Chapter 35

The trees gave the stolen voices back one by one, and every single one landed wrong.

They came from different distances and different mouths, but they all carried the same flaw: a hair too careful, a breath too late, emotion stitched on top instead of rising from underneath. One called my name in Luna Lea’s bright voice. Another laughed in a young patrol wolf’s familiar bark of amusement. A third used Alpha Cameron’s growl and somehow made it sound empty. Recognition still hit like a blade, even warped. That was the point. These things did not need to fool us perfectly. They only needed one fatal heartbeat of hesitation.

“Tell me you hear that too,” I said, my voice low enough not to carry beyond us.

Ty did not take his eyes off the thing wearing our sentry’s body. “Unfortunately, yes,” he murmured. “And if one of them uses my voice again, ignore anything sincere too. I’d rather not discover where my charm ends and my emotional range becomes a tactical weakness.”

A startled sound almost escaped me. “Your timing is still terrible,” I whispered.

“And yours is still worse,” he said, shifting his blade just enough that silver caught moonlight between us. Then, quieter, so only the bond and I could hear, “Stay with me, Sila. If it starts sounding right, look at me instead.”

The bond tightened at the words—not possessive, not commanding, just present in that relentless way I was still learning how to trust. “That only works if you don’t get yourself killed in the next thirty seconds,” I said.

He glanced at me then, brief and fierce and far too warm for the freezing edge of the forest. “That sounds a lot like concern.”

“Don’t get arrogant,” I muttered, but there was no time for more. The underbrush shifted in three directions at once. Another wolf-shape stepped between the trunks to our left, then another behind it. All of them wore pack bodies. None of them wore them properly.

One had a familiar dark pelt and crooked hind leg that belonged to an older hunter who should have been sleeping in the west barracks. Another wore the long pale fur of a she-wolf from the eastern patrol, except the shoulders under it were too narrow and too many joints seemed to be negotiating ownership of the movement. Their mouths hung slightly open as if they were tasting how wolves breathed. Their ears twitched at the wrong moments. Their tails dragged a fraction too long before remembering to lift. Every detail was close enough to wound and wrong enough to sicken.

“Tell me you have a theory better than ‘nightmare wearing fur,’” I said.

“I have several,” Ty said, voice kept deliberately even. “None of them are comforting. Best guess? Something left over from the breach learned wolf-patterns and found bodies to nest in. Worse guess? It doesn’t need dead wolves to do it.”

My stomach turned. “You always know exactly how to make things worse.”

“Another gift,” he said. “Right after charm.”

The creature wearing our sentry’s body took one step forward, paws sinking into the mud with that same careful, learned pressure. “We found the den,” it said again in the scout’s exact voice. Then its jaw twitched, and the next words came in Beth’s bright tone. “You should run.” Another twitch. Luna Lea’s voice this time, warm and vicious. “Or stay. I’ve always preferred blood close to home.”

Neeka slammed so hard against the front of my mind that my own teeth ached. I let the anger settle instead of spending it too early. “You can wear their shapes,” I said to the thing ahead of us. “You can steal their voices. But you can’t fake what they are to me.”

Its head tilted farther, almost curious. Then it answered in my father’s voice.

“That’s what he said too,” it murmured.

The words hit low and vicious, aimed with surgical cruelty. My breath caught for one dangerous second. Ty felt it instantly. He stepped half in front of me before stopping himself and turning the movement into a shift at my side instead. “Don’t give it that,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t know him. It only knows where to cut.”

I swallowed hard. “You say that like I’m not aware of how effective cutting can be.”

His voice dropped lower. “I know exactly how effective it is. That’s why I’m still here.”

That made the things in the trees go still. Not frozen. Listening. Learning. The creature in front of us opened its mouth and this time when it spoke, it used Ty’s voice with eerie precision. “Still here,” it repeated, then smiled too wide for any wolf and added in mine, “How long do you think that lasts?”

“Long enough,” Ty said, and the bond between us snapped sharp and bright. He moved right as I moved left. No discussion. No hesitation. Just pattern. Just trust. His silver blade cut low through one counterfeit foreleg while I drove sovereign force—not enough to command, just enough to disrupt—through the mud under the lead creature’s paws. The ground buckled. The false wolf shrieked. Two more dropped from the brush to flank us.

“Three on the left,” I said.

“Two more behind us,” Ty answered.

“You always save the better news for last.”

“You love that about me,” he said, and drove his shoulder into a lunging imitation hard enough to knock it sideways into a cedar trunk.

“Terrible timing, Cameron,” I muttered, but the truth beneath it pulsed warm through the bond. Even in the middle of horror, he was anchoring me to something human. Something chosen.

Then one of the creatures screamed in a voice that was not stolen. Not borrowed. Real. A wolf-cry, panicked and buried deep under the imitation, tearing its way out through the wrong throat for half a second before black brine choked it off again.

Ty heard it when I did. We both stopped just long enough to understand the new horror. These were not only skins. Not only mimicry. Something of the real wolves was still in there—trapped, drowned, or pinned beneath whatever had climbed inside them. Which meant silver might stop the thing without saving what it wore.

The white-scarred wolf in front of us jerked like two bodies were fighting over the same bones. Its mouth opened. Black brine spilled down its teeth. Then, through the distortion, in the real sentry’s voice and with real terror underneath it, it said, “Don’t let it take the Alpha.”