Olivia’s POV
Night was never silent anymore.
Since the verdict, every sound felt sharpened—every creak of timber in the halls, every howl carried on the wind, every footstep in the dark. My body seemed trained to hear judgment in all of it, like the world itself had taken up the council’s demand.
Find your bloodline. Prove who you are.
The words chased me into sleep and back out again.
I sat at the long table in Lucas’s study, parchment spread before me, maps and lists and scraps of old pack records Ava had scavenged. The ink smudged beneath my fingers where I had written and rewritten my mother’s name: Elara. Her face hovered behind my eyes—soft smiles, long hair braided over one shoulder, hands that smelled faintly of herbs. But her past? Her family? She had left me only fragments,
