MasukDANTE'S POVOpened across three screens in my office were Diana’s corrupted file. The data had taken me days to decode.At first it looked like nonsense, but Diana never left nonsense behind, she only left traps, and instructions disguised as chaos.I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temples.“Talk to me, Diana,” I muttered under my breath.As if she could answer, as if the dead ever did.The file finally stabilized after I ran the last decryption layer, and everything clicked into place at once.My eyes moved slowly across the screen, tracking shell companies, hidden subsidiaries, and internal Blackthorn travel records that should never have existed in the same dataset. Yet there they were, interlinked and entirely deliberate. My stomach tightened. This wasn't random data corruption. This was mapping. Someone hadn't been attacking Blackthorn from the outside; they had been building a network from within, guiding the blade from the inside out.Standing up, I walked over to t
LENA'S POVI never expected to be the one demanding peace, especially not after all the blood, the lies, and the graves. Yet, three days after the Hunter's warning, I was standing in the war room and staring at maps covered in red markers.None of those markers belonged to Blackthorn, and none belonged to Kingshade.Instead, they belonged to something worse: the hunter syndicates.For years, these hunters had hidden in the shadows, making money from conflicts between wolf territories. While Blackthorn and Kingshade destroyed each other, the syndicates grew stronger. Now, they were moving openly. Entire settlements had vanished, scouting teams were disappearing, and supply routes were under attack. The reports arriving every hour painted the same picture. They were not preparing for small raids; they were preparing for a war against everyone.Dante was sitting across the table with his arms folded while Jax remained beside me, silently. The familiar warmth of his presence stead
CALLUM REYES POV The fortress of Kingshade had survived three wars, multiple famines, blood feuds, and Alpha rebellions. I told everyone who would listen that it would survive whatever was coming next. But the truth was far less comforting. While standing on the highest balcony of the keep, I watched hundreds of warriors training below. Preparations were accelerating because war was already coming. The distinction mattered. Blackthorn thought they were preparing for a standard invasion, but they were wrong. They were preparing for an awakening. And those were two entirely different beasts. I closed my eyes, tightening my fingers against the stone railing. Even now, after all this time, the memory of Diana remained entirely intact. It wasn't fading or weakening; it was just waiting, like an old wound that never truly healed. Most people believed Diana Blackwell had been the great mistake of my life. They were wrong. She had been my greatest joy and my greatest terror. The
JAX POVThe morning after felt worse than the battle.I'd been stabbed before, shot, nearly torn apart by rogues but none of that compared to walking through my own territory and feeling the doubt in people's eyes.The moment I stepped into the main courtyard, every conversation stopped. Not all of them though but just enough. A group of warriors standing near the training grounds fell silent as I passed them, one of them looked away immediately when my face fell on him. Another held my gaze a little too long. The message they passed was was clear.They were wondering about the same question that was spreading through Blackthorn like a disease.Was I still Jax? Or had Lena already changed me?I kept walking with my jaw clenched. My wolf hated it but i tried to ignore them along with their reactions. A part of me understood why they were questioning me. The entire territory had watched wolves kneel before Lena, all through pure instinct not even through force. They had seen her
LENA'S POV I stopped counting the days after the third sunrise because the tower had become my prison. It was my choice but still my punishment. It was the highest room now in Blackthorn and I could overlook the entire territory. From the narrow windows, I could see forests stretching for miles, I could see mountains rising beyond them, and the distant walls of the estate below. Being able to see all of this freely should have felt like freedom to me but it didn't, instead, it felt like I was being put in a cage. Because every hour I spent alone gave me more time to think, and more time to remember what the Hunter had told me. It gave me more time to remember the wolves kneeling, more time to remember the silver eyes staring back at me from the mirror. I wasn't afraid for myself anymore, I was afraid of what I could do to everyone else, especially Jax. The books scattered across the room offered no comfort, neither did the old journals Dante had sent me, every story always en
DANTE'S POV I was at the head of the table with my hands resting flat on the polished wood. I didn't sit. Sitting gave the illusion of comfort, and there was absolutely no comfort to be found in this room anymore. One of them was a ghost. One of them was the shadow billionaire who had funded the slaughter of our youth, balancing the scales of our misery to line their own pockets. I scanned their faces slowly, letting the silence stretch until the younger elders began to shift in their seats. On my left sat Elder Thomas, his old hands trembling slightly as he adjusted his spectacles. Next to him was Elder Victoria, her expression was a mask of cold stone, her fingers tapped a rhythmic, irritating beat against her teacup. Across from them were the others, men and women who had run the logistics, the finances, and the food supplies of Blackthorn for decades. I had trusted them. I had buried friends alongside them. Now, every smile they gave me felt like a blade waiting for
DANTE’S POVThe photograph was older than it looked. While the edges had faded badly with time and the paper carried significant water damage near one corner, the faces remained clear enough for someone to recognize but one of those faces should not have been there.I stared at Vivianne silently f
LENA’S POV“I am not taking four guards to school.” I snapped at Jax whose men who already hopping on their bikes. “You are taking six.”I stared at Jax across the breakfast table in complete disbelief. “You cannot be serious.”“I am very serious.”Dante looked up from his coffee calmly. “Personal
JAX’S POVSomeone had entered Lena’s room inside Blackthorn estate.This was the most heavily secured property in the city and somehow no cameras caught it.No guards saw anything and no alarms was triggered which could only mean one thing.Someone inside the estate was helping them.That realizati
LENA’S POV The estate became unbearably quiet after the argument. Silence that sat heavily in the air every time Jax entered a room and every glance between us felt sharp now, controlled and careful. And somehow that hurt worse than the shouting. Three days had passed since the Kingshade sy







