Selene’s POV
The forest screamed with silence, a wrongness that sank into my bones like frost. My boots pounded the earth, mud splashing my calves, the scent of pine and blood thick in my throat as I ran beside Lucien. His ice-blue eyes blazed ahead, his scarred chest heaving under a torn linen shirt, his breath a sharp hiss in the moonlight. The howl from the villa had torn us from the warmth of the pack, from laughter and the glow of the arena, thrusting us into this nightmare. Bloodsuckers. Vampires. Creatures we thought long dead, their names whispered in ghost stories, not carved in fresh graves.
We burst into the clearing, and my heart stopped. The air felt poisoned, heavy with a metallic tang and something darker, like rot laced with malice. Moonlight spilled over the scene, cold and unforgiving, glinting off blood-soaked grass. Two bodies lay covered in rough cloaks, their shapes too still, too broken—a father and his son, the messenger had gasped before collapsing. The pack
