No sign of him at all.
Just broken branches and trampled leaves where the shadows had swarmed through.
“Where is he?” I murmured.
Nova looked over.
“Who?”
“Rendel.”
The name made Keegan’s head snap slightly in my direction.
I didn’t notice.
I was still searching the tree line.
“He was right there a minute ago,” I said.
No answer came.
I turned back toward the group.
Keegan stood frozen where he was.
His wolf eyes had shifted slightly past me.
Toward the woods.
But Gideon was watching me.
Not the clearing.
Not Keegan.
Me.
The look on his face wasn’t hostile.
It wasn’t friendly either.
It was… curious.
Like he was waiting for something.
And suddenly, the strange feeling that had been tugging at the back of my mind since he stepped into the clearing came rushing forward.
I studied his face more carefully.
The dark hair.
The shape of his jaw.
The way his eyes held steady, even when everything around him was chaos.
Something about him had felt familiar from the moment I saw him earlier.
Not like someone I’d met before.
