LOGINRonan’s POVI slowed my pace, my boots crunching softly on the blackened soil. Beside me, Xavier and Alara drifted a half-step forward, their bodies coiled like overwound springs. Rylan held the flank to my left, his eyes darting through the skeletal remains of the treeline."No movement," I murmured, the words barely hitching on the air."That’s the problem," Rylan replied, his voice a low grate of gravel. "Everything in these woods should be screaming right now. Instead, it’s like the forest is holding its breath."He was right. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. And yet, beneath the surface of that quiet, I felt a flicker. It wasn't a sound or a scent. It was a phantom connection — a tether of intent that didn't belong to any of us."Wait—" I started, the warning dying on my lips.They didn't emerge from the shadows; the shadows simply solidified into teeth and fur. There was no theatrical growl, no rustle of dry leaves. There was only the sudden, violent impact.A massive, grey-furr
Xavier’s POVThe land began to decay long before the visual evidence appeared.“We’re close,” Rylan murmured at my shoulder.I didn't bother responding. The confirmation was already vibrating through my body. The pull was there, but as relentless as a physical tether. With every stride forward, the thread only tightened.Deep within the cages of my mind, Marcus stirred. He was eerily focused. Alert.“She’s here.”“I know,” I breathed.The words were barely a ghost of a sound, but they were the only things keeping me grounded. Ronan moved a few paces ahead, his eyes tracking the treeline with lethal precision. His frame was a coiled spring. “This place is wrong, Xavier. Down to the dirt.”“It was made to be,” Rylan added, his voice analytical even in the face of the macabre.He was right. The terrain was uneven, stained with dark patches that looked less like burns and more like a systemic corruption.We pressed deeper into the blight, moving with the silent efficiency of a hunting pa
Alara’s POVThe moment I crested the northern ridge, the world as I knew it ceased to exist.The air didn’t just turn cold; it turned heavy. It became a thick, pressurized substance that didn't necessarily impede my physical movement, but instead pressed relentlessly against my senses, dulling the sharp edges of my perception. Sound didn't travel; it died.The rustle of my own movements was swallowed by an oppressive silence, and the wind, which had been biting at my back moments before, became a stagnant, breathless weight. Even the ground beneath my boots felt fundamentally wrong.I came to a halt just beyond the skeletal remains of the tree line, my gaze sweeping across a valley that defied every instinctual map I carried. It wasn't merely unfamiliar territory; it was land that had been stripped of its identity. There were no pack markings here, no scent-trails of territorial claims, no natural boundaries defined by the ebb and flow of a healthy ecosystem. This was a dead zone — l
Xavier’s POVSomething was wrong.The realization didn't arrive through a sudden sound or a visual cue; it arrived through a void. It was the crushing weight of absence. The corridor leading to her private chambers was too still, the air unnervingly stagnant, as if the very atmosphere had been hollowed out.I didn't slow my pace as I reached her door. I didn't knock. I simply shouldered it open.Empty.My mind stalled, momentarily refusing to process the vacant space. She was supposed to be here. I swept the room with a clinical gaze. There were no signs of a struggle. No overturned furniture, no scuff marks on the stone, no evidence of an intrusion.That was infinitely worse. It meant she hadn’t been taken by force. She had walked out on her own."Where is she?"The words were a serrated blade as I turned toward the guard at the threshold. He snapped to attention, a flicker of raw dread crossing his features."My King, she—""Don’t hesitate," I snarled."She didn’t pass through the
Alara’s POVI kept the secret buried. I didn't tell Xavier. I didn't tell Ronan or Rylan. I knew them too well. I knew the protective, tactical walls they would build around me the moment they realized what was happening. They would stop me before I could find out what lay at the end of the thread.The connection hadn't faded after that initial strike. It remained a living thing, steady and expectant, like a path that had already been carved through the wilderness, simply waiting for my footprint to claim it.I stood in the center of my chambers, the silence of the room pressing against my skin. The wards that had been placed on the twins hummed faintly in the back of my mind — a distant, comforting warmth. They were safe. If they weren’t, I wouldn't be doing this. That was the only anchor that allowed me to even consider stepping into the void.“I am in control,” I whispered the mantra again and again to myself. I closed my eyes and leaned into the pull.The connection didn't just
Ronan's POVIt hit without any warnings.It was a sudden, jagged surge of energy that snapped through the center of my being as if something massive had reached out from the darkness and grabbed hold of my very soul from the other side of the world.I gasped, the sound catching painfully in my throat as my knees buckled. I barely managed to slam my hand down on the edge of the heavy oak table to brace myself. The familiar stone walls of my chambers blurred into streaks of gray and shadow. The air in the room changed instantly. It felt wrong — unnaturally thick, yet devoid of the oxygen I needed to fill my lungs. Everything had paused, except for the invisible hand that was currently reaching through the fabric of reality to find me.The sensation pulsed again like a command. It was stronger than anything I had felt before. And this time, it wasn't just a vague sense of "him" out there in the world. It was directed.My breathing slowed, my body instinctively attempting to find its ce
Alara’s POVSeven days.Seven days since the night the palace had erupted into chaos.Seven days since the beds of my children had been found empty.Seven days since the hunt had begun.And still… there was no sign of them.The war room smelled like exhaustion.Maps covered the long oak table in ov
Xavier’s POVPeace was louder than war. That had been the strangest discovery of the past year.War had been chaos — noise, blood, decisions made in seconds. It filled every waking moment with purpose. There had always been something to fight, something to fix, something to survive.Peace, however,
Xavier’s POVThe next wave of council warriors did not wait for dawn. It came before it.The second assault began in darkness so complete it felt deliberate, as if even the sky refused to be a witness.Scouts had barely returned from their rotation when the northern wards detonated in a cascade of
Alara’s POVThere is a stillness that follows near-catastrophe, not peace, but suspension.The battlefield had been cleared. The wounded stabilized. The red moon faded back into silver memory. But Xavier…Xavier had fainted right after the chaos had slipped into calm and he refused to wake up.They







