Chapter 139

Dane As I hurried towards the Alpha's court, distant sounds of my boots echoed dully on stone in empty halls; the striking weight of night heavy on my shoulders like ribbons of dangling fog. Lusia's kiss was stamped in my memory—an urgent, violent, insistent kiss—while her pressing question about Kiara wedged itself in the back of my mind like a splinter I could not pull out again. I glimpsed Lusia hours ago, tucked under a blanket, with a trembling ghost of a girl left with the maidens. The council meeting was trumping it all and I was already running late. My cloak billowed behind me; the air was perfumed thick with wax and the scent of old wood as I threw open the heavy oak doors into the court. Silence fell in the room; every eye snapped onto me: around two dozen council members, their faces all stone-cut, perched around the long table like vultures. The chamber was vast, most of the impressive height cut into shadow by the high ceilings of an expansive room, where tapestries of al