Serena
The days after the Blood Moon passed like any other normal day
My father returned from the Vanthorpe negotiations, and I kept my expression pleasant and my opinions to myself.
"There were meetings and briefings. I got reports from the border as well. I also met with the pack council to discuss the territory boundaries. The meeting lasted three hours, and we didn't come to an agreement," my father concluded and walked away
He didn't bother to ask how I was doing. I had a fitting for the engagement banquet. My father's event coordinator talked about the centerpieces.
The Blood Moon happened two weeks ago. I am fine now.
The morning sickness started quietly, the way most things that would eventually become problems did.
I remember the time it happened, I thought it was just my nerves.
The time I thought the rich food at the council dinner wasn't agreeing with me.
The time I was standing at my bathroom sink at six in the morning, with cold water running over my wrists, and I did not think anything; I just tried to breathe through it until it passed.
By morning, I had stopped making excuses for the morning sickness and started making sure Nyla was not around when it happened.
I was not successful in keeping the morning sickness from Nyla today
We were in the east drawing room, going over the seating arrangements for the engagement banquet.
Nyla had the draft chart spread across the table between us, and I had a pen in my hand, and the sun was coming through the east windows
I felt my nerves coming in, and I tried to escape before Nyla noticed
I only made it two steps before my stomach decided it was time, and I crouched down to the level of the dustbin and threw up like my life was ending
Nyla was beside me before I had straightened up, her hand firm and steady between my shoulder blades, saying nothing while I braced against the wall and waited for the room to stop tilting.
When it steadied, she pressed a glass of water into my hands and guided me back to the chair
I drank the water.
She crouched in front of me and looked at my face.
"How long?" she said. Not a question.
"Nyla—"
"Seraphina." She only used my full name when she needed me to understand she was not going to be redirected. "How long?"
I looked at the window.
"Eleven days," I said. "Give or take."
The silence that followed was very careful.
"The Blood Moon was fourteen days ago," she said.
"I know."
"And before that—"
"There was nobody before that," I said quietly. "There hasn't been anyone in a long time."
Nyla sat back on her seat, looking at me with her large, steady eyes, and I watched something move through her expression, moved so fast I couldn't even take note of what it was
"You already know," she said.
It wasn't an accusation. It was just Nyla seeing me clearly the way she always had.
"I've known for five days," I said.
"And you didn't—"
"I didn't know how to say it out loud yet."
She was quiet for a moment. Then she stood, crossed to the drawing room door, and checked the corridor in both directions before closing it again. She came back, sat across from me, and folded her hands in her lap.
"Tell me everything," she said. "From the beginning."
So I told her, every single detail without sugar coating anything, how the gates opened for my father's car to disappear, the mask in my bag, the doors of the Mirewood event hall, the dancing, the wine, the way the Blood Moon had felt like a second heartbeat pressing against my ribs, Him, the balcony and the two hours that had felt like something I had never been permitted to have before, the room on the upper floor, the morning after, the empty sheets, the strip of light under the bathroom door and the glimpse through the gap, his back, his collarbone, the diamond birthmark and the scar running to his left side that I had registered and then lost entirely when my phone rang and panic replaced everything else.
Nyla listened without moving.
When I finished, the room was very still.
"You don't know his name," she said.
"No."
"He doesn't know yours."
"No."
She nodded slowly. "And the engagement banquet is in three weeks."
The banquet. Dorian Crest, who had shaken my hand like a contract and looked at me like a negotiation. The centerpieces. The seating chart was still spread open on the table between us.
"Yes," I said.
Nyla looked at her hands for a long moment.
Then she looked at me, and her expression determined
"Your father cannot find out," she said.
"If he finds out before the wedding—" I stopped. The end of that sentence was something I had been keeping at a distance for five days. Saying it out loud would make it a real thing that existed in the world. "He would not let me keep it, Nyla."
Something moved across her face, fast and furious and quickly controlled.
"No," she said carefully. "He would not."
We sat with that for a moment.
"The wedding is two years away," she said then.
I looked at her. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking two years is enough time to do something useful with." She leaned forward slightly.
"The banquet is in three weeks. After that, your father's attention shifts entirely to the alliance terms, the legal arrangements between the packs, and the property negotiations. He will be buried in work for months, he won't care about where you run off to, and the public will have other news to focus on." She paused. "We use that window."
"Nyla."
"We leave, Sera."
The words landed quietly and stayed there.
"You're talking about leaving Ironveil," I said.
"I'm talking about leaving before this pregnancy becomes visible and your father makes a decision about your life that you cannot come back from." Her voice was steady and without drama.
"I have a friend in Crestfall, the Outside pack territory, outside Alpha jurisdiction, outside your father's reach. No council, no Conrad Ashveil, no engagement." She held my gaze. "We could be no one there."
The echo of my own thought from the masquerade moved through me quietly.
Just for one night, I was nobody.
"We don't go yet," Nyla continued. "We don't go panicked, we go planned. We go after the banquet, when the timing is right, and the attention is elsewhere. But we start preparing now quietly." She paused. "Small things like Money you can move without it being noticed, Documents to a route." She looked at me. "Can you do that?"
I thought about the border reports I reviewed every week—the access codes I had been given as heir. I knew the staff schedules by heart because I had been paying attention to them since I was sixteen.
"Yes," I said.
Nyla exhaled slowly.
"Okay," she said. "Then we start today."
She reached across the table and turned the seating chart face down.
Neither of us looked at it again.
That night, after the house got quiet, I took the travel bag from the back of my wardrobe and put it on the floor of my closet.
I didn't rush to pack. I packed as Nyla taught me
I packed slowly and carefully, like you do when you know you won't be back and can't afford to forget anything
I packed four changes of clothes and nothing with the Ironveil logo. I included a pair of boots that were comfortable because I'd worn them a lot. I also put in an envelope of emergency money that I had been secretly taking from my allowance over the past few days, making sure not to leave a big gap in the household accounts.
I stopped at my desk. Glanced at the wedding plans my father's assistant had left for me to review. There were confirmations for the venue options for flowers and a sample of the announcement that would be in the pack's newspapers. I closed the folder and set it aside for now.
I didn't look at it again.
Nyla came at midnight with a piece of paper and sat cross legged on my floor, like when we were seventeen and doing something that could get us both exiled.
"There are two routes," she said, spreading the paper open. "The northern road is faster, but it runs through Vanthorpe territory for forty miles. We would need papers for that." She moved her finger across the page.
"The southern route is longer, three days by car instead of one, but it stays in neutral territory the whole way. No checkpoints, no pack affiliation required."
"Southern," I said without hesitating.
She nodded and made a mark on the paper.
"My friend knows we are coming," she said. "She does not know everything. Just that we need somewhere quiet and off the registry."
"Is she trustworthy?" I asked skeptical
"She hated pack politics before I did," Nyla said. "She left at nineteen and never looked back."
I looked at the bag on the floor, half full, the whole of what I was taking from the life I had been given.
"After the banquet," I said.
"After the banquet," Nyla confirmed, folding the map.
Caden
In a security room of the Blackridge Keep compound, Caden was by himself.
The room was really dark because it had no windows. The only light came from the wall monitors, but most were not on. He had told the security people to leave an hour ago, and they did not ask him why.
He was looking at the monitor that showed what was happening outside the Mirewood event hall.
He had asked to see this six days after the Blood Moon, but he did not look at it until now, eight days later.
He started watching the footage. He looked at the part where people were arriving first. They were all wearing masks, so you could not see their faces, which is what is supposed to happen at these things. The Blood Moon made everything feel weird and not normal.
He slowed down the footage at 9:47 PM. That was when she walked in by herself.
Even though the camera was not very good and she was wearing a mask, Caden knew it was her right away, just as he had at the event.
He kept watching the footage, and at 11:32 PM, the camera showed them standing together on the balcony. She was looking up at the stars, and he was looking at her.
He stopped the footage there. He had been telling himself that it was the Blood Moon that made him feel this way. The Blood Moon can do things to wolves, so it made sense. Now he was not so sure.
He opened another window on the computer, and he saw her face as she ran down the stairs around 8:57 AM
It had taken his head of intelligence seven days to figure out who she was
He opened a file on the monitor.
Seraphina Ashveil.
24 years old
5'8
Amber eyes
Long golden brown hair
Appointed Guard and Best friend- Nyla Graves
Her Wolf hadn't surfaced yet
She was the daughter of Alpha Conrad Ashveil of Ironveil.
Engaged to Dorian Crest, engagement party in 3 weeks
The Ironveil pack registry was not publicly accessible, but Caden had resources that made things easier for him
He read it once. Then he read it again.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the stopped footage on the other monitor.
Out of all the women in the world, his wolf had found the one person who could cause him trouble.
"I just spent a night with my enemy's daughter," Caden muttered to himself