Born of Moonlight, Crowned in Fate

Chapter Six

"How do you know my name?" she asked quietly.

"I know a great deal about you." He reached into his coat and produced a folded piece of paper old, the edges soft with handling and placed it on the desk between them without looking away from her face. "I know who your father was. I know what your mark means. I know what is coming for you now that the rising has begun." The faintest pause. "And I know that you have approximately forty eight hours before the Shadow Pack traces the signal of your awakening to this location."

Elder Gareth made a sharp sound. "The Shadow Pack cannot have detected..."

"The Shadow Pack has had a tracker sensitive to the Blessed Luna's frequency embedded in their ranks for three centuries," Kael said, still without looking at the elder. "They detected the activation the moment it happened in the clearing tonight. Mordecai will have received the signal within the hour." His eyes did not leave Seraphina's. "You need to leave this pack. Tonight. And you need somewhere to go that is defensible and known to no one who might be persuaded to give you up."

Seraphina looked at him for a long moment. The mark was still warm against her collarbone, not blazing now, but steady and rhythmic, that deep pulse that had begun with his howl continuing its slow, enormous beat beneath her skin.

"And you are offering me that somewhere," she said.

"Yes."

"Your territory." She kept her voice even. "Your pack. Your protection."

"Yes."

"And what do you want in return?"

The question sat between them in the firelight. Kael looked at her with those deep water eyes, and for the first time since he had stepped through the window, something in his expression shifted into a territory she could not read at all, something complicated and layered and not entirely cold.

"I want you to survive long enough to fulfill the prophecy," he said. "That is all."

It should have been reassuring. It was presented as reassurance, clean, practical, stripped of any personal investment. Just strategy. Just necessity. Just the logical move of an Alpha King who needed the Blessed Luna alive for whatever political or military purpose the prophecy served.

It should have been reassuring.

But something in the way he said that is all, with that infinitesimal hesitation before the last three words, a hesitation so brief she could have imagined it told her, with the certainty of the mark still pulsing against her skin, that it was not all.

It was not all by a distance he had not yet decided to measure.

Before she could speak, before she could ask the question forming at the back of her throat, the door to the study burst open.

And standing in the doorway, breathing hard, with fury carved into every line of his face and three armed warriors at his back, was Alpha Damon.

His eyes moved from Seraphina, to Kael, to the open window, and back to Kael and what lived in his expression in that moment was not the cold calculated rejection he had shown in the clearing. It was something rawer and uglier and infinitely more dangerous.

"Step away from her, Duskwood," he said. "She belongs to Nightborne pack custody as of one hour ago. I have the elder council's signed order."

Seraphina turned to Elder Gareth.

The old man would not meet her eyes.