Book 15: All in the Family

Marianna

Blake can barely manage to walk the twelve feet to the bedroom door without needing to brace himself against the wall. I lunge for him but halt mid-step when a tall, broad, and honestly, impossibly handsome man in his mid-seventies barrels into the room looking downright murderous. His black hair is brushed away from his face, peppered with dark gray, but his silver eyes are sharpened and honed on Blake as he braces his hands on the doorframe and scans Blake, then the room, and… softens when he sees me standing in outright terror only a few feet away.

I know him. Not personally, of course, but it’s impossible not to know of the ever feared, ever worshipped, Alpha King Ryatt–The King of Shadows, of darkness. The King of The Roguelands and the mystical, secretive Veiled Valley that he passed down to his daughter.

Blake sways but manages to keep himself upright as he stretches a hand toward Ryatt in what I can only describe as surrender. “Rya