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A voucher.

“I remember yourst words to me,” she began, her voice smooth as old river stone. “He tells you…”

The pause was deliberate. She let the silence stretch, let it press against the walls, until I could hear my own blood in my ears.

“What?” I asked, though my mouth was dry, though my bones already knew the answer,

Her lips curved faintly, the ghost of a smile with no kindness in it. “Your King. Your Lycan. Francesco,” fnc757 Chapters first released on f?i?n?d?n?o?v?e?l?/fnc757

At the sound of his name, Mika stirred inside me, ears t, a low growl in the hollow of my chest. My wolf did. not like this woman–not the way she said his name, not the way she weighted it like a coin she had once owned and might yet spend again.

I forced my breath to steady. “What do you im he told me?”

She tilted her head, reed–colored hair slipping over one shoulder. “Not im. I know… The words he left in your ear.”

Ice pricked my spine.

The word struck like a flint against memory. A half–remembered whisper from weeks ago, a thread of voice tangled in sleep. Bring the sea back its stolen name.

My stomach clenched. She saw it. Of course she did.

“Ah,” she breathed, eyes sharpening. “You do know I will know.”

I did not answer.

I would not give her the satisfaction.

But the air seemed to lean closer, hungry for the next word.

“He tells you,” Mother Severine said again, lower now, like a confession spoken in a church with no God to hear it, “because blood remembers what mouths try to forget. Because the old Lycaon promised me something he never gave. And promises have teeth.”

Her eyes locked to mine then, steady, patient, relentless. “Tell me, Luna–do you know what your mate’s father stole from me?”

My throat ached, but I lifted my chin. “If he wronged you, it was not Francesco’s hand that did it.”

For the first time, something like heat broke in her expression–not anger, not sorrow, but a spark of satisfaction. “And yet… it is Francesco’s blood that carries the debt.”

The bond between me and my mate thrummed tight in my chest, protective, warning. I wanted to end the conversation, to turn my backb, /bto call Audrey, Marlow, anyone. But I held her gaze. Because if bthis /bwoman smelled even a breath of fear, she would feed on it like wolves on marrow.

b11:56 /bFri, Oct b3 /bM…

“What debt?” I asked. My voice was calm. Too calm.

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12 85 vouchers

Mother Severine’s smile deepened, slow as dusk. “The kind that cannot be paid with coin. Only with names. And blood. And the truth you do not yet know.”

She stepped closer, and themplight caught her eyes, turning them silver–gray like storm clouds.

“Shall I tell you, Luna?” she whispered. “Shall I tell you what your King has never dared speak?”

I gulped nervously.

Her voice dropped, soft as a thread slipping through cloth. “Bring the sea back its stolen name.”

She knows…

The words sank in me like a stone in water. My breath caught before I could stop it. She saw. Of course she saw–the flicker in my face, the tightening in my shoulders.

Her smile was a thin de, sharp and cold.

I forced my chin higher. “If you came here to frighten me with riddles, you’ll find me harder to scare than you think.”

She moved one step closer into themp’s reach.

The gray cloth of her dress looked dull until that moment, when it caught the faintest sheen, like wet ash. Her presence pulled the air taut, every shadow in the room bending closer to her.

“Your mate’s father,” she said evenly, “the old Totti Lycaon. A man with a crown in one hand and fire in the other. He promised me power. He promised me forever.”

A sick chill coiled in my gut. “Promised you…?”

“Love,” she said without hesitation, without shame. “He whispered love into me like salt into water. He wanted my magic–the deep magic, older than wolf or Lycan. I was a girl then. Foolish enough to believe a king’s vow Foolish enough to give him what he asked.”

Her eyes glittered hard, bitter. “Together we dreamed of ruling the whole of Europe, He said we would build an empire that neither wolf nor man could shatter.”

Oh God…

Sheughed then, like he could hear the horror in my head, but it was an empty, rattlingugh. “And then he left me. Left me with nothing but the taste of lies. He took from me what he could not keep—and when he abandoned me, he sealed my power away with chains of dark iron. Buried me alive in silence, in stone. For decades Iy there, breathing dust, waiting.”

I couldn’t breathe. My skin prickled cold.

The old Totti… Francesco’s father?

11:56 Fri, bOct /bb3 /bM…

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b69 /b

El 56 vouchers

Her voice sank lower, softer, but the words carried like knives. “So when he said, ‘Bring the sea back its stolen name,‘ he was naming the debt. Because what he stole from me was a name.”

I frowned, shaken, unable to stop my whisper.

“A name?”

“Yes.” She leaned forward, and for the first time her voice trembled, not with weakness but fury contained like a storm at sea. “He took my name, Luna. Not just what I was called–my very power. My true name, the word of me that bound my magic to my blood. Without it, I was a shadow. With it, I am what you see now.”

The gray in her eyes deepened, storm against stone. “And it is his blood, your Francesco’s blood, that ties me to my prison still. Do you see now why I cannot let the Lycaon line go unpunished?”

My heart hammered.

The bond inside me with Francesco shivered tight, as if even across the manor he felt the shadow of her words.

I swallowed hard. “No.” My voice cracked once, then steadied. “No. I see only that a bitter woman is still chained to the past. Whatever your quarrel was, it was with him. Not my mate.”

Her lips curved, faint, cruel. “And yet you carry his legacy. You carry the curse that began with his father’s betrayal.”

Her words hung in the room, heavy as iron.

I clenched my fists, soil from yesterday’s garden still faint in my nails. “Then you’ll find I do not break easily. I’ve survived rejection, I’ve survived loss, and I will protect Francesco with everything I have. You may hate his father, but you will not have his son.”

Mother Severine regarded me for a long, endless moment. Then she smiled–not kindly, not warmly, but like a woman who has found her enemy’s spine.

“Good,i” /ishe said softly. “I prefer when the prey fights back.”

And then she was gone, slipping into the dark like she had never been there at all.

Or that’s what I thought…

b11:56 /bbFri/bb, /bbOct 3 /bM