The forest is too quiet. Even the birds have gone silent, as if they know better than to announce themselves. My skin prickles, sensing movement that my eyes cannot yet catch.
A soft scrape comes from within the smoke.
I freeze, bear spray raised.
“Hello,” I call, voice steady despite the way my pulse jumps.
No answer.
The scrape comes again, closer, followed by the faint shift of weight on charred boards. Smoke thickens and swirls, and something large moves behind it, a shadow cutting through the gray.
My muscles tense.
A shape lunges. The rogue wolf bursts out of the smoke like a living nightmare, massive and fast, coat streaked with soot and eyes bright with predatory intent. Its lips peel back, teeth flashing white against blackened fur, and the sound it makes is not just a snarl.
I spray.
The bear spray blasts forward in a hard orange cloud, hitting the wolf’s face and muzzle. It flinches only slightly, shaking its head once as if annoyed rather than injured. Then it charges again, closing the distance so fast my brain barely keeps up.
I stumble backward off the porch, boots slipping on ash and damp dirt. My shoulder aches as I catch myself, the old wound pulling hard beneath my sleeve. The wolf lands in the yard, paws thudding, and then it drives toward me with brutal speed.
I turn and run.
Branches slap my face as I sprint into the trees, the forest swallowing me in shadow and smoke. The rogue’s paws pound behind me, close enough that I can hear its breath, hot and ragged in the cold air. My lungs burn as I push deeper into the woods, every instinct screaming to climb, to hide, to vanish.
The rogue does not let me vanish.
It follows, relentless, forcing me away from the cabin and into the forest’s darker throat.
16
ALDEN
The clearing still vibrates from the blast.
Dust hangs in the air, drifting through torchlight like ash. Wolves shout over each other, voices sharp and uneven, the kind of noise that comes from instinct instead of order. Brynn stands upright near the central stone, staff braced, her gaze moving fast as she tries to steady a room full of predators suddenly reminded they can bleed.
“Hold the line,” Ciaran barks, palms out as he forces distance between younger wolves and the treeline. “Nobody shifts, and nobody runs blind.”
Marek drags an elder to his feet with a hard grip on the man’s elbow. Lydia is already calling for scouts to locate the source of the explosion. Gideon stands too composed, head tilted as if he is measuring reaction instead of sharing it.
I should stay. I should give the next command.
I feel it before anyone says her name.
Fear.
Not the pack’s scattered fear. Not the council’s alarm. Something sharper slices through my chest, sudden andintimate, like a hand closing around my ribs from the inside. My breath catches, and my wolf slams forward, furious and certain.
Cassidy.
The bond tightens hard, pulling my focus away from the clearing and toward the forest beyond. It is not a thought. It is a physical sensation, a violent certainty that she is running and terrified and not safe.
Ciaran’s voice cuts through again. “Alpha, we need?—”
I am already moving.
My boots scrape stone as I push past the circle, ignoring the murmurs behind me. Ciaran reaches for my shoulder, his hand grazing my sleeve, but I shrug him off without slowing.
