Knock.. Knock…

:

A knock–double, then single–Marlow’s pattern for not urgent, but notter.

Francesco sighed into my hair once, then stood in one fluid lift, bringing me with him.

b978 /b

10 vouchers

He set me on my feet, brushed my skirts smooth with the kind of domestic care that would make Maria cackle, and went to the door.

Marlow didn’t quite fill the threshold the way my mate does–no one does–but he brought the weather in with him all the same. Behind him: Alfonso, eyes already busy with lines only he can see.

“Forgive the hour, my Alpha.” Marlow said, which meant we considered waiting and didn’t. “There’sb… /bmovement.”

Francesco’s hand found my back and stayed there, a habit now. “Speak.”

Alfonso nced at me and didn’t bother softening it.

“Spies,” he said. “Not ours. Must be Dorian’s. Quiet ones. Kitchen ears, stable mouths. One of them got a message out after the ward scene. A hawk rode the wind before supper. Dorian will know by dawn that the old lover is still alive and chained and that the King shouted in the ward.”

“And that the Luna wept,” Marlow added, his tone dry, already braced for how rumor would chew that. “They’ll make poetry of your tears and politics of his temper.”

“They always do,” Francesco said.

He wasn’t annoyed. fndcfc Official source is find?novel/fndcfc

He was choosing where to set his weight on the map.

“What else?” I asked.

If they hesitated to tell me, I would learn it anyway in the tilt of their mouths.

“Two Alphas on the Loire changed their tune by nightfall,” Marlow said. “Aren’t riding home yet. Staying in border taverns, listening. Dorian’s men poured coin into cups there this evening. They’re telling a version where the Lycan King is unstable and the Luna—” He flicked eyes toward me, apologetic only in the smallest

“-bewitches kitchens and councils alike.”

way.

“Bewitches,” I repeated, amused despite the knot in my chest. “At least they know I like herbs.”

Alfonso’s mouth twitched because I could speak joke.

“There’s more,” he said. “Another thread stitched in–older story, new cloth. Someone is whispering a name we’ve heard exactly never in the taverns: Mother Séverine. Not the whole. Just enough to make people feel clever for being afraid.”

b12:02 /bbTue/bb, /bSep b30 /b

Heat rolled through me, not fear–fight.

Francesco felt it, his thumb pressed once at the base of my spine.

“How fast?” he asked.

4200

“Fast enough.” Alfonso said. “The hawk flew before sunset. A rider left an hour after. He’ll make Dorian’s sear before dawn if the moon favors him.”

“Dorian will not sleep,” Marlow added fast. “Men who build their power on rumor never do. He’ll throw coin at the wind until it sounds like an army.”

1 nodded, agree with what he said “And he’ll test the border again,” I said. “Not to win–yet. To separate. To see if we run toward each other or away.”

Francesco’s mouth curved–not smile, something more feral. “Let hime. He learns the same lesson every time: I don’t separate.”

Alfonso’s eyes lit. “Then we set our stage first.” He gestured with the ledger he’d brought. “Public forum tomorrow at sunset. We announce it before breakfast so rumor has to run uphill to meet us. You listen; the Luna speaks first.”

“Of course.” Francesco said, like there was no world where I would not.

Marlow shifted his weight. “We also widen the patrols–south and east. Rogues will wear better faces next time. And if Isolde is right—”

“She is right enough,” I cut in even though I hate to admit it. “We add the fen to our map as if it were an army. We protect our girls like we protect our grain.”

Alfonso nodded, already moving pieces only he could see. “And we put coin on the rumor mills we can’t silence. If they insist on telling a story, we feed them ours–open windows, full tables, Luna in the ward–not with chains, with charts. Witches don’t love charts.”

“Nor does Dorian,” Marlow said, smug.

Francesco’s hand left my back only to squeeze Alfonso’s shoulder once, a wordless go. Then he looked at me, the whole n glinting in him, and I saw the man who can end a map and begin a garden in the same breath.

“One more thing,” I said, before the room could break to its errands. “We ask Julius and Bethany to gather the elders and the children at noon. Stories. Not the kind they’ve heard. The kind their bones need. We tell the truth about the Lycaon line–about duty and mistakes and how an apology can be heavier than a sword. We say the old name out loud, even if we don’t know it yet. So when someonees whispering in the market, our people say, ‘We’ve heard better around a fire.“”

Marlow’s grin showed a wolf. “Yes, Luna.”

Alfonso closed his ledger with the quiet satisfaction of a man who has just watched a tide choose to turn. “I’ll

wake the scribes.”

They left on their different winds.

b12:02 /bTueb, /bbSep /bb30 /b

The door shut.

The chamber exhaled.

b79 /b

10 vouchers ???? !!&

Francesco turned me toward him with two fingers under my chin. “You did that,” he said. “You took the day that tried to swallow us and turned it into bread and a n.”

“We… did that.” I corrected.

He bent to kiss me–soft, grateful, a thank–you in the shape of a mouth–and when he straightened, some of the iron that lived in him looked easier to carry.

We slept a little, sometime between the first patrol’s shift and the coals turning low, a tangle of limbs that felt like a prayer answered, again and again.

The bond hummed–a cat at a windowsill–content to keep watch while we closed our eyes.

Morning didn’t knock.

It arrived with boots and breathless news.

Alfonso, again, this time without Marlow.

He brought the cold in with him and something sharper: urgency dressed as calm.

“Dorian,” he said, not bothering with greetings. “He didn’t wait for dawn. The hawk did its work. He sent riders out in four directions before the moon slept–east to the Loire, west to the hills, north to the river towns, south…” He flicked his eyes to me. “South toward Camargue. He is throwings in water he barely understands.”

“Let him tangle,” Francesco said, tying his hair back with the strip of leather he never can find until I hand it to him. I did. “But we move first.”

“What does he know for certain?” I asked.

“That Isolde still lives, that you visited her, that the King thundered,” Alfonso said. “And the rest he fills with the things he’s always believed: that a Lycan is a storm; that a Luna is a spell; that fear is cheaper than grain.”

I stepped to the window.

The courtyard below was already alive—Maria bossing baskets, Audrey drilling a line of new guards with a frighteningly serene smile, children chasing a dog that had stolen a heel of bread as if it were a crown.

The ce had begun, finally, to sound like a pack again.

I would not let Dorian’s coins buy that music.

“Then we set the table again,” I said. “Bigger. Louder. With better bread.”

Francesco slid a palm to the small of my back. “And sharper knives,” he added, not unkindly.

12:02 bTue/b, Sep b30 /b

“Always,” I said.

78

10 vouchers

A runner in the hall skidded, then remembered to walk before Alfonso’s raised brow scorched his youth. “Message,” the boy panted. “From the south–market gossip. A woman in gray, hair like reeds, was seen asking after salt roads and old names. Paid in silver that smelled of… of the marsh.”

My skin pebbled.

I looked at Francesco.

He didn’t need the bond to read me.

“We have our witch,” he said.

“Or one of her hands,” Alfonso cautioned. “Either way–the forum tonight bes a.”

Marlow’s voice floated from the doorway–he’d arrived without sound, as usual. “We bait it with truth and courage. We haul what bites.”

Francesco’s hand tightened once at my spine. “And if Dorian rides to interrupt our market with soldiers and stories?”

I smiled, not gently. “Then we feed his men first. It is difficult to march on a full stomach.”

“Impossible, if Maria cooks,” Marlow muttered, reverent.

Alfonso’s quill was already moving, the room bing lines and circles. “I’ll spread word: sunset, the square. Open forum. No des beyond the outer ring. The King hears first petitions after the Luna speaks.”

“And if the woman in grayes?” Audrey asked from the arch, where she had been for–who knows how long–blending with the wood. “What if shees to smell our blood?”

“Then she will smell rosemary,” I said, thinking of the little nts bending their brave heads in the garden. “And findw.”

Francesco kissed my temple, a benediction and a brand. “And if she wants a name,” he murmured, voice gone quiet and old, “she cane ask me which one my father whispered.”

“Will you tell her?” Alfonso asked, curious, cautious.

Francesco’s smile showed a little fang. “I’ll tell her I’ve given it a new ce to live.”

“Where?” Marlow asked, half augh in it.

Francesco looked at me.

The answer made my ribs warm. “Here,” he said simply, pressing his hand over my heart.

By noon the notices were up.

By midafternoon the square smelled of bread and ink and the sharp, bright tension of a people about to learn

12:02 bTue/bb, /bbSep /bb30 /b

the shape of their own spine.

By sunset the world would be looking toward our windows–some to cheer, some to count our missteps, or two to tally the way fear fails to feed a family.

The day rolled forward.

We rolled with it–shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, vow to vow–ready to greet Dorian’s whispers with daylight.

And far to the south, where the salt eats stone and reeds write their names in the wind, something old turned its face toward us and smiled like water learning our measure.

Let it smile.

We had learned how to be a hearth after storms.

We had learned where to nt knives among the rosemary.

We had learned how to turn rumor into a table for all.

Tonight, we would learn who wanted our names, and why.

And tomorrow, if the fen asked for blood, we would teach it a differentnguage.

AD

Comment