Chapter 180 - Kelly

I woke in the middle of the night to find Leo sleeping soundly beside me. Careful not to disturb him, I slipped out of bed and quietly left the room. The room was dark and silent as I made my way to the couch in the mini living room. Once seated, I reached up and removed the necklace, letting it rest in the palm of my hand.I'd been thinking about what Ella said ever since. ‘Don't think. Just hold it.’ I had been wearing it around my neck for weeks, and nothing had happened, which made me wonder if the instruction was more specific than it sounded. I stared at the pendant in my hand and touched its cold surface, waiting for something to happen even though I did not exactly know what I was waiting to see. Maybe holding it wasn't enough. Maybe she meant something else by it. Maybe she meant: hold it the way you hold something you're afraid of losing. Hold it the way you hold the last thing a person you love left for you.I sat in the chair by the window with the pendant in my palm an

Chapter 181 - Aiden / Ella

AidenElla had stopped looking at me like I might disappear if she blinked.I noticed it around midmorning on the third day, when I came back from a brief meeting with Leo and found her sitting up in bed with one of the books from the packhouse shelf open across her knees. She looked up when I walked in and said, "There's tea on the table if you want it," the way a person says something like that when they've been sharing space long enough to start knowing each other's habits. Casually. Without the measured caution she'd had when we first got here.It was a small thing. I stood in the doorway for a second longer than I needed to, and then I went and got the tea.The truth was, I had been handling her as if she might break, and she had noticed, and she had decided at some point to stop tolerating it. I wasn't certain exactly when the shift had happened. Somewhere between the moment she'd said I know in response to my confession about the mate bond, and now. She had decided, in that qui

Chapter 182 - Leo/Kelly

LeoThe long table in the conference hall was set for forty and laid for war.Maximus had insisted on the formality of it. “You break bread before you break a line,” he’d said, in that voice that made even Sean stop chewing. “The wolves who eat together fight better. Because they know who they are fighting for.” So we’d done it his way. Black linen. Iron candlesticks. Mateo’s pack had brought wine in stoppered jars older than my grandfather. Sean and Kale brought meat for us to feast on.Kelly sat at my right. Aiden at my left. Ella was across from him; she looked better now, but the marks filled her arms like a tattoo. She didn’t hide it this time, and for who knew what it meant, it showed her respect for everything she went through. We all arrived at the same time, a few hours before the feast.Aerin sat beside Clint and pretended very hard that she was one of us. They had prepared the feast just as we had all agreed.I watched as everyone enjoyed the gathering. It’s been a while si

Chapter 183 - Kelly/Leo

KellyI told my daughter the truth in the herb garden, between the lavender and the sage, on the kind of cold, bright morning that makes the whole world feel like it has been washed and put out to dry.I had thought about doing it inside. I had thought about doing it at the kitchen table while making sandwiches, like we used to.In the end, I chose the garden because I realized I want to preserve all the good times we have had in the kitchen as a lasting memory. That’s why I chose the garden. I looked at my daughter as she plucked a lavender leaf and smelled it. My daughter was growing, and her curiosity couldn’t be stopped. She looked up at me and smiled. Her bright smile was even brighter than the sun. She turned her focus back at the herbs right in front of her as I stood. I gave her more time to explore, to enjoy, before I dropped something a child her age shouldn’t be experiencing. I slowly walked down the path when I felt my daughter’s small hand in mine and the other carryi

Chapter 184 - Leo/Aiden

LeoThe vampires came at dawn on the third day, the way they had said they would, and the first thing I learned about war is that it does not feel the way the history says it feels.It does not feel empowering. It does not feel like destiny. It feels like cold air on a sweat-damp neck, and the small irritating fact of a buckle that has not seated properly on the left shoulder of your harness, and the embarrassing realization, halfway down the slope, that you have to pee and there is going to be no good time for the next four hours.I had been at the eastern ridge since the second watch. Mateo had the western flank. Sean and Kaleo had the center with three hundred between them. Aiden was somewhere I could not see, holding the southern line where the tree cover broke, where I had put him because I trusted him with broken cover, the way I trusted no one else.Kelly was not on the field.Kelly was, at this hour, with my daughter, Hunter, and Aerin, and Ella and the Fae King; they were doi

Chapter 185 - Kelly

The gazebo had been built for waiting. I understood that, finally, standing inside it.It was old. It was even older than the stories the fae kept about it. The wood was pale, and the carvings on the columns were not decoration so much as record, names, and dates. The roof was an open lattice. Sunlight fell through it in an uneven grid and lay itself across my mother’s face, across her folded hands, across the hem of the dress she’s wearing. Twelve years.Twelve years, and someone had been changing her clothes, cleaning her, taking care of her.I held that thought tight against the inside of my chest because if I let it loose, it would have undone me. I can now see that she was loved-something I'd longed to believe, yet fear I might never fully feel. The kind of love that she deserved and never got from my father. And I knew who. This realization made my heart tighten with hope, emphasizing the deep emotional connection I longed for.Viktor now stood at the gazebo’s threshold, exact