"Last night. When you—" I touched my wrist without thinking. The place where his hand had gripped me. Where the spark had ignited. "Did you feel—"
"Get some rest, Lumi." His voice was soft. Almost gentle. "You've earned it."
He walked away.
I watched him go. Watched his broad shoulders disappear through the chamber doors. Watched the space where he'd been and felt the echo of something I couldn't explain.
And Cole hadn't answered my question.
As a dangerous new bond awakens and the truth behind the feral wolves begins to surface, Lumi must face what she truly is—and whether her fated mates can survive the answer.Continue the Frosthaven Academy: Northern series in Book Three,Northern Heart.
Chapter thirty
Epilogue — Classified
The office was dark.
Twilson preferred it that way. The lamp on his desk cast a small circle of light—enough to work by, not enough to be seen from outside. At this hour, the administrative building was empty. No witnesses. No interruptions.
No one to see what he was about to do.
He sat motionless for a long moment, staring at the wood grain of his desk without seeing it. The council session played on repeat in his mind. The vote. Four to three. The ferals granted sanctuary. Mr. Cole's unexpected betrayal.
And her.
Always her.
Lumi.
The name tasted bitter on his tongue. A first-year student. A nobody. And yet somehow she'd walked into his carefullyordered world and upended everything. The ferals should have been eliminated weeks ago. The program should have been shut down before it started. But she'd gotten in the way. She'd formed bonds that shouldn't exist, achieved results that shouldn't be possible, convinced people who should have known better.
She'd made him look like a fool.
Twilson's jaw tightened. He reached for the bottom drawer of his desk—the one that required a key and a code. The one that didn't officially exist.
The lock clicked open.
Inside was a single folder. Old. Weathered. The edges soft with age and handling. No label on the outside. No classification markings. Nothing to indicate what it contained.
He lifted it onto his desk. Opened it.
Photographs spilled out.
Women. All of them women. Spanning decades—the oldest photos black and white, the newest in sharp digital color. Different faces. Different eras. Different lives.
But something the same.
Twilson spread the photos across his desk, studying them the way he had a hundred times before. The eyes. There was something about the eyes. A quality he couldn't name but could recognize. A depth. A pull.
The same pull he'd felt the first time he'd seen Lumi in the council chamber.
He picked up one of the older photographs. A woman in her twenties, dark hair, fierce expression. The notation on the back was faded but legible:Subject 7. Confirmed. Terminated 1987.
Another photo. Another woman. Another notation:Subject 12. Suspected. Unconfirmed. Lost to resistance, 1994.
Another. And another. Fifteen photographs in total. Fifteen women across fifty years. Some confirmed. Some suspected. Some lost before they could be studied.
All of them with that same quality in their eyes.
