Chapter 36 – The Edge of the North

The northern border was too still.

Not just silence but stillness.

Silence meant peace. Stillness meant something was waiting.

Damien could feel it crawling beneath his skin as his patrol advanced through the frost-thick undergrowth. The air was damp with the scent of iron and pine sap, the kind of cold that bit deep into fur and bone.

Six wolves moved in formation behind him, their boots sinking into the half-frozen ground. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Their alpha’s tension was enough to tell them this was no ordinary sweep.

“Movement?” he asked, voice low.

Kade, his beta, crouched and pressed a palm to the dirt. “Nothing yet. But the air’s wrong. Smells like burnt stone.”

Damien’s jaw tensed. He stepped past him, crouched, and brushed the soil with his fingers. The ash smeared cold against his skin, and beneath it, carved into the earth, was a fain