When Nelle Wychthorn was forced to sign herself away in marriage, she should have read the contract's fine print. Because she signs not with ink, but with blood. And that changes everything.
Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns'
***
Fiery Nelle, the isolat...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My gaze skipped about the room, poking about his family and brothers, but I couldn't spot Danne among them.
"Come, come," my mother urged. "We've been waiting for you both."
As she walked beside me, I noted the glassy sheen to her eyes and the rattling noise of the pills in her pocket that always accompanied her movements. She'd become more anxious and frail over the past five years. However, the vast planning needed for this engagement party of Evvie's, and the oncoming wedding, had been good for her. There'd been more smiles, more excitement than I'd seen in years. But these days it seemed it was all she and Evvie did—sifting through dress fabric; planning seating arrangements; choosing the perfect invitation font, and making choices between flora. It left them both with little time for me.
I was lonely. That was the sad truth of it all.
So I took what I could from her at this moment, linking my arm around her bony one, letting my body warm and cradle her fragile frame.
As we moved deeper into the room, our guests, the Pelans, stared blatantly.
Sage might be at my heels, but there was another wolf stalking beside me as I headed toward my father. There was just as much wariness of Graysen as of Sage.
Graysen dominated the room with his presence. An intoxicating mixture of power and ruthlessness. An ominous hint of a winter storm.
Everyone here, including my father, wielded words as their weapons, but Graysen's entire body was a honed weapon. He didn't need the knives and swords I'd seen strapped to his powerful body. He could end every single person here without a drop of blood staining his shiny, leather shoes.
And he knew it, too. The slight, smug curve to his lips gave him away.
He was a cocky sonovabitch.
I scanned our guests.
The elder Pelans had produced seven children with freckled, milky-white skin and varying shades of red hair—from deep auburn to strawberry blonde. The two younger sisters leaned closer to one another, their noses wrinkling and mouths puckering as they stared overtly right at me while they whispered amongst themselves.
I was well aware of the rumors of me floating about the room, why I was rarely seen and kept myself to the estate.
Odd.
Too many people made me nervous.
I suffered from panic attacks.
In some way they were right. They never suspected I was other, mostly because at a young age it usually became apparent with temper tantrums that flew out of control.
But mine, the creature living inside me, had never been caught out by the wrong people. The creature had the ability to shield itself from prying sight. And no one here would suspect what I was, as long as I kept calm. Ignoring the younger girls, I loosened a loop on my adamere necklace I'd wrapped around a wrist as a bracelet and comforted myself by weaving the beads through my fingers.
