MasukThe dawn after the attack revealed a strange and chilling tableau.
The Ardian camp was in ruins—tents slashed, supply wagons overturned, smoldering fires scattered like fallen stars. The air was thick with moans of pain, the clatter of panicked salvage, and a pervasive, humiliated silence. But as the sergeants took stock, a baffling report filtered up to the remaining officers.No one was dead.Dozens were injured—bones broken, deep gashes from claws that seemed deliberately placed to maim rather than eviscerate, concussions from brutal blows. But not a single throat had been torn out. Not a single body was left to cool in the dawn. The wolves had moved with surgical, terrifying precision, neutralizing the army’s strength and spirit without taking a life. It was not an assault; it was a demonstration. A message written in pain and fear.The message itself was found nailed to the splintered post of Kael Rennar’s command tent. It was written on cured hide in a stark, cThe rattle of the key in the ancient lock was the only sound in the cold cell. Elira worked with an efficient, detached precision. The manacles sprang open, first one heavy wrist, then the other. Kael’s arms fell to his sides, the muscles trembling with weakness and released tension.She did not look at his face. Instead, she turned to a small bundle she had brought with her, untying it to reveal fresh clothes—his own, from his campaign chest: a clean linen shirt, a woolen tunic, trousers. The familiarity of the garments in this place felt like a surreal kindness.“Here,” she said, her voice devoid of inflection. She held out the shirt.Kael took it, his movements stiff. Every bruise protested as he pulled the fabric over his head. He fumbled with the buttons, his fingers nu
The single word hung in the torch-lit cavern, a fragile thread connecting two shattered lifetimes.“Mother? You mean… you are my daughter? Eli…ra?”The alpha’s voice, moments ago a instrument of command, was now raw, trembling with a hope so long buried it sounded like pain.Elira could only nod, her golden eyes wide, the bond’s fierce clarity momentarily blurred by a tidal wave of primal, human recognition.The alpha—her mother—turned sharply to the assembled pack.“Leave us.” Her voice regained a shred of its authority, though it still shook.
The summons was not a request. Royal guards, their faces stern, arrived at Malven’s estate at first light. Their presence was a cold splash of reality against the isolated world Elira and Thane had built. The bond hummed with Thane’s instinctual distrust, a low growl in the back of her mind, but she placed a steadying hand on his arm.“It’s the King,” she said, her voice devoid of the fear or anxiety the moment should have held. “It’s about the debt.”They were escorted to the palace not as honored guests, but as assets. The King received them not in the throne room, but in a private solar, the weight of the kingdom’s fear and his own guilt etched deeply into his face. He dismissed everyone but them and two silent guards at the far door.“Duchess,” the King began, his gaze lingering on the faint, golden light he could now perceive in her eyes—the mark of the bond she made no effort to hide. “You know why you are here. Kael is alive, but his time runs out. The nobles clamor for blood,
The dawn after the attack revealed a strange and chilling tableau.The Ardian camp was in ruins—tents slashed, supply wagons overturned, smoldering fires scattered like fallen stars. The air was thick with moans of pain, the clatter of panicked salvage, and a pervasive, humiliated silence. But as the sergeants took stock, a baffling report filtered up to the remaining officers.No one was dead.Dozens were injured—bones broken, deep gashes from claws that seemed deliberately placed to maim rather than eviscerate, concussions from brutal blows. But not a single throat had been torn out. Not a single body was left to cool in the dawn. The wolves had moved with surgical, terrifying precision, neutralizing the army’s strength and spirit without taking a life. It was not an assault; it was a demonstration. A message written in pain and fear.The message itself was found nailed to the splintered post of Kael Rennar’s command tent. It was written on cured hide in a stark, c
The Howling Crags were not a battlefield. They were a meat grinder.The Volgarians had not been idle. They’d learned from their defeat at the capital. No longer just sabers and stubborn fury, they came with industry. Their front lines advanced behind clanking, wheeled shields of iron. Their guns were not the long, elegant rifles of Ardian marksmen, but shorter, brutal things that spat clouds of shrapnel. And from their rear lines, with a terrifying whoomp, came the high-arcing fire—iron spheres launched from catapult-like tubes on carts, packed with gunpowder and scrap that rained down in devastating, indiscriminate bursts. (Think naval mortar bombardments, but on land.)But Kael Rennar had not led an army of the past.The Ardian forces, dug into the scree and rock of th
Dawn at Malven’s estate was a grey, quiet affair. Elira stood at her window, watching the mist cling to the skeletal trees. The bond was a low, warm hum in her chest, Thane’s sleeping presence in the next room a steady anchor. The world was simple now. Clear.A knock at her chamber door broke the stillness.Finn entered, his expression unreadable. In his hands, he carried a simple, unvarnished wooden box. It was jarringly familiar. The sight of it sent a discordant jolt through her—a relic from her life before, from the study in Rennar Manor where she’d once gone hunting for ghosts. She’d found this box, assumed it held the secret love letters from Princess Ilyana, the royal childhood friend and rumored lover Kael was never supposed to have. She had left it unopened, a testament to a pain she thought she







