Mag-log inBLOOD ON THE BOUNDARYThe first scream came just before dawn.Lucius was already awake when the second one hit.He was moving before the alarm bell even started ringing."North boundary!" someone shouted.He grabbed his weapon and ran.Daria was right behind him.They got to the forest and found six warriors standing around what was left of the boundary ward.Which wasn't much.The protective markings carved into the trees had been ripped apart. Blood everywhere. One guard was slumped against a tree, out cold. Another one was just... gone.Lucius crouched down and touched the blood-soaked dirt."This isn't wolf blood."Daria knelt next to him. "No."She pressed two fingers to the ground.Her eyes changed instantly.Lucius grabbed her wrist. "Daria."She didn't answer.The forest disappeared.Six warriors. Then seven. A figure moving between them. A flash of silver. Someone screaming.Then a door. Black stone. Covered in blood.And behind it…Harriet.Daria gasped and yanked herself ba
DARIA'S FIRST WARNINGDaria then stopped hiding her visions.There wasn't any point anymore.The first time she told the council she could sense danger before it happened, they dismissed it as instinct.The second time, they listened.The third time, she saved six wolves from walking straight into an ambush.After that, nobody questioned her.She stood over the map in the strategy room."The attack isn't coming from the east."Garrick frowned. "All our intelligence points east.""I know.""Then why are you saying otherwise?"She put her finger on the northern boundary."Because that's where they want us looking."Lucius studied the map. "You think the eastern activity is a distraction.""Yes.""Where will they strike?"Daria closed her eyes.The sensation came again. Cold. Darkness. A heartbeat underneath the earth."Here."She pointed."The old quarry."Lucius ordered a patrol immediately.Two hours later, they came back with news.Someone had been there. Fresh tracks. Blood. And a
WHISPERS IN THE DARKSilas suddenly woke up screaming.Lira was beside him before his eyes were even open."Silas!"He couldn't breathe. Couldn't get his lungs to work right.Riley ran into the room. "What's happening?"Silas just gripped the sheets so hard his knuckles turned white."The door."Lira frowned. "What door?""The one underneath the mountain."Riley and Lira exchanged a confused look. Silas had been having visions for weeks, but this one had him shaken in a way they hadn't seen before."There was a chamber," he whispered."Rylan?"Silas nodded."He was there."Lira sat down beside him. "What was he doing?""Talking to someone.""Who?"Silas closed his eyes. "I couldn't see."His voice dropped to almost nothing."But I heard the voice."Riley leaned closer. "What did it say?"Silas looked at him."It called Rylan a servant."Nobody spoke.Lira's face tightened. "A servant of what?"Silas shook his head. "I don't know."His breathing went uneven again."Something old."Dari
THE WEIGHT OF WHAT BEGINSThe pack had never been this quiet.Not the good kind of quiet, the kind that settles in after everyone's eaten and the fires are burning low. This was different. This was the quiet of people holding their breath. Of wolves who learnt to stop talking mid-sentence when someone walked into a room. It lived in the hallways now. Sat down with them at dinner. Followed them everywhere.Harriet was gone.And everyone knew exactly why.She left because staying meant putting them in danger. Because Rylan knew too much. Because the Shadowborn was too close. Because sometimes the only way to love people is to walk the hell away from them.Lucius stood alone in the Alpha's chamber, staring at the empty chair across from his desk.Harriet used to sit there.Not often. But enough.He could still hear her arguing with him about patrol routes, speaking when everyone else was too scared to open their mouths. She always had this way of looking at him like he wasn't the Alpha a
The Door in the HillsWe left before dawn.Cora moved faster than a woman her age had any right to. She walked ahead of me up the path with a lantern in one hand and a staff in the other, and she did not stumble, slow or speak. The hills rose around us as the light came up grey and cold, and by the time the sun had cleared the ridge we had left the village far behind and were walking into country that did not look like any country I had ever seen.The trees grew wrong here. Too close together, too tall, their branches twisted into shapes that my ordinary eyes could not quite follow. The ground was soft underfoot in a way that had nothing to do with rain. The air was still. Not quiet, still. The way a room is still when someone has just stopped talking."You feel it," Cora said. It was the first thing she had said in an hour."I feel something," I said."You feel it because you are still of the line, even without the gift. The line does not leave you when the gift does. It only goes qu
The Woman in the LettersI learnt that her name was Cora.I found it in the fourth letter, buried in the middle of a paragraph about the harvest and the price of wool, my grandfather had a habit of writing around the thing he meant, circling it like a man afraid to land. Cora says the signs are clearer this year. Cora says we have perhaps a decade. Cora says the child must be told before she is grown, or it will be too late.The child. Me. I had been six years old when he wrote that letter. Six years old and already the subject of a countdown I had never known was running.I read all of them that night. Every letter in the drawer, every circling paragraph, every warning my grandfather had never spoken aloud. By the time the sun came up I knew three things:My grandfather had not been the only one who knew about the covenant.Cora had known more than he did.And Cora was very much still alive.She lived in a village three days' ride east, past the river, past the hills, in a place so s
The Secret FriendDaria's POVThe warrior, masked, remained motionless, one erroneous motion on his side and I would attack.I kept my blade low but ready. "Speak," I said. "Slowly."He nodded. "My name is Kael," he said. I vowed to Lucius much earlier than Rylan came to power.Harriet shifted behi
A Daughter AwakeningDaria's POVHarriet screamed.Not a cry. Not a whimper.The scream with which, like lightning tearing the sky open, it broke into the forest.I threw the bunch of herbs to my fingers and magic shot out of her like lightning flashing in the eyes. A flash of blue and silver broke
The Vote of BetrayalDaria’s POVI hid myself as the council re-converged, and my heart seemed to be beating out of my chest. I was so afraid of being detected. Fear and doubt were heavy in the air in the pack square. Torches wrought their lengthening shadows, which wound and turned across the ston
Too Close to the TruthDaria's POV I crept back into the shadow, the moment Lucius turned, and my heart beat so fast that I could feel it aching in my ribs. I hissed a curse to myself. I had gone far, far too far, too fast, and my gut already began betraying me. I got my back against the coarse







