Word of the twins' birth spread faster than Liora's fastest riders could carry it, rippling outward from the fortress to every pack, coven, and court that had spent the last season debating whether Jasmine's children would ever be allowed to exist at all. By the third day, well-wishes and warnings arrived in equal measure, tangled together in scrolls sealed with a dozen different bloodline crests.

Jasmine read few of them. She was too occupied with the two small, insistent lives now anchoring every hour of her day — Elara's fierce, unrelenting cry whenever she was set down even for a moment, Ronan's watchful silence that made the healers glance at...