HARLEYThe morning came slowly, dragging its gray light across the sky like paint on a faded canvas.I hadn’t slept.Not because of nightmares—but because I was afraid of what might happen if I dreamed.Ever since that night in the woods… since the wolf in the mist… the air around me had changed. I felt it in the way the shadows stretched just a little farther around my footsteps. In the way wind would sometimes curl toward my ear like it was whispering secrets.Magic.It lived beneath my skin now.And it didn’t like being ignored.I stood barefoot in the kitchen, watching the kettle hum. Steam twisted up into the air in soft, haunting spirals. My fingers tingled, that now-familiar ache pulsing at my palms. The warmth was back—gentle, coaxing. Like it was calling me to open the door I’d only just begun to crack.I pressed a hand against the wooden table.“Show me,” I whispered.At first, nothing.Then—softly—a tremor beneath the grain.It was small. Delicate. The wood groaned as if si
CONNORThe war room was quiet.It wasn’t really a war room, of course. Just Jasper’s office in the back of the house—walls lined with old maps, dusty books, half-used notebooks and mismatched weapons propped in corners like forgotten relics.But tonight, it felt like a war room.Because war was coming.I stood with my arms folded, leaning against the far wall, eyes fixed on the map laid across the table. It had once belonged to our father. He used to trace the old pack lines with a silver pen, mumbling about honor and blood and balance, long before we understood what any of it really meant.Now those lines were nothing but scars.“Roy’s on the move,” Kade muttered, dragging a marker across the edge of the territory. “Baron’s wolves were spotted near the ridge line.”“Rogues don’t travel in groups unless they’re led,” Jasper added. “They’re organizing. That’s not instinct. That’s Roy.”Shane stood at the head of the table, his jaw locked, eyes unreadable. He hadn’t said much. He didn’t
HARLEYThe house was too quiet.Not the peaceful kind of quiet. Not the comfortable silence that came after a long day, wrapped in blankets and breathing in sync with someone beside you.No—this quiet hummed. It watched.Like the walls were holding their breath.I sat cross-legged on the rug in Shane’s room, his hoodie swallowed around me, my bare feet pressed into the fabric as I stared at my hands.They looked the same.Soft, pale. No scars. No glowing marks. No runes carved into my palms like in those old witch stories.But I could feel it now.Something pulsing beneath the skin.Something awake.It hadn’t stopped since the library. Ever since Shane shifted and saved me—no, since before that. Since I heard his voice in my head. Since I knew I wasn’t just falling for him…I was becoming something else.He’d gone downstairs to speak with the others—Kade, Jasper, Connor. I could hear their voices faintly through the floorboards, low and tense. Planning. Preparing.They didn’t think I c
ROYThe wind was sharp tonight.Cold, biting—like a warning carved into the air itself.But warnings didn’t move me.Not anymore.I stood atop the cliff at the edge of no-man’s-land, overlooking the valley where borders blurred. Behind me, the moon bled silver over barren trees. Below, the old ruins still whispered of power lost and blood spilled. These lands didn’t belong to any one pack now. They were cursed. Forgotten.Perfect for gathering wolves who had no home left to lose.The rogues.I tightened the leather strap around my wrist and watched as one by one, they emerged from the shadows. Feral eyes. Snarling mouths. Some limping from old battles, others practically dripping with rage.Broken things.But even broken things have their uses—if you know how to hold the leash.And I did.The largest of them stepped forward first—Baron. Half his face was scarred beyond recognition, and his left eye glowed white with blindness. But the other eye—sharp. Calculating.“You called,” he gro
JULIETThere are some things you grow up knowing—without question, without reason, just as a quiet certainty.Like the fact that the sky is blue. That fire burns. That monsters don’t exist.At least… they’re not supposed to.I’d always believed I was in control. That with the right words, the right look, the right amount of venom behind a smile, I could own any room I walked into. I could twist people around my finger. Make them feel small or invisible with a glance.But nothing prepares you for the moment when you realize you’ve been walking into a room filled with predators—and you were never the one in control.Just prey with a good poker face.I sat alone in my room, curled up against the window seat, knees pulled to my chest. Outside, the sky was beginning to bruise with twilight. That deep, slow fade of color before night swallowed the world whole. My reflection in the glass looked paler than I remembered. More hollow.I used to think power meant being the one people feared.Now
JULIETI hadn’t slept.Not really.I’d laid in bed for hours, eyes fixed on the ceiling, listening to the ticking of the antique clock across the room. It used to be soothing. Tonight, it just sounded like time running out.Everything had happened so fast.The fire. The panic. Harley screaming. Shane shifting in front of half the damn school.I should’ve felt triumphant.I should’ve felt satisfied.I’d helped Roy execute the perfect plan. And it had worked. Shane’s little secret was no longer a secret. Harley had to be reeling. The pack would be on edge. The town would be buzzing. Fear. Confusion. Hysteria. Everything Roy wanted.And I’d helped make it happen.So why couldn’t I breathe?The darkness of my room pressed in around me like smoke. I turned on my side, clutching my pillow, and stared at the soft light slipping through the blinds.I hated this house. I hated the peeling wallpaper in the hallway. The creaky stairs. The way my father barely looked up from his coffee each morni