The numbers do not favour them.
She finds a third option.
At the war council, the math is brutal and everyone in the room
is smart enough to know it. A second pack offers alliance at a price
Seraphine refuses without hesitation, she has been the expendable wolf
and she will not make another one.
So she finds the third option.
She stands alone in the Veilmoor forest at midnight and opens
the Moonblood bond wide - every thread, every connection,
every wolf who has ever carried the Nightveil origin in their blood,
wherever they have gone, whatever life they have built.
She does not demand. She calls.
They feel her. They come.
In ones and twos and then in dozens
some of whom have not been home in years.
And in the quiet before the battle,
with everything assembled and everything at stake,
she turns to Caelan Nightveil and makes the choice she has been
circling since the night of the Bond Ceremony.
Not the pull. Not necessity. Not the bond making the decision.
Him.
With clear eyes and no remaining ambiguity.
The mark on their wrists completes itself - silver and gold, healing
into one combined glow - simultaneously, on both their wrists.
The Nightveil Pack feels it like a shockwave.
Far away, Aldric feels it too.
His message back is four words. What are you?
She smiles for the first time in weeks.
THE SHADOW PACK'S LAST VOW is Book 9 of The Nightveil Pack Chronicles.
The penultimate chapter - fated mates finally chosen, war at the door,
and one wolf who has been told no so many times she learned to ask
different questions.
Read Books 1 to 8 first. Available on Kindle Unlimited.