Something ahead is waiting. For both of us.
I push faster, following the thread that leads to her.
The wolf form drops from my skin at the edge of the clearing. Bones pop, muscle reshapes, and the animal consciousness peels back to reveal the man. I kneel in the dirt, naked, heart rate barely elevated. I murmur the angelic words Shadow Peak taught me, and fabric weaves itself across my skin—jeans first, then shirt, boots last. Not comfort. Practicality.
The clearing is wrong. Too perfect. A circle cut from reality with mechanical precision. Trees bend at identical angles around the perimeter. Light doesn’t filter—it stands suspended, particles frozen in midair.
Nova stands at the center, her back to me. Beyond her, reality tears at the seams—a breach point where the Fade bleeds into our world. Not a portal yet. A wound. Waiting to be opened.
I step forward. The ground feels solid but sounds hollow under my boots.
She turns, unsurprised. Her eyes find mine immediately, clear and focused.
“You came.”
“You knew I would.”
Her expression doesn’t change, but something in her stance relaxes. She extends her arm, palm up. The silvery mark on her wrist pulses with faint bluish light, brighter than I’ve ever seen it.
“It’s a key,” she says. “The mark. Faelan put it there—I don’t know when, don’t remember how. But it’s what he needs to open the breach fully.”
“Then we don’t let him use it.”
“No.” She turns her wrist, studying it. “We use it first. On our terms.”
Beyond her, the breach shimmers—reality bending at sharp angles, light splitting like oil in water. The doorway to the Fade. Where Faelan waits.
“Once we cross, we find him. We end this.” She meets my eyes. “But we have to be on the other side to cut him off from his power source.”
I nod, understanding. The pack will follow eventually, but not soon enough. This moment—this choice—belongs to us alone.
But before I can take another step toward the breach, movement at the tree line stops me cold.
Marcus emerges from the shadows, Derek and Torres flanking him. Elena follows close behind, then Mateo and one unnamed younger wolf. Five wolves total, moving in tight formation.
They came.
Relief floods through me for exactly three seconds. Despite everything—the division, the doubts, the faction forming—they came to fight.
But something’s wrong.
They don’t approach us. Don’t join our position at the breach. They halt at the clearing’s opposite edge, a separate unit maintaining deliberate distance. Notwithus. Just... here.
“Marcus?” I call across the clearing, confusion bleeding into my voice.
His eyes meet mine, and what I see there makes my blood run cold. Not defiance. Not anger.
Horror.
“Dane, I—“ His voice cracks. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t—”
The air shifts. Wrong. The clearing’s unnatural stillness intensifies, pressing down like a physical weight. The fracture behind Nova pulses once, twice, and I feel something ancient and terrible turn its attention toward us.
Then he’s there.
Not emerging from the breach. Not stepping from the shadows. Faelan’s projection simply exists in the space between our two groups—not fully solid, edges shimmering like heat off pavement. His real body is in the Fade. But his power reaches here just fine.
His smile is gentle. Pleased.
