INICIAR SESIÓNLENA'S POVTonight, the compound looked less like a military staging ground and more like a wasteland carnival.Everyone was drinking. Everyone was laughing a little too loud and smiling a little too wide. It was a desperate, feverish kind of joy. We all knew the truth, even if no one was brave enough to say it out loud: tomorrow, the world could end. Tomorrow, the blood would start flowing.But tonight? we pretended we were immortal."You're been brooding, Lena. It's ruining the vibe."I turned my head, the heat of the bonfire washing over the left side of my face. Jax was standing there, with a half-empty bottle of amber liquid dangling loosely from two fingers. He wasn't wearing his tactical gear for once. Just a faded black Henley with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing the intricate ink sprawling up his forearms."I don't brood," I said, though my voice lacked any real bite. "I'm just observing.""Right. Semantics." Jax took a slow swig from the bottle, his dark eye
JAX'S POVThe energy on the training grounds had completely changed over the last twenty-four hours, and I hated every single second of it.Ever since that mysterious old man vanished from the throne room into the morning fog, Lena’s presence had taken on a heavy, suffocating weight. It wasn't just something you could see; it was an invisible wave hitting the basic instincts of every single wolf in the estate. The pack dynamics were fracturing right before my eyes.The female warriors were becoming openly hostile. Whenever Lena walked past the weapon racks, they would stop what they were doing, tracking her with hard, glaring eyes, their lips peeling back over their teeth in low, bitter growls. To them, she was a threat to their hierarchy. But the reaction from the male wolves was what really made my blood boil. They were acting strangely protective, stepping too close into her personal space during drills, drawn to her like she was some kind of magnetic force they couldn't figh
LENA'S POVI couldn’t take my eyes off the man who had just stepped out from the shadow of the throne. He wasn't the monster I expected and as the seconds ticked by, the heavy feeling of danger in the room began to break.He didn't look like an enemy. He looked like someone who had survived a war that everyone else forgot."You're looking for monsters in the dark, Lena," the stranger said in a rough. "But you're looking in the wrong direction."Jax shifted balance onto the other foot. His jaw was hard, completely ready to fight. "Step back," Jax warned amidst a growl. "Tell us who you are before I take your head off."The man didn't even look at Jax. He kept his eyes on me. His gaze was deep, tired, and full of a strange, sad familiarity."She doesn't remember," the stranger murmured with a faint smile. "Of course she doesn't. They did their job well.""Who are you?" My voice was barely a whisper, but it cut through the silence."I am the reason you are still breathing," he said sof
LENA'S POVThe night before the eclipse seemed odd in a way I couldn’t explain. The entire night was muted as if the world was holding its breath too long and forgetting how to exhale.The estate had turned into a fortress overnight. Barricades were reinforced, patrol routes doubled, sentries were posted at every blind corner. Even the air felt heavier, like the walls themselves were bracing for impact.Jax didn’t leave my side for once. He stood behind me as I walked the upper corridors, his presence close enough that I could feel him before I saw him.“Your guards are nervous,” I said without turning.“They should be,” he replied.I glanced back at him. “That doesn’t help me feel better.”His jaw tightened slightly. “It’s not meant to.”That was the problem with Jax lately. He wasn’t lying to make things easier anymore. He was telling the truth like it was a weapon. We stopped at the central balcony overlooking the lower courtyards. Warriors moved like shadows below us. Everythi
DANTE'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
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,
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 th
DANTE'S POVThe quiet inside the Alpha’s private study was always heavy, but tonight it felt downright suffocating. I was behind the massive mahogany desk, the glowing screen of my terminal casting sharp, blue angles across the walls. The pack house was still reeling from the Kingshade invasion,
LENA'S POV"No more," I said, my voice shaking but loud enough to pierce the heavy quiet of the safe house. I was in the center of the room, my fists clenched so tightly my nails bit into my palms. "No more illusions and no more cryptic warnings. If you’re going to haunt me, if you’re going to fo







