Chapter 136: Ghosts of the Gate
Why did she let him in?
Why did she kill him now?
What good is a queen who invites the ghost inside?
She could feel Beckett at her back before she heard him. His footsteps were light for a man who could break a wolf’s neck with one twist, but the bond between them pulsed a silent warning , a heartbeat drumming under her ribs that wasn’t hers alone.
"Say something," Beckett muttered. He stood so close his breath warmed the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck.
Magnolia’s fingers twitched at her sides. "What do you want me to say?"
"That you see them," he said. "That you see they’re tearing themselves apart while they wait for you to tell them this isn’t the end."
She barked a laugh that turned sharp as ice. "It isn’t the end."
Beckett’s hand ghosted to her shoulder. "Then say it like you believe it."
She stepped forward, boots crunching over the broken threshold where the gate once barred the Elder’s wolves from the pack’s soft underbelly. The air here smelled of old blood and fire. Somewhere beyond the ridge, the forest waited , thick with snow and secrets she could almost taste on her tongue.
Magnolia turned, letting her eyes sweep across the circle of wolves gathered in the courtyard. Mothers with cubs clinging to their cloaks. Old men with scars that cut through beards gone iron-gray. Young ones who’d never known a world without the Elder’s leash biting their necks.