“Don't.” His voice cracked. “Just... don't.”
We kept moving.
Nate stayed close to Evan, his eyes darting everywhere, taking in details with the desperate focus of someone trying not to fall apart. His hands kept flexing at his sides, and I could see faint green light flickering at his fingertips.
“The magic here,” Nate said quietly. “It's wrong. It feels wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Evan asked.
“I don't know how to explain it. It's like...” Nate struggled for words. “Like someone took something beautiful and twisted it inside out. The forest is screaming, Evan. Can't you hear it?”
Evan's expression shifted. Concern bleeding into something darker. “I hear something. I thought it was just the absence of pack presence.”
“It's not absence. It's pain.” Nate's voice dropped to a whisper. “Something was done here. Something that hurt the land itself.”
Gideon had gone very still, watching Nate with an expression I couldn't read.
“The boy's right,” he said finally. “This isn't just death magic. It's corruption magic. Someone used blood and pain to tear a hole in the natural order. The forest is wounded here. Might never heal properly.”
“Silas?” I asked.
Gideon shook his head slowly. “No. This doesn't smell like Silas's work. His magic has a signature.” His eyes met mine. “Someone's been studying his methods. Learning from him. But this isn't his hand directly.”
“A student,” Michael said.
“Or an imitator. Someone who saw what Silas could do and decided to try it for themselves.” Gideon's jaw tightened. “Which is almost worse. Silas is controlled. Calculated. An imitator would be sloppy. Desperate. Willing to break things they don't understand just to see what happens.”
We found the bodies in the clearing behind the main house.
Then we saw the wolves. Laid out in a circle, their corpses arranged with deliberate care. Some had shifted back to human in death, their faces frozen in expressions of terror and rage. Others remained in wolf form, fur matted with blood that had long since dried to black.
At the center of the circle, the earth was scorched. Burned in patterns that made my eyes hurt to follow. Ritual marks. The kind carved with blood and sealed with death.
“This is where they died,” Rafe said. His voice had gone flat. Numb. “Not the attack. The attack happened all over the compound. But they were brought here. After. Arranged like this.”
“For what?” Evan asked.
“Power.” Gideon crouched at the edge of the scorched earth, not touching, just looking. “Death releases energy. Violent death releases more. If you know how to harvest it, how to channel it through the right patterns...”
“You can store it,” Nate finished. His face had gone gray. “Like a battery. Like a... a fuel tank for dark magic.”
Rafe walked into the circle.
I started to call out, to tell him to stop, but something in his posture made me hesitate. He moved like a man walking to his own execution. Slow. Deliberate. Knowing exactly what he was doing and doing it anyway.
He stopped at the center, stood on the scorched earth, and looked down at the bodies of his pack.
“I knew all of them,” he said quietly. “Every single one. Damian trained me when I was a pup. Elena taught me to track. Warren...” His voice broke. “Warren was the best Alpha I've ever known. Fair. Strong. He believed in second chances. Believed that wolves could be more than their worst impulses.”
“Rafe...” I started.
“The night it happened.” He didn't look up. Just kept staring at the bodies. “I was on patrol. Northern boundary. Routine sweep, nothing unusual. Then the bond just... snapped. All at once. Like someone had cut every thread connecting me to my pack.”
His hands were shaking now. Trembling with the effort of keeping himself together.
“I ran back. Fast as I could. But by the time I got here, it was already over. They were dragging bodies. Arranging them.And there were so many of them, these wolves I didn't recognize, moving like they were all one thing wearing different faces.”
“Rogues,” Evan said.
