The summons

Silas’s boot drove into my stomach, and I folded around the pain without a sound. Ten years in this pack had taught me one thing: noise makes it worse.

I hit the training yard dirt on my side, and a puff of dust coated my tongue. Silas stood over me with his sandy hair cropped close to his skull, his small eyes bright with the kind of joy only cruelty could feed.

“Get up, Mercer.” He nudged my ribs with his toe. “Or don’t. You’re better down there. Like the worm you are.”

Two of his friends laughed behind him. I didn’t bother with their names anymore, they came and went, always circling Silas like moons around a rotting planet.

I pushed onto my hands and knees. My stomach screamed where his boot had landed, and my claws punched out without permission, thin black points digging into the packed earth. My eyes burned, and I knew they’d gone wolf-gold. That was all I could manage. No fur. No shift. Just pieces of a monster that never fully came.

Silas crouched and grabbed a fistful of my ash-brown hair, yanking my head back until my throat pulled tight. “Show me your wolf, omega. Oh wait, you don’t have one.”

“Leave him.”

The voice came from the edge of the yard, steady and clean. Archer. I didn’t turn, but I knew that tone like I knew the smell of the medic hut, herbal and sharp.

Silas’s grip tightened for a second. Then he shoved my face into the dirt and stood. “Your healer boyfriend’s here, Mercer. We’re done anyway.”

Their footsteps faded across the packed earth. I stayed on my knees until the shaking stopped, then I spat blood and dirt and pushed myself upright.

---

The medic hut smelled like rosemary and alcohol. Archer sat me on the edge of a narrow cot and tilted my chin up with two warm fingers. His hazel eyes moved over the cut on my lip, the bruise spreading along my jaw, and something in his expression tightened.

“This is the third time in two weeks,” he said quietly. No accusation. Just a fact he hated.

“I heal fast,” I said.

“You don’t heal fast. You just stop noticing the pain.” He pressed a cloth soaked in something cold to my cheek, and I flinched before I could stop myself. His other hand settled on my shoulder, gentle but firm. “Hold still.”

I held still. Archer’s hands were always clean, scrubbed pink even though he spent all day in blood and bandages. He moved the cloth down to my split lip, and his thumb brushed my chin, a touch that lasted a second too long.

My chest pulled tight.

“You shouldn’t have to live like this,” he said, so low I almost missed it.

“And where should I live, Archer? The rogue lands?” I let out a dry sound, not quite a laugh. “At least here I get a cot.”

Archer’s jaw tensed. He took the cloth away and turned to his supply shelves, rolling bandages with quick, angry movements. “You could fight back. You have claws. You have—”

“Claws and eyes,” I cut in. “That’s not a wolf. That’s a bad joke.”

He turned back, holding a roll of linen. His voice dropped. “That’s not what I see.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I looked down at my hands. The claws had retracted, leaving pale crescents at the tips of my fingers. The amber in my eyes had faded too, back to their dull brown.

The door banged open.

A beta guard filled the frame, his uniform dusty from a fast run. “Mercer. Alpha Draven wants you in the council hall. Now.”

Archer stepped forward, placing himself between me and the guard. “He’s injured. Can’t it wait?”

“No.” The guard didn’t even glance at Archer. His eyes stayed on me. “Move.”

I stood up, and Archer shoved the linen roll into my hand as I passed. “Take this. And Caelum,” his voice cracked on my name, his mouth opening and closing around words that wouldn’t come, “just come back.”

I nodded, and I walked out into the early dusk without looking behind me.

---

The council hall was colder than the air outside. Stone walls and high windows let in the last grey light of the day, and the cold climbed up through the soles of my worn boots as I stood in the center of the room.

Kellan Draven sat in the high-backed chair at the head of the table. Silver-blond hair tied at his nape, glacial blue eyes that fixed on me like I was a problem he was trying to solve. To his left sat Elder Voss, gaunt and silent, pale eyes gleaming with something I couldn’t name. Two other council wolves flanked the table. No one offered me a seat.

“You’ve heard about the rogue attacks,” Kellan said. Not a question.

I swallowed. “Some. Rumors.”

“Five enforcers dead in fourteen days. The rogue’s name is Bastian Crowne. He moves alone, hits our border patrols, and disappears before we can organize a pursuit.” Kellan’s voice was a blade wrapped in silk, precise and calm and utterly without warmth. “Our trackers can’t find his den. He’s gathering other outcasts, and if we don’t stop him, we’re looking at a coordinated assault before the first snow.”

I waited. My stomach was a cold knot, but I kept my face blank. Being called here meant I was part of something, and in Silver Hollow, nothing was always safer than something.

“Why am I here?” I asked.

Kellan leaned back in his chair. “We have a special assignment. One that requires an omega’s biology.”

My skin went tight across my shoulders. “What kind of assignment?”

“You’ll report to the medic tent at dawn,” he said, like I hadn’t spoken at all. “You’ll be prepared for the mission there.”

“Prepared how?” The knot in my stomach pulled harder, cold and sharp. “What mission?”

Kellan’s eyes didn’t blink. “You’ll be told when you need to know.”

I felt the words like a door slamming shut. The council members watched me, and Voss’s thin mouth curved into something that wasn’t a smile.

“That’s all,” Kellan said. “You can go.”

I didn’t move for a long moment. The cold from the stone had seeped into my bones, and my legs felt heavy as I turned and walked out. The guard closed the heavy door behind me with a sound like a lock clicking into place.

---

My dorm room was a narrow box with a cot, a washstand, and a single window that looked out onto the dark yard. I stood in the doorway for a long time, letting the silence settle, trying to unclench the muscles in my back.

Then I saw it.

On my pillow, a single white wolf hair. Too long. Too pale. It glowed faintly, the way moonlight glows through thin clouds.

I crossed the room on legs that didn’t feel like mine. My hand reached out before my brain could catch up, and my fingers closed around the hair.

Warmth flooded up my arm and into my chest, spreading like honey poured slow. The hair dissolved into light between my fingers, and in that light I felt something else, a pressure behind my ribs that wasn’t pain.

A word came. Not through my ears. Through my blood.

Soon.