Esther’s POV
I’d barely closed the infirmary door when the vibration against my hip startled me. My phone pulsed with a message from the caretaker assigned to the twins in the guest wing:
Kids won’t nap. Acting restless. Asking for you.
I stared at the text until it blurred. They’d been restless for days, Carl especially. Ever since we’d arrived at the Blood Moon Pack, his questions had sharpened. Why did we have to stay, why was Mama always at the palace, why couldn’t they visit more often.
He was only a child but his eyes had started to look like mine in the mirror: haunted.
I thumbed a quick reassurance back—Be there soon—and headed down the hall anyway.
The palace air was thick with polish and the faint trace of incense from morning rituals. Beneath it, a current of gossip: the
