The courtyard was almost empty by the ti we arrived. I watched Evelyn step from the car and walk away without looking back. Her shoulders were small and taut, the way she carried herself told she wanted nothing from but distance. Good. Maybe this will convince the goddess that she made the biggest mistake my making her my mate
Still, the sight of her retreating figure lodged in like a bone. Her face, the mark on her arm, the way the crescent had flared when I saved her.... it wouldn’t leave .
I found my chambers and the silence inside had teeth. I stripped off the outer cloak more by habit than need, the blood on it dried into a pattern I could not pretend not to see, and I let the robe fall. In the privacy of my room I allowed the restlessness to unfurl. I paced. I sat. I tried not to think of her.
That failed.
Thoughts are traitors. They always return to the sa line of pain. How many tis had I promised myself to stay distant? To let the world go on when it wanted to? Too many tis. The Moon Goddess had bound with curses and bargains and broken promises, she’d been the source of power and the architect of loss. I do not submit easily. I do not beg, I am a Monster, I do not feel. And yet, each breath was threaded with the mory of her under the moonlight, the way the moon had kissed her face outlining her soft and beautiful face, and the unnatural echo in my chest when she cried.
I told myself to sleep. Sleep is a refuge, a dulling of the edges that keeps the beast from scratching. I lay down and closed my eyes.
But instead of peace and quiet, I dreamt in shards and whispers. A voice found , her voice, the Moon Goddess, or the echo of her. She did not look like the pious won carved into shrine stone, she sounded like the night itself speaking.
“You carry the blade of ages,” the voice said. “You have lived long, Lucian Draegor. You have bled and you have taken. You have known fire and you have fed it.”
I wanted to answer with a growl, with contempt, with the arrogance that always shielded . Instead the words ca raw and involuntary.
“And the one who bears the demon’s mark,” the voice continued, “she is the keystone. She will lead you to your destiny.... and your doom.”
Doom. Of course.
I woke in a sweat, lungs burning as though I’d run a race beneath water. The crescent on my arm buzzed faintly under my skin. In that instant I knew, as certainly as I knew the weight of my own claws, that the voice had not been wrong. The only other person I’d seen with such a mark was the girl I had carried out of the sky. The stubborn but weak human girl that I am constantly trying not to think about, Evelyn.
She bears my mark. The demon’s mark.
My mind tried to argue, it coincidence, superstition, the way the goddess plays tricks. The fact that we have the sa crescent mark doesn’t an she’s to be my doom.
But the darker part of listened like a dog sniffing a scent. A keystone, she had said. My destiny and my doom. Sothing small and fragile and human enough to unravel . It was infuriating and, in a way.... familiar. I had felt this before with Aurelia, a pull that did not care for logic, a tether that cut deeper than bone.
I did sleep again that night. Instead I sat at the edge of the bed and let the silence fold around .
Evelyn’s POV
The kitchen slled of burnt crusts and stale tea when morning ca. I do not know what comfort a servant finds in routine, but the girls clung to it like a lifeline.
When I entered the kitchen that morning after a sleepless filled with thoughts and occasionally flaring crescent marls, I looked hollow, exhausted, ragged at the edges
Rose and Clara gathered around imdiately, we didn’t really get a chance to talk cause I returned late last night.
Their faces were swollen with grief. There had been no ti to mourn Lisa, no one made room in the world for our sorrow, the pack expected us to scrub and knead and smile no matter what.
“It’s not fair,” Rose whispered, pressing a hand to her mouth. “Lisa... she....”
“She’s gone,” Clara said. The words were small but they were filled with pain. I watched as she dried her own face with the back of her hand, the motion practiced and brittle.
“I miss her,” Rose said in a cracked voice. “She was.... she kept the kitchen from being a place for nightmares.”
Clara’s eyes shuttered. “We all miss her.”
A guard suddenly arrived in the kitchen and called for to report to the Alpha’s mansion. The way he said it was not a request.
I straightened, surprised. “For what?” I asked
“You’re requested,” the guard said. “At once.”
The walk across the grounds felt uneasy.
But the guard didnt lead to the Alpha’s mansion, he pointed at the garden where Aiden waited, an odd crease of impatience tightening his face.
“Evelyn,” he called when I approached. “I’ve been trying to find you.”
“You found ,” I said. “What is going on?”
He stepped closer so his voice dropped to a whisper. “I have an idea. A way to get his blood like we planned last night" he said, eyes flicking toward the mansion as if Lucian might appear from the stone.
I held his gaze for a mont "Go on.”
He handed a bottle, it was corked and heavy. “This is strong liquor,” he said. “The strongest you can imagine. It’s been in the brewery storage for decades, even before I was born. It was mixed with a lot of herbs and stored for a very long ti, when a re werewolf even dares to take a sip of this, he is knocked out for at least a week.” His voice caught. “Get Lucian to drink it. Make him drink all of it, until he falls hard and cannot move.”
“You want to drug him?” My chest tightened
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