SHIFT IN THE AIR AT THE COVEN COUNCIL

{"Change your thoughts and you change your world."}

Lord Marcel's lips parted slightly, his eyes wide with disbelief. Idris and Tio looked as if they had swallowed their tongues, their mouths agape, their expressions frozen somewhere between horror and shock. Desmond and Byron stood rigid, their eyes darting between Cassius's lifeless body and the pool of blood spreading beneath it, as if trying to comprehend what had just occurred.

Their stunned expressions were almost comical.

I nearly chuckled at the absurdity of it all. Had they believed I would allow Cassius to keep breathing after his silence betrayed him? After he refused to answer for the vampire bugs? The coven laws were absolute, harboring a wolf was punishable by death. The fact that it was that wolf, the one who killed my father, only made my decision easier.

But as I shifted my gaze beyond them, I saw a different kind of reaction.