The scars on Luna Estrella are enough to prove it.“I—” She shakes her head. “What does this have to do with the Haze? Why are you running away?”“Because you’re not my mate.” This time, my shoulder sears like my arm is about to fall off. More memories of last night leak in. Someone’s teeth in my ar
HollisEva shakes her head. “I just don’t know how we didn’t find each other.”“It’s strange,” I agree, my mark burning.When I found her, asleep in the nook of a tree, I looked her over for a mating mark before I even woke her up. All the way over. Not a single sign of the snowflake shape. Not even
Father steps up next to the wooden structure Eva and I stand on. I raise my eyebrows.‘I thought you left,’ I say to him through the mind-link. ‘King Kieran delivered an insult too great to be expected to bear?’‘Hush,’ Father replies without looking at me. ‘We cannot look distracted.’I exchange a
Candace“Look at this!” Estrella holds a single piece of green grass up in front of my eyes. “It’s alive.”“I’m so happy for you.” I force a smile. Despite the realization that this first application only affected the area right around where they put what they’ve started calling the elixir, Raven an
I blink. “Something happened last night.”“Your first Haze.” Mother’s smile is sickly sweet, like she doesn’t quite know how to do it anymore. “Did you—?”I nod.“And he frightens you.”‘No.’ My face burns as I mind-link Mother for the first time in almost a year. ‘He…he doesn’t want me.’“Oh, darli
Hollis“So I said, ‘Who are you kidding? Your wolf doesn’t even have two ears.’” Lord Gunnar, one of the Snowcrest nobles Father begrudgingly agreed to bring on the trip, bursts into laughter at his own joke.Father nods once, crisply, and takes another drink from his cup. Zain, my Beta whenever I t
The dark hair and eyes, the dress that looks like nobody’s seen it in the light in twenty years, the vague aura of social ineptitude.“Lucky guess,” I reply. “Are you mated?”She giggles again. I tighten my hold on her and hope she finds that romantic. This kind of information-gathering is not where
CandaceI shrink lower in my seat. My mark brands my skin like a hot iron, and I just swallow the pain. Eva found me hiding out at the edge of the party, trying to convince myself to join in and risk seeing either of them. I tried to warn her that I wasn’t very good company, but she’s too good of a
‘Ah,’ she says like she’s finally cracked one of the secrets of the universe. ‘It wasn’t Blanca, was it?’‘Help!’ I yell to Kieran, Taner, and Finn. The rest of our reinforcements aren’t here yet, so they’re my only hopes.‘It was you.’A finger of wind lashes out and flogs my back, like I remember
CandaceA wolf dives at me out of the screaming, clashing mayhem, its maw drenched in blood. One half of my brain orders a paw to swing. The other shouts, RUN! I manage a hopping scramble that seems more likely to get me killed than anything else.And one of the men Hollis picked to stay at my side
If I don’t admit I love her, maybe the Goddess won’t think to take her from me like She’s taken damn near everyone else.All together like that, it sounds fucking stupid. Like a kid trying to keep the monsters under the bed from becoming real by saying they’re not there. Like screaming into the wind
HollisI stand with my squad at one of the side doors, waiting for the final signal from Father. Pinning Soren’s forces in, making it so their numbers are useless because they can’t get enough of them out to change anything, is the highest priority, so everyone is attacking from different angles. Ca
The doors swing open. We leap to our feet at varying speeds, like Soren could’ve gotten this deep into the castle without us hearing a peep.Kash strides in, an easy grin on his face. “Sorry I’m late.”“I do not believe you were invited,” King Andri says coldly.So his change of heart has its limits
Candace‘He’s in,’ Kieran says through the mind-link. ‘Everyone convene in the main dining room in fifteen minutes.’I look up at Ingrid, painting on the other side of her sitting room. She grins at me. I don’t know what comes next from here, and I doubt she does either, but we won’t be trapped in K
My gaze drifts to Eva. She watches the two of them dully, almost disinterested, but she has her arms wrapped around herself the way she always does when she’s upset. Holding herself together.She and I weren’t supposed to see all the same tutors, I remember suddenly. While I studied government, she
HollisFather and I march in lockstep up to the small door beside the front gates. Early morning sunlight promises spring might actually arrive in the mountains someday soon, as soft and sweet as waking up to Candace slipping back into the room with a sheepish smile on her face. Low conversation and
I close my eyes and try to sort through half-remembered geography lessons. LeClair belongs to…“Starfall Mountain.”He nods. “My sister Luci, my parents, all my younger brothers, burned alive in the temple on her wedding day because Gavin’s invasion wasn’t working. If I hadn’t run off, I’d have been