LOGINPOV: Caleb"This is the edge of the dead zone," Lena's tracking specialist said, crouched over a portable scanner that had been throwing the same static reading for the last twenty minutes."Just past this ridge, my equipment might as well be a rock. Whatever's masking the terrain, it's not allowing any modern equipment to push through it.""Then we go in without the equipment," I said."Caleb." Keith's voice carried a warning I had heard from him too many times over the last five days to take seriously anymore."You've slept maybe six hours total since Thornfield. Varric's right behind us with the main unit. We don't need to be the ones charging blind into an unmapped territory.""I'm not asking you to come.""I'm coming anyway. I'm just pointing out you're being reckless, so it's on record when you inevitably ignore me."We pushed on past the ridge as the light started fading, the terrain growing rougher, giv
The warmth woke me up, bringing me out gently from the darkness, a low, steady heat against my side.The blankets were heavier than anything I owned, pressing down over my aching limbs, the smell of woodsmoke and something herbal, bitter and green.I opened my eyes to a ceiling of rough-hewn beams and a single window letting in gray morning light."Don't sit up too fast," a voice said, somewhere near a small stove. "Your body is spent and exhausted from trying to keep you alive. So, give it a moment to realize that you are back here."I turned my head instead and found an old woman crouched by the fire, stirring something in a blackened pot, her clouded eyes not quite meeting mine even when she glanced over."Where—" My voice came out as a rasp. I tried again. "Where am I?""My home. Such as it is." She rose, joints cracking audibly, and crossed to the bed with a wooden bowl in hand."Eat first. Questions after. You've earned the order reversed, given the state you arrived in."I push
I lost track of how long I walked. The rain stopped at some point, though I couldn't have said when, and the cold that replaced it was worse, the kind that got into your bones and ached. Every part of me was aching."Bey."“I'm here.”"How far do you think he chased us?"“Not this far. I lost his men's scent hours ago. They shouldn’t be able to use your scent too. Sleep, I mean. Rest. You've been moving since midnight.”"If I stop, I don't think I'll start again."“Then don't stop. But tell me if your legs give out before your will does. There's no honor in collapsing midway.”I almost laughed, but it came out as something closer to a sob instead, and once it started, I couldn't quite make it stop."I don't know where I am."“Neither do I, fully. Somewhere in the mountains east of his territory. Still wolf country, but mostly unclaime
POV: GinaThey walked me out at dusk, two guards flanking me with the careful, unbothered efficiency of men handling something valuable rather than someone dangerous, which was, I decided, a mistake I intended to make them regret."Through here," Rourke said, gesturing toward a break in the tree line I hadn't noticed until we were nearly on top of it.The stones rose out of the dark like they'd grown out of the ground rather than been placed.They were smaller than the ones in the royal forest, rougher, but unmistakably the same kind of old, the air around them already prickling against my skin the closer we got.Fabian was waiting inside the circle, unarmed, his hands loosely clasped behind his back, the picture of a man entirely confident in how this evening would go."Wait at the tree line." He told the guards. "They obeyed without argument, which told me more about the reach of his authority here than anything he had said to me directly in four days."You could just ask what happ
POV: CalebIt's been over four days now since Gina was kidnapped, and every lead we chased into Fabian’s territory had gone cold.Problems kept coming up, making us stall out with nothing to show for it.It’s either a scout's report cutting off mid-transmission, a tracking drone losing signal the moment it crossed some invisible boundary.Or the team encounters an entire hillside that was not on any satellite feed we had before."Wards," Varric said with frustration, for the third time that day, staring at the blank patch on the projected map like it might rearrange itself if he glared hard enough."Old wards, that nothing modern can see through; they must be how he has shielded himself for this long.""Then we find something old enough to match them." I hadn't slept properly in four days either, and it was starting to show in how short my patience had gotten with problems that didn't have obvious solutions."Easier said." Varric countered"I'm aware."I reached for the bond again, a
POV: GinaOsric came to check my shoulder on the third day I woke up, and the first thing I noticed was that his hands shook slightly when he unwound the old dressing.His shaking wouldn’t be from age, though he was old enough that his knuckles had gone knotted with it, but I could guess it was from something else, like nerves."You're not one of his," I said. Not quite a question.He glanced at the door before answering, voice pitched low. "I'm his healer. That's a different thing than being his.""Is it?""Ask me again in a month, if we're both still breathing." He pressed a fresh dressing against the wound, careful, competent. "You're healing faster than you should. Lycan blood, or something stronger.""Something stronger, probably.""Mm." He didn't push. He reached into his coat instead and pressed something small and wrapped into my palm before straightening.It was bread, not the thin, watered gruel Fabian's kitchen sent up twice a day. "Eat this when the guard outside changes s
As night set in, I felt restless again; now I can confirm that the maid, Gina, is the true cause of my state. It was not the restless unspent energy that came from unfinished council matters or border skirmishes. This was different, sharp, invasive, and intimate.The kind that crawled beneath skin a
Caleb POVI could not sleep, not even when everywhere had gone silent; my sense of unease was strong, and Trey was restless, he wanted a run or just to find that little maid we met earlier.I ignored him, the maid was just a human, no matter how she smelled so divine, and his eyes drew me in. I wil
Gina POVWe were kept busy all through the queen’s event. Lila kept snapping like a she-wolf in heat. Maybe she is in heat. Who knows, with these Lycans, I don’t have much understanding of their biological makeup.By evening, the nobles invited by the royals had wined and dined, and my encounter wi
Caleb POVMy mother strong-armed me to this soirée of hers; she spends the huge palace resources just to create a fantasy meeting of me meeting an aristocratic lady of choice.I got tired of coming since it was always the same set of people with the Lycan males' usual groveling and the females' thei







