Novels by Lena Voss

Odalys knew where to start."The Sorrell family kept a cabin," she said, spreading an old, hand-drawn map across Kade's study table. "Deep in the hills, two days' travel from here. I visited once, as a girl, before the scattering. If any of them survived that night, that cabin's the most likely place they'd have gone.""Two days is a long time to leave Rowan again," Ivy said, though she was already reaching for her coat."I'll go with Odalys," Kade said. "You should stay, this time. Rowan needs one of us close, and Rhys still has concerns about lingering Thorne loyalists testing our security while attention's split."Ivy hesitated, torn, then nodded slowly. "Bring back whatever you find. All of it, even the parts that are hard to hear.""Especially those," Kade agreed.Ivy stayed home for three days that felt longer than any of the three-day countdowns she'd survived over the past year, pacing between the nursery and Rhys's security updates, waiting for word.It came on the evening of

They drove home three days later, exhausted, Damon's border pack finally settling after Bram's release, though the question Fern had raised sat heavy in the car the whole way north.Kade requested the old council archive the morning they arrived, before he'd even properly slept, standing in the same records room Damon had once pulled the Ashgrove registry from under far less honest circumstances."I need every file from my grandfather's tenure," he told the archivist. "Border actions. Council decrees. Anything marked 'cleansing' or 'security measure' from that era."The archivist hesitated. "Some of those files are sealed, sir. Your grandfather sealed a number of records himself, before he died.""Unseal them," Kade said. "All of them. I don't care what's in there. I need to know."Ivy watched him work through the afternoon, jaw tight, methodical in a way that reminded her of the man who'd once told her the truth about a fated mate flag only because he couldn't stand hiding it any lon

"Don't move," Fern said quietly, arriving behind them, breathless from the run. "Not yet. Let it come to you rather than chasing it. It's been waiting. Waiting means it's still capable of choosing, somewhere underneath the hunger."Ivy stepped forward anyway, slow, deliberate, ignoring Kade's hand tightening around her arm."Ivy—""I have to try," she said quietly. "He's been alone for forty years, Kade. If there's any part of him left that can still choose, I don't want him choosing in a courtyard full of people who are all afraid of him."Kade's jaw worked, every instinct in him clearly screaming to pull her back, but he let go, stepping with her instead of in front of her this time, close enough that Ivy could feel the warmth of him even through the unnatural cold radiating off the shape ahead of them."Bram," she said, voice steady despite the fear hammering in her chest. "Your name was Bram Ashworth. You had a mate. Two children. Forty years ago, someone took them from you, and I

They spent the rest of the night in Fern's small cabin, going through old pack records by lamplight, searching for any name that might explain what they'd just seen in the trees."There," Fern said finally, tapping a yellowed page with one thin finger. "Bram Ashworth. Lost his entire family in a border raid forty years ago — mate, two pups, all of it, in a single night. He disappeared into the woods a week later. We assumed he'd died out there, grieving alone. Nobody ever found a body.""Forty years is a long time to survive alone in the woods," Kade said."It's not surviving," Fern said quietly. "Not really. Whatever's left of Bram hasn't been alive in any way that word usually means for a very long time. He's just been out there, hollowing further and further, waiting for something to finally fill the emptiness or finish him off."Ivy looked at the old photograph tucked into the record — a young man, smiling, arm around a woman Ivy assumed was his mate, two small children at their f

The pack elder was older than Odalys, older than anyone Ivy had met in either bloodline, a small woman named Fern who spoke slowly, like every word cost her something to dredge up from very deep memory."Hollows aren't born," Fern said, seated by a fire despite the mild evening, hands wrapped around a cup of something that smelled sharp and medicinal. "They're made. A wolf, once, who lost their bond so completely — mate, pack, all of it, torn away at once — that the grief itself hollowed them out from the inside. What's left isn't really a wolf anymore. It's just hunger, wearing a shape that used to belong to something that could love."Ivy's chest tightened. "That's horrifying.""It's tragic," Fern corrected gently. "Which makes it more dangerous, not less. You can't reason with grief that's eaten everything else a person used to be. You can only survive it, or stop it.""How do we stop it?" Kade asked."Salt and iron slow it. Don't kill it — nothing physical kills a Hollow, because

Kade called Damon within the hour, phone on speaker so Ivy could listen while she paced the nursery, Rowan finally down for his afternoon nap."Tell me everything," Kade said, no greeting, straight to business. "Your letter said something crossed onto their territory. What kind of something?"Damon's voice came through static-heavy and tired, like a man who hadn't slept properly in days. "Nobody here has a name for it. Three pack members gone in two weeks, found drained somehow — not killed the way an animal kills, not marked the way a fight leaves marks. Just empty. Like whatever took them took more than just their lives.""Drained," Kade repeated slowly. "Drained how?""I don't know, Kade. That's the problem. The pack elder here says there are old stories about something called a Hollow, a creature that feeds on pack bonds themselves, not bodies. I always assumed those were just stories meant to scare pups into staying close to the group at night." A pause, heavy with static. "I don