Book 3: The Sacrifice

Ainslee

I remember riding this way not so long ago to see my family and demolish the Blacks. It would have been a happy time, except for the fact I’d been engaged to Axel Brodcraz.

Now I’m unhappy again, because I am leaving the man I love forever and possibly my son as well. No, unhappy doesn’t cover it. I’m crushed. Shattered.

And angry.

I don’t see the landscape. I don’t touch my dinner at the inn where we stay overnight. I don’t sleep, either. I am just numb as we travel all the way to the middle of Longclaw territory.

The carriage stops before a new structure that is clearly still being built. Its bones look something like Alpha King Karl’s house in Warfang, but it’s smaller, and there are no intricate carvings.

My father comes out of the building when the carriage stops, well-dressed and smiling. “Ainslee! My baby girl! I haven’t seen you since you were a tiny child in your mother’s arms.”

I get down out of the carriag