All Chapters of Moonblood: Chapter 101 - Chapter 109

THE LAST THING SHE WAS HOLDINGEIRA'S POVI came in from the south.That is where Cassian placed me when we split the approach, with the south unit, twelve wolves who let me run beside them because Reece told them to and because not one of them was willing to be the person who tried to stop me. I had no weapon. I had no plan that extended beyond getting to my son. These are not the conditions under which a careful person enters a clearing full of hostile wolves.I stopped being careful approximately three seconds after Reece said the cells are empty.The war cry hits the air before I clear the tree line.It doesn't start as sound. It starts as pressure in the sternum, in the oldest part of the chest, in the place that existed before language and reason and the careful management of things too large to look at directly. It moves through the cold air like weather, like something the night itself has been holding and finally releases.I know that voice.I have spent five years trying to

CHAPTER 103: WHILE SHE SLEEPSCASSIAN'S POVThe healers work for a long time.That is the first thing I learn about the cost of what Eira did in that clearing. Not the falling, I was there for the falling. I caught her before she reached the ground. I carried her out of the forest myself and I know exactly how she felt in my arms, lighter than she should be, warm in the way of someone whose body is working very hard at something invisible.The falling I was there for.What I was not prepared for is this.The length of it.She has been in this room for six hours and the healers have been here for most of them and they speak to me in careful, measured voices that tell me everything I need to know about how concerned they are while simultaneously telling me nothing I actually want to know."Her body is compensating," the head healer says.Her name is Maret. She has been the palace healer for longer than I have been Alpha King, which means she has seen a great deal and is not easily unse

CHOSENEIRA'S POVThey told me to wear white.The palace attendants came to the room in the early afternoon, three of them, carrying things in their arms with the careful reverence of people transporting objects that matter. They laid everything out on the table by the window without speaking and then stood back and looked at me with expressions that were trying very hard to be neutral and not quite managing it.The dress is white.Not the white of absence or surrender or the blank page before anything has been written on it. The white of the Moonblood. Of my wolf, standing silver in a clearing full of wolves who thought they knew what I was. The white of something that has always been there and is only now being allowed to be seen.I stood in front of it for a long time.One of the attendants — young, dark-haired, the one who always moves slightly faster than the others, cleared her throat softly and said, "There's no rush, my lady."My lady.She said it like she meant it.L

CHOSENEIRA'S POVThe hall eventually empties.It takes a long time. There are pack leaders to receive and elders to speak with and the specific social architecture of a gathering like this that requires presence and attention and the patient management of relationships, some of which are new and need to be built and some of which are old and need to be rebuilt and some of which are damaged in ways that are going to take years and honesty and work.I do all of it.I do it differently than I used to.When the evening finally thins and the torches have burned lower and the last of the formal conversations have been concluded and the hall has been left to the servants and the quiet, I find myself standing at the tall window at the far end.The night outside is clear.The moon is full.Cassian finds me there.I hear him coming. I have always heard him coming, something in the way he occupies space, the specific quality of attention he generates in a room, the way the air knows he

THE ENDING HAPPINESS CASSIAN'S POVThe northern delegation arrives in the afternoon.There are seven of them. Pack leaders and advisors, traveling together, which in itself is a thing that would not have happened four months ago. The northern territories have been in contest for decades, border disputes, resource arguments, the long-running grievances of packs who have been circling each other so long they've forgotten the original reasons and are fighting purely from habit.They sit on one side of the long table in the eastern meeting room.Eira sits across from them.I am here.But I am not leading this.I decided that three weeks ago when we mapped out the delegation schedule together and she looked at the northern meeting and said nothing, just looked, and I watched her decide something privately before moving to the next item on the list. I decided it then. Confirmed it this morning when I told her I would be present and she looked at me with the particular expression she