I wanted to argue. Wanted to lock him in the pack house where corruption magic couldn't reach him, where I'd know he was safe while we tore apart whatever lay waiting. But I looked at his face and saw Anna there. The same fierce love, the same absolute refusal to back down when someone she cared about was in danger.
“Stay close to me,” I said roughly. “You fall behind, you stay with the rear guard. Understood?”
“Understood.”
I turned back to the pack, felt power surge through pack bonds that connected us all, and let the shift take me.
Bone cracked and reformed.Muscle tore and rebuilt. Skin erupted with fur that caught moonlight and turned it silver. Thewolf rose up through flesh that welcomed it, that had always been meant for this, and when I landed on four legs the world exploded into scent and sound and instinct.
Pack. Mine. Protect.
Around me, the others shifted in sequence. Evan first, then Jonah, then the rest in a cascade of transformation that filled the clearing with the sound of wolves becoming. Thirty-two bodies, all moving as one, all bound by pack magic that saidthese are mine, I would die for them, they would die for me.
Michael stood at the center of our circle, the only human shape, and moonlight painted him in silver patterns that made the Harroway blood visible. The forest recognized him, marked him as belonging in ways that had nothing to do with pack bonds and everything to do with magic older than our kind.
I moved to his side, pressed my wolf form against his leg, and felt him bury his fingers in my fur. Grounding. Connection. The promise that I'd bring our son home or die trying.
Then we ran.
The forest opened before us like it had been waiting. Trees parted, paths revealed themselves, and the earth itself seemed to guide our steps toward Moon Clearing. But underneath the cooperation was wrongness. Wards that tasted sour, corruption woven so deep into protective magic that removing it would collapse the entire network.
The wrongness intensified as we neared Moon Clearing. Air that tasted like copper and rot. Wards that vibrated with strain, pushed past their limits by corruption that wanted them to fail. And underneath it all, a pulse of dark craft that made every hair on my body stand on end.
We were walking into a trap. We all knew it. But pack didn't abandon pack, and Nate was ours.
The trees opened.
The clearing lookedlike something from a nightmare.
Ward stones that should have pulsed with soft green-gold light now burned with sickly luminescence. The ground itself had been carved with ritual circles. Geometric patterns that drew power from earth and moon and blood, creating channels for magic that no sane practitioner would touch.
And at the center, kneeling in a pool of his own blood, was Nate.
They'd bound him with corruption magic, dark threads wrapped around wrists and throat that burned where they touched skin. His head was bowed, rust-colored hair matted with blood and dirt, breathing labored but steady. Alive. Hurt but alive.
The growl that tore from my throat was more rage than sound, vibrating through the pack like thunder. Thirty-two wolves adding their voices to mine, creating a wall of fury that should have been warning enough for anyone with survival instincts.
Rafe stepped into view at the clearing's edge.
And he was smiling.
“Daniel.” His voice was warm, almost fond, like we were old friends meeting for coffee instead of enemies at the precipice of war. “Right on time. I told Nate you'd come. Told him you wouldn't be able to resist playing hero.”
I shifted back to human form, felt the change rip through me faster than safe, driven by fury that made precision irrelevant. “Let him go.”
“Why would I do that?” Rafe's expression shifted, went from pleasant to something colder. Emptier. “After all the work I put into getting him here?”
“The wards,” I said, and the realization hit like ice water. “It was you. All this time, it was you poisoning them.”
“Give the Alpha a prize.” Rafe spread his hands, theatrical, mocking. “Every ward stone, every protection marker, every boundary line. I've been degrading them for weeks. Patient. Careful. Just like Silas taught me.”
“The corrupted wolves that attacked Michael?—”
“Mine.” Pride flickered in his eyes. Something dark and possessive. “I learned necromancy from Silas. Learned how to stitch dead things together with dark magic and point them where I wanted them to go. Every attack, every incursion, every 'random' rogue sighting that kept you running in circles.” His smile widened. “All me.”
The betrayal carved through my chest with claws I couldn't see. But underneath the pain was something worse. Something I couldn't ignore.
“The signature was wrong,” I said slowly. “Gideon said it didn't match Silas's magic. That it was younger. Hungrier.”
