INICIAR SESIÓNFreya's POVWe ran until the trees thinned and the sound of the Vespera border faded behind us, and then I slowed and grabbed Nyx's wrist and pulled her to a stop.She was breathing hard. Too hard for someone who had only been running for a few minutes.I could hear it, the ragged, uneven quality of it, the way her wolf wasn't steadying her the way it should. Whatever they used to keep her suppressed back there wasn't fully out of her system yet."Nyx." I kept my voice low. "We're not going back to Draven."She turned to look at me."What?""We need to find Ravin." I released her wrist and faced her fully. "Right now, before we go anywhere else. We don't know if he's back at school yet. If he isn't, we'll be sitting in those dorm rooms waiting and Elara will still be out here."Nyx stared at me."You want to go to Darkhowl.""I know the direction. My tracking instincts are sharper than most, you know that. I can follow Ravin's scent trail from here. He has come through this area enoug
Elara's POVThey moved the moment the brothers stepped back.Freya crossed the distance between us first, her arms coming around me so fast and so hard that the impact nearly knocked me sideways.I felt her grip tighten, her hands fisting into the back of my jacket, her whole body carrying a tension she hadn't let herself release until this exact second.She held on like she was checking that I was real. Like standing there and breathing and not being gone was something she needed to confirm with her hands before she could believe it.Then Nyx was there.She pressed into my other side and the sound she made was small and broken, something that came out of her chest before she could catch it.And then she was crying, properly, the kind she never let herself do in front of people. Her shoulders shook against me, her face pressed into my shoulder like she wanted to disappear into the warmth of it.I didn't say anything. I just held her tighter.I held them both.The back of my throat ach
Elara's POVThe smile stayed on Lyris's face for a moment longer than it needed to.Then it dropped, cleanly and without ceremony, like a decision she was done entertaining."The details," she said, her voice losing every trace of warmth it never truly carried, "are our business. Not yours."She took one step toward me. Not fast. Not aggressive. Just the kind of step that was designed to close distance and let you feel it closing."So I'll ask you plainly. Are you taking the deal or not?"I held her gaze. I held it long enough to make it a deliberate choice and not a reflex. Long enough to let her know I wasn't going to be rushed into anything, not by the border, not by the dark, not by the two silent figures standing behind her."And if I refuse?"Something shifted in her expression. Not quite amusement. Something cooler than that."Think carefully before you ask that question.""I'm asking it."She was quiet for a beat. Just one. When she spoke again her voice was completely flat, s
Elara's POVI smelled them before I saw them, Freya first. That familiar mix of cedar and something faintly floral, the kind of scent you stopped noticing after years of sharing a dorm room until the moment it came at you from the wrong direction in the wrong place. Then Nyx, earthy and warm, close behind.I slowed at the tree line and shifted back before I stepped through. My clothes were still on, barely, the way they always were when the shift happened fast and with enough intention behind it. I moved forward on two legs, pushing branches aside, following the pull of their scents deeper into the dark.And then I saw them.They were tied to separate trees, a few feet apart, rope looped around their wrists and across their shoulders, holding them upright against the bark. Not unconscious. Not bleeding. But still in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise, their heads bowed low, their wolves pressed down by something I couldn't name from here.I moved toward them without
Lyris's POVKia was the one who asked it first, which was how it usually went between them."What if he comes with her?"I didn't look away from the tree line. "He won't. I contacted Kol before we moved tonight and told him the plan changed on my end, but that he should hold to his part of it. The diversion still runs. Ravin has something pulling his attention right now and that's all I need.""So he's occupied." Evan's voice was flat, just confirming."Completely." I turned to look at them both. "Ravin is not coming through that tree line tonight. I made sure of it."The twins exchanged one of their looks, the kind that communicated more than whatever came after it."Fair enough," Kia said, and Evan nodded beside him. "Then that brings us to something else." He folded his arms. "We did our part. The plan worked, the girls are here, and Elara is coming. You made us a promise.""I remember my promise and I'll keep it," I told him directly. "But I need the two of you to stay until the e
Elara's POVI walked until the corridor ended, then I kept walking.There was no decision to make. There was only the letter in my pocket and the border close to Vespera and the fact that every second I spent standing inside this building was a second my friends were somewhere I wasn't.I heard Ravin's voice in my head as I moved through the corridor, not literally, just the memory of it settling over everything the way it always did when I was about to do something he told me not to do."Don't come looking for me. Don't leave school grounds no matter what."I remembered the night he said it. The seriousness in his face, the weight of it. He didn't give instructions lightly. Every word he laid out for me came from somewhere real, from a calculation he already ran about what could go wrong if I didn't listen.And I knew, more than I knew most things, that he was right.Kol was out there. The Vespera pack was out there. The things that moved in the dark beyond Draven's borders were real
Ravin's POVThe pull hit me without warning, right in the middle of watching two of my warriors settle a dispute on the training ground.My hand was at my chest before I understood why, and my wolf went completely still inside me, the way it only did when something had its full attention. I had fel
Elara's POVThe lunch hall was loud the way it always was on Fridays. I was staring at my food and not eating it when Professor Aldric walked to the front and clapped twice.The noise dropped."The annual forest camping trip begins today. Buses leave at four. Attendance is mandatory."The hall erup
Elara's POVI noticed him during second period.He was sitting three rows ahead of me and two seats to the left, not doing anything particularly noticeable. Just sitting there, head slightly angled toward the front of the class, pen moving across his notebook. But there was something about the way
Ravin's POVI told myself I was gathering information.That was what I called it the first night I stood in the treeline beyond the academy fence and watched the students move between buildings. I came back the second night. And the third.By the fourth I had her routine mapped. She left the dormit







