Eve
My eyes burned. Hades's voice was a low, steady rumble—gravelly and somehow still soothing—and all I wanted was to curl into him, close my eyes, and sleep.
But the maps spread across the office desk kept me anchored. Strategy markers. Quadrant divisions. Enemy positions. I couldn't afford to drift.
I glanced up just as Hades said something that stopped me cold.
"The casualties will be high in Silverpine. I hope you know that."
His voice carried a solemn note that pierced through me like a heated blade.
I blinked. It wasn't shock I felt—I wasn't naive. As someone raised to one day take the Silverpine throne as its Alpha, I'd been taught the stakes of all-out war. I knew the brutal arithmetic: sons would lose mothers, daughters would lose fathers, entire families would be wiped out. War fed on violence. There was no version of this where everyone survived.
But Silverpine's population was different.
