved wrong—too fluid, too precise, like something wearing human skin but forgetting how humans were supposed to move."That's not Amaya







