“Now?”
“Now,” I confirm. “Have them meet me at the eastern gate in ten minutes.”
Soon,we’re deep in the forest where Daciana was attacked. The moon filters through the leaves above us, casting everything in silver and shadow. My wolf senses sharpen, picking up traces others would miss.
“Here,” I say, crouching beside a tree. Blood. Not Daciana’s. The scent is all wrong. This belongs to whoever hurt her.
Aaron kneels beside me, his eyes shifting to amber as his wolf rises closer to the surface. “The soldiers must have investigated after the attack. They would have found this trail.”
“And it probably led nowhere,” I say, studying the blood spatter. The trail is clear for perhaps twenty feet, then vanishes completely. No drag marks, no continued drops, nothing. Whoever orchestrated this knew how to cover their tracks. “That’s why we’re here.”
I stand, extending my hand over the droplets. Magic flows from my fingertips, ancient and primal. This is the gift of my bloodline, the pure hybrid magic that few possess anymore. The air shimmers, and threads of silver light begin to weave outward from the blood, tracing a path invisible to ordinary sight.
“There,” I say quietly, following the ethereal trail deeper into the woods.
Aaron and Ferin fall into step behind me, their expressions grim. They know what I’m doing: using magic to track what can’tbe tracked by conventional means. It’s a skill that sets us apart, that makes my pack both valuable and feared.
The silver threads lead us away from the attack site, winding through the forest in a serpentine pattern designed to confuse. But magic doesn’t lie. It follows the essence of the blood, the life force that once animated it, no matter how carefully the path it took was hidden.
We reach the edge of the forest, where the trees thin out near the main road. The threads converge on a spot in the underbrush, and there, partially hidden beneath fallen leaves and branches, is a corpse.
Or what’s left of one.
Animals have been at it. Scavengers drawn by the scent of death. But even through the damage, I can see this wasn’t natural decay. The body has been deliberately mutilated, carved up in ways meant to obscure identity.
The face is beyond recognition.
But I know. The scent, faint as it is beneath the rot and blood, tells me everything. This is the one who hurt her. The one whose poisoned claws tore into her flesh.
I think of the female alpha, one of the wild wolves that follow Daciana. The desperate way she clawed at my door, her whines frantic and urgent. I think of how I found Daciana, her body so cold, so badly injured, her blood everywhere. Too much blood. Far too much for anyone to survive.
But she survived. Barely.
Rage, white-hot and consuming, floods through me.
I reach down, my claws extending, and plunge my hand into the corpse’s chest cavity. Its ribs crack under the force. My fingers close around what’s left of the heart, cold and lifeless, and I rip it free. It turns to paste in my grip, oozing between my fingers. I crush it completely, watching the remains fall to the forest floor like mud.
“Let the animals have him,” I say coldly. “His face is beyond identification anyway.”
Aaron and Ferin exchange glances but say nothing. They know better than to question me when my wolf is this close to the surface, when fury radiates from me like heat from a forge.
Aaron clears his throat carefully. “If they’re going after Daciana, then the Queen isn’t safe, either.”
The words cut through my rage, bringing clarity back. He’s right. The poison on those claws was very specific, designed to harm someone with Daciana’s unique bloodline. And if Daciana is being targeted specifically, that puts Astra in constant danger simply by being near her.
Astra staying alive is crucial. More crucial than anyone in the palace realizes.
“Agreed,” I say quietly, wiping my hand on the grass.
My mind turns over the implications. Daciana needs to be protected. She needs to be where I can watch over her constantly, where my people can form a barrier between her and this threat that keeps coming for her.
She needs to be by my side.
But to remove her from her duty to the Queen, to justify taking Astra’s personal guard away, I would have to reveal the prophecy. The one that speaks of the Wolf Kingdom’s downfall, of the darkness coming for it. The one that brought me here in the first place. The prophecy I’ve kept close to my chest because revealing it would cause panic, would make me look like a harbinger of doom rather than an ally.
“They’re covering their tracks,” I add, gesturing to the mutilated corpse. “Whoever orchestrated this attack killed their own man to keep him silent. They made sure the physical trail would lead nowhere. That’s why the soldiers found nothing.”
“Professional,” Ferin observes grimly. “And merciless.”
