•• Damien’s POV •••
The border winds howled like restless wolves—sharp, unforgiving, hungry.
I stood at the southern line, boots pressed into cracked stone, eyes fixed on the distant haze where Martin’s troops lingered just beyond scent range. The Infernal Shadows warriors formed two tiers around me, fully armored and deadly still, waiting for my next command.
“Report,” I snapped, my voice cutting through the air like a blade.
Noah stepped forward, tablet in hand, wind whipping his jacket. “East flank’s holding. But they’re trying to push through the lower ridge. Scouts found claw marks and broken bramble near the Ravine Path. Classic Martin move—using terrain to thin our numbers.”
I nodded once. “He’s testing us. Not attacking—yet. Coward wants to stretch us thin first.”
“Hold position,” I comm
•• Victoria’s POV •••Silence had teeth in this place. It gnawed at the edges of my sanity, scraping away time until I no longer knew how long I’d been here.Minutes? Hours? Days?Time passed in the crawl of dripping water and flickering light.I’d stopped counting the seconds between drops. They no longer calmed me—they agitated me. Time was pressed down like a weight here. Time, in this place, was cruel.The damp cloth I’d clawed toward my knees lay half-wrapped beneath me now. Useless in its current state. But I couldn’t discard it.Hope came in scraps, and I clung to mine as if it were the last stitch holding me together.My wrists throbbed—bloodless, cold, stiff with dried sweat and skin rubbed raw. Rope bit in deeper with every shift, but I had to keep testing. Had to keep trying. I wasn’t going to get out today, I knew that. But I would learn every knot by feel. Every fray. Every weakness.My mind sharpened on that.One goal and plan.No matter how long it took.Lya stirred aga
•• Victoria’s POV •••The door creaked open.The sound was soft, but in the dead silence of the room, it rang out like a blade scraping over stone.I didn’t move.Not even a twitch.Not as the hinges groaned and the air shifted, carrying the scent of fear in with it. The same submissive scent from before—muted, shaking. The Omega stepped inside.I heard her pause. The muffled shuffling of boots against the floor. A sharp inhale.She was scared.Good.That meant she wasn’t here to hurt me.Not yet.My body screamed at me to shift, to look, to do something—but I remained limp on the floor, every muscle burning with restraint. I listened instead.“I… I brought food,” the Omega murmured, barely above a whisper. “He said you might wake soon.”She set something down. A soft clatter of metal on metal. A tray?The scent of stale bread and thin broth reached my nose. My stomach growled on instinct, but I didn’t flinch. Hunger was nothing compared to what I needed: a chance.The Omega moved clo
•• Victoria’s POV •••"Urghh..."I woke up to my body feeling pain all over.But there was something else... A pain unlike any other.Not the sharp kind that makes you scream, but the slow, coiling kind that wraps itself around your nerves and sinks in deep. My body felt like it had been dipped in ice water and left to freeze from the inside out. Every inch of me ached—my shoulders, my neck, my spine. My head throbbed, pounding against my skull with each beat of my heart.But worse than the pain was the weight.The weight of knowing something had gone terribly wrong.My eyes fluttered open, and I immediately regretted it. A harsh, flickering light blinked overhead, casting shifting shadows on the cracked stone walls. My vision swam for a moment before sharpening just enough to make sense of where I was.I was underground. A basement. In a cell.It smelled o
•• Elijah’s POV •••They thought I was desperate.They thought I was broken.Let them.Let Martin believe I came crawling to him, that I begged for scraps of alliance to regain what I lost. He sees a wounded Alpha trying to survive the new order. But I’m not here to survive.He was a fool.He spoke like a king and planned like a cornered dog, his threats loud but brittle, cracking at the edges. Still, I smiled through every meeting, every toast, every word laced with false camaraderie.Let him believe I was his ally.Let him think I’d help him bring down Damien.But I was not here to survive.I was here to take everything.Martin was just a blunt weapon, useful but stupid. He underestimated everyone, especially Damien. He thought sheer numbers would break the Infernal Shadows Pack. That a few well-timed attacks would topple the Alpha Kin
•• Victoria’s POV •••The early buzz had started just after noon. Whispers on werewolf forums. Mentions in rogue-run marketplaces. Even the Elders’ network was murmuring about the comeback of Eclipse.I leaned back in my chair, eyes scanning the trending alerts Liam sent through Oli’s secure line. Packs from Europe and Asia were already discussing it and analyzing the teaser we had dropped since last night.No logo. No name. Just a dark velvet bottle held in shadowed hands and a tagline written in silver: Reborn under the moonlight.That was all it took.By the time I stood to speak in the conference room, the energy was already shifting.“We won the first strike,” I said to my team, their eyes bright and unwavering. “Now we finish the job. Eterna wants to steal our identity? We’ll drown them in our legacy.”Cheers erupted, brief and s
•• Damien’s POV •••The border winds howled like restless wolves—sharp, unforgiving, hungry.I stood at the southern line, boots pressed into cracked stone, eyes fixed on the distant haze where Martin’s troops lingered just beyond scent range. The Infernal Shadows warriors formed two tiers around me, fully armored and deadly still, waiting for my next command.“Report,” I snapped, my voice cutting through the air like a blade.Noah stepped forward, tablet in hand, wind whipping his jacket. “East flank’s holding. But they’re trying to push through the lower ridge. Scouts found claw marks and broken bramble near the Ravine Path. Classic Martin move—using terrain to thin our numbers.”I nodded once. “He’s testing us. Not attacking—yet. Coward wants to stretch us thin first.”“Hold position,” I comm