LOGINThe Shadow Fang warriors didn't wait for dawn.Damien's command rippled through the ranks like flame through dry brush, silent and devastating."Regroup. Now. We end this before they reach the ravine."Natasha fell into step beside him, her blade still wet, her muscles singing with the remnants of battle. Around them, warriors reformed with brutal efficiency. Gideon took the left flank, Marcus the right, Soren vanished into the shadows to scout ahead.The enemy had broken, but broken wasn't dead.And Torin was still breathing somewhere in that darkness.The forest around them was a graveyard of scattered bodies and groaning wounded. The air hung thick with the copper stench of blood and the wet, earthy smell of churned mud. Somewhere in the trees, an owl had gone silent, as if even the forest itself held its breath.Natasha's boots crunched over broken weapons and trampled undergrowth, her eyes scanning the shadows with the razor focus of a born predator.Damien moved beside her with
The attack came not at dawn, but in the darkest hour before it.Natasha's eyes snapped open, her wolf surging beneath her skin before her conscious mind registered why. The bond screamed, Damien's alarm flooding through her like ice water, sharp and immediate. She was on her feet in an instant, blade in hand, the familiar weight of steel grounding her as her senses stretched into the darkness.They're here.Damien's voice cut through the camp like a blade itself."Shadow Fang! To arms!"The camp erupted.Warriors spilled from tents with weapons drawn, training and instinct overriding sleep-fogged minds. Soren materialized from the tree line, his ghost-like presence suddenly visible only because he chose to be. His hand raised in a sharp signal."Eastern approach," he breathed, barely audible. "Forty, maybe fifty. Moving fast."Torin.The name burned through Natasha's mind. The enemy Beta had struck sooner than expected, gambling on catching them vulnerable in the dark. A bold move. A
The bond had not quieted since dawn.Natasha felt it like a second pulse beneath her ribs—Damien's presence threaded through her veins, stubborn and insistent, refusing to fade even as the hours stretched and the camp settled into its wary routine.She could sense him across the camp without looking, the way his wolf prowled beneath his skin, restless and caged. The sensation coiled low in her belly, a heat that had nothing to do with the training fires burning at the camp's edge.She thrust her blade forward, and Gideon parried with a heavy sweep that sent vibrations shuddering up her arms. The massive warrior barely grunted, his dark eyes steady and focused, but she caught the faint approval there.He came again—faster this time—and she pivoted, letting his momentum carry past her as her edge kissed his ribs in a controlled strike."Better," Gideon rumbled. "Your hips are rotating too early on the second form. Wait for the weight transfer."She nodded, resetting her stance.Sweat tr
The eastern sky had barely begun to lighten when Damien returned.Natasha heard him before she saw him, the crunch of boots on loose gravel, the low murmur of voices as warriors parted to let him through.She turned from the fire, her body tensing instinctively, every ache and exhaustion sharpening into alertness.The bond flared between them, hot and urgent, and her breath caught at the raw intensity pouring through it.Damien emerged from the tree line like something forged in the fires still smoldering on the northern horizon.Blood caked his chest and arms, most of it not his own. A shallow gash across his ribs had already closed, leaving only a pink line against his bronzed skin. His dark hair was matted with sweat and ash, his crystal-blue eyes burning with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.He moved through the camp with the controlled prowl of a predator still in hunting mode, every muscle coiled, every sense alert.Their eyes met across the clearing.The bond pulsed,
The shift ripped through Damien like a storm breaking.One moment he was steel and sinew, sword wet with enemy blood—the next, bone cracked and reformed, flesh rippled and split, and a massive dark wolf surged forward where the Alpha had stood. His fur was black as the forest around them, eyes burning crystal-blue in the firelight. The transformation took less than a heartbeat, and then he was running, claws tearing gouges into the earth as he launched himself into the enemy's crumbling front line.Behind him, the Shadow Fang warriors followed. Forty bodies twisted and reshaped in the smoke-choked darkness, human cries dissolving into savage howls. Wolves of grey and brown and brindle poured through the camp, fangs bared, muscles coiled with lethal intent. The sound of it was primal—snarls and snapping jaws, the wet tear of flesh, the crunch of bone beneath powerful muzzles. The night itself seemed to recoil from the violence.Damien's jaws closed around the arm of a warrior still fum
The forest swallowed them whole.Damien moved at the front of the column, his body cutting through the darkness like a blade itself. Forty warriors followed in his wake, their footfalls muffled by damp earth and years of training. The moon hung low, a pale sickle offering just enough light to see by, not enough to be seen.The bond tugged at his chest—Natasha's presence flaring warm and steady somewhere to his left, already peeling away from the main column with Gideon and Soren at her flanks. He didn't look. He couldn't afford to. If he looked, he'd pull her back. He'd drag her behind him and chain her to his shadow where no blade could reach her.Focus.The ravine opened ahead, its narrow mouth flanked by dense pine. Gideon's advance team had already cleared the forward sentries—two bodies lay crumpled in the underbrush, throats opened in silence. Damien stepped over them without pause."Marcus," he murmured into the dark.A shadow detached from the tree line to his right."Eastern
Natasha’s second morning as Luna of Shadow Fang began not in the training yard but in the council chamber, a stone-walled room heavy with the scent of old parchment and wolf musk. Damien had sent for her before dawn, his messenger’s knock brisk and impersonal. She’d dressed quickly in fitted trouse
Natasha stood frozen for a long moment after Damien’s silhouette disappeared through the velvet curtain. The cold night air clung to her skin, but the heat radiating from her chest—from the bond she refused to name—made her feel feverish. Her wolf, a restless presence she’d always kept tightly leas
Damien’s wolf had been clawing at his ribs for hours, a relentless, snarling pressure that made every polite smile a lie. The moment he’d walked into the ballroom and caught Natasha’s scent—wildflowers and steel—the beast inside him had lunged against its chains. Mate. The word was a drumbeat in hi
The ballroom no longer felt like a celebration.It felt like observation.Natasha moved through it with controlled precision, each step measured, each expression carefully restrained. The emerald gown made her feel exposed in ways armor never had, not because it was revealing, but because it was des







