Aria’s chest heaved, sweat clinging to her skin as though she had run for miles. The phantom image of Kael’s blood on her hands wouldn’t wash away. Even as she rubbed her palms hard against her blanket, she still felt it, warm, sticky, damning.Her breath came uneven, her throat raw with unshed screams. She pressed her fist against her mouth, but it didn’t muffle the sob that ripped free.She had killed him.Not in reality, but the dream had been so vivid, so searing, that her body shook with the echo of it. The weight of the sword. The look in his eyes, not anger, not resistance, but a quiet surrender that tore her heart in two.Acceptance.Her bond pulsed violently in her chest, an echo of Kael even though he wasn’t beside her. She clutched it like a lifeline, desperate for the steady thunder of his heartbeat to prove she hadn’t truly destroyed him.But the fire within her didn’t calm. It burned hotter, wilder, as though the dream had stoked it into a frenzy.She staggered out of th
The night stretched long after Kael disappeared into the shadows, leaving Aria standing by the fire with her chest aching and her skin still burning where he had touched her. She wanted to scream, to shake him, to force the truth out of him, but the look in his eyes when he had said Not tonight clung to her.It wasn’t just avoidance. It was fear.Fear, from a man who had faced countless battles without blinking. Fear, from the wolf who had dragged her into this wild camp and bent her fate to his will.That terrified her more than the silence.By dawn, her decision was made. She wouldn’t wait for him to break. She would pry the truth from his chest, even if it left both of them bleeding.The camp woke heavy, the tension like a storm cloud pressing low against every tent. Rogues moved with clipped voices and sharper tempers. Aria could feel it in the air: something was unraveling. The whispers from the night before had spread like fire through dry grass. She caught fragments as she walk
Aria’s heart pounded so hard she thought the entire camp might hear it. The fire crackled between them, shadows moving across Kael’s face, painting him in light and darkness all at once. His hands were steady as he carved, but there was a tremor in the air, in the space between his body and hers, a pulse of grief so thick it made her throat tighten.Her name.On his blade.She didn’t even realize she’d stepped forward until the dry twigs beneath her boot snapped. Kael’s head lifted at once, sharp, predatory, his eyes gleaming gold in the firelight as his instincts flared. Then he stilled. He knew it was her before his lips even shaped her name.“Aria.” His voice was low, rough, as though he’d been caught in something forbidden.She didn’t answer at first. Her gaze dropped to the sword in his lap, to the letters carved so deep they would never fade. Her name marked into steel like a scar.“Why?” The word slipped out before she could stop it, brittle and breathless.Kael shifted, coveri
Kael didn’t sleep. He didn’t even try.When he returned to camp after that meeting in the forest, the night clung to him like a second skin. The torches were still burning low, the rogues curled in restless sleep, but Kael couldn’t close his eyes. Not after what Thalos had said. Not after the weight of prophecy had settled like iron in his chest.He sat on the stone ledge just outside his tent, his sword across his lap, the edge of the blade catching faint light. His thumb traced along the steel, slow, deliberate, as if the familiar motion might quiet the storm tearing through him. But it didn’t. Nothing could.Because Thalos hadn’t come only to taunt. He had come to deliver a truth Kael didn’t want.She is the balance, the seer had said, his voice echoing like something carved in bone. And balance demands sacrifice. For her fire to rise, yours must fall. The Silverborn does not walk alongside her alpha, she survives because he does not.Kael’s hands had clenched so tightly on his swo
The moment Thalos spoke Kael’s name, the night seemed to fold inward.The rogues who lingered at the edges of the fire stiffened, their eyes darting between Kael and the shadowed figure. Few dared to breathe. Even fewer dared to speak. They knew the name, even if most had never seen the man in flesh. Thalos. A whisper more than a presence. A ghost woven through the rogue networks like smoke through trees.Kael’s jaw clenched. He didn’t answer immediately, and Aria could see the war waging in his eyes. His instinct screamed to shield, to guard, to fight. But his logic… the sharp, ruthless logic that had kept them alive this long, demanded something else.Thalos’ gaze flicked toward her once more, lingering just a fraction too long. It wasn’t hungry, not the way some men’s eyes could be, but it was sharp. Assessing. As if she were something to be measured, weighed, and tucked into his endless ledger of debts and dangers.Kael shifted, blocking her from that stare with the broad line of
The camp reeked of ash.Smoke still curled through the night air, clinging to hair, to skin, to lungs. The fire Aria had unleashed hadn’t just scarred the trees, it had scarred the people too. Rogues moved in silence, their faces drawn tight, their gazes darting toward her with something sharp, something she couldn’t quite name. Fear. Awe. Maybe both.Aria sat on a rough-hewn log near the center fire, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her fingers still trembling. Every time she blinked, she saw the flames all over again, consuming everything, alive and furious, answering her command as if it had been waiting for her.Her wolf stirred uneasily under her skin. The bond between them felt thinner, stretched too far, as though the fire itself had claimed a piece of her spirit. Her body wasn’t her own anymore. Her hands weren’t her own.The Silverborn lives.The whisper echoed through her mind until she wanted to claw at her skull to silence it.Across the fire, Kael paced like a sto