“Anything?” I called as they approached.
Sienna shook her head, but her jaw was tight. “Tracks. Same pattern as yesterday. Something's been testing the wards, but not crossing. Just... watching.”
“How many?”
“Three, maybe four. Hard to tell. They're covering their scent somehow.” She glanced at Theo, who nodded confirmation. “But Daniel, the spacing is deliberate. Military. Like they're mapping our response times.”
My stomach dropped. “Show me.”
We moved through the undergrowth in silence, and with each step the wrongness intensified. The trees were too quiet. No birds. No small animals rustling through dead leaves. Just the sound of our breathing and boots on frozen ground and the distant howl of wind through branches that sounded almost like screaming.
Theo stopped at a cluster of pines, pointed down. “Here.”
The tracks were clear in the half-frozen mud. Wolf prints, large ones, spaced in a pattern that spoke of deliberate reconnaissance rather than random wandering. They circled the ward-line three times, each pass closer than the last, testing for weaknesses.
But it was the other marks that made my blood run cold.
Claw marks on the trees. Deep gouges that scored through bark into heartwood, arranged in sets of four at precise intervals. Measuring distances. Marking sight lines. Creating a tactical map of our defenses carved into the forest itself.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“Yeah.” Sienna's voice was grim. “That's what we said.”
I knelt beside the tracks, studying the depth and spacing. Big wolves. Experienced. Moving with purpose and discipline that spoke of training, of coordinated effort. This wasn't a random probe. This was intelligence gathering.
They were learning us.
My phone buzzed. Evan's name lit up the screen.
Evan
Eastern perimeter. Movement. Bring everyone.
I was already running.
The shift took me mid-stride,bones cracking and reforming with familiar violence, fur erupting across skin that suddenly burned with the need to protect, to fight, to tear apart whatever threatened my territory. The wolf landed on all fours and ate up the distance in bounds that blurred the world into scent and sound and instinct.
Pack. Threat. Protect.
The eastern perimeter came into view through the trees, and what I saw made every hair on my body stand on end.
Six wolves stood just beyond the ward-line, massive and dark against the dying light. But their eyes—their eyes were wrong. Empty. Like something had hollowed them out and left only hunger and obedience behind. No soul looked back from those vacant stares, just cold calculation and the kind of focus that came from being pointed at a target and told to destroy.
Corrupted just like the ones before.
The word rose from some instinctive place that recognized wrongness when it saw it.
My pack had already assembled. Evan in wolf form, hackles raised, teeth bared in a snarl that vibrated with barely contained violence. Beside him, Nate's wolf crouched low, druid magic crackling across his fur in silver-green sparks that made the air taste like thunderstorms. Jonah, Mason, Alaric—all shifted, all ready, all watching me for the signal.
Rafe stood among them in wolf form, bigger than most, his dark gray fur catching the last of the daylight. He'd positioned himself at the flank, tactical and smart, covering an approach angle the others had missed. His amber eyes tracked thecorrupted wolves with the kind of cold assessment that came from real combat experience.
He met my gaze briefly, nodded once. Ready.
Behind the wolves, Michael stood with a silver blade in hand and Gideon beside him. The witch's hands already glowed with golden light, intricate symbols forming in the air as he wove protection wards around Michael's position.
The corrupted wolves attacked.
They moved as one unit, coordinated and brutal, hitting the ward-line with enough force to make it shimmer and crack. I lunged forward and met the first one in a collision that shook the ground, jaws finding throat, claws raking through corrupted flesh that felt wrong under my teeth—too cold, too dense, like meat that had been dead and reanimated.
