LOGINAurelia's POVThe alchemist's back room smelled like someone had dried every herb in the world and then left them there for a hundred years. I sat on a wooden stool that wobbled every time I breathed. Kaelen was next to me, still pale, still quiet. Rylan stood by the door, arms crossed, watching. Torin leaned against the wall near the window, his eyes scanning the street outside.She moved around the room, picking things up, putting them down, not looking at us. Her hands were somewhat steady for her age. Her eyes weren't.“How's the wound?” she asked, not turning around.Kaelen shifted. “Better.”She snorted. “Liar.” She grabbed a jar off the shelf, shook it, put it back. “But you're alive. That's something.”“Why did you want to see us?” I asked.She stopped moving. Turned. Looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes were cloudy, but sharp underneath.“Something's wrong,” she said. “I can feel it.”“What kind of wrong?” Torin asked from the window.She shook her head. “I don't know exa
Aurelia's POVWe stumbled out of the ruins like the dead coming back to life.The daylight hit my face, and I almost cried. I didn't. But I wanted to. The mist was thinner here, just a haze hanging over the rocks, not the thick blanket that had swallowed us for what felt like forever. I could see the sky. Actual sky. Not glowing crystals. Not darkness. Just gray, miserable, beautiful sky.Kaelen was leaning on Rylan, his face pale, his breathing still shallow. He'd been quiet since we left the heart. Too quiet. Torin walked ahead, scanning the path, his hand never leaving his blade. I stayed in the middle, wrapped in a torn blanket someone had found for me, my feet sore, my head pounding, my wolf finally quiet.We didn't talk much. There wasn't anything left to say.The path wound down toward the settlement. I recognized the broken pillars, the crumbling walls, the statues with faces worn smooth. We'd passed them before, on the way in. Now they looked almost familiar. Almost welcoming
Kade's POVThe woman stood in the middle of the private chamber. Hood up. Face hidden. She hadn't moved since the guards brought her in. Just stood there. Still. Quiet. Too quiet.I hated it.“You wanted to see me,” I said, leaning back in my chair. I tried to sound bored. “So talk.”She tilted her head. Slow. Like she was listening to something I couldn't hear. Something behind me. Something in the walls.“You should not mess with things you do not understand.” Her voice was low and uneasily strange. It didn't echo right.I blinked. Felt my eyebrow twitch. “Come again?”She took a step closer. Her boots made no sound on the stone. “Old blood should die. Do not resurrect what you cannot control.”“What the hell are you talking about?” I sat up straight. My hand found the armrest. Gripped it.“The First Bond.” She said it like I was stupid. Another step. “You're playing with fire, Alpha.”I stared at her. I felt my jaw tighten. “How do you know about the book?”She laughed. It came out
Kade POVI didn't sleep worth a damn.The twitch. That stupid eyebrow twitch. It played in my head on repeat like a song I couldn't turn off. Corvus knew something. I was sure of it. I just didn't know what, and that was what pissed me off the most.I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. The water stain in the corner looked like a duck. Or maybe a frog. I wasn't sure. Didn't care. I just needed my brain to shut up for five minutes.It didn't.Aldric was already at the table when I walked in the next morning. Book open. Coffee cold. Same old same old.“You look like hell,” he said without looking up. His voice was flat, like he was commenting on the weather.“Good morning to you too,” I said, dropping into my chair. I rubbed my eyes with both hands. “You always know how to make a guy feel special.”“Someone has to keep you humble.” He turned a page. The paper crackled.“I don't need humble. I need answers.”“You're thinking about the eyebrow again.” He finally glanced at me.
POV: KadeThe guard stood there like a kid who’d just been caught stealing cookies from the Alpha’s personal stash. I hated that look. It meant bad news.“They’re gone, Alpha,” he said. “The mansion’s empty.”I stared at him for a good five seconds. “Empty how? Like, nobody’s home empty, or we’ve-been-robbed empty?”He swallowed. “Empty as in… no one’s there, sir. No guards. No servants. No triplets. Beds haven’t been slept in for days. Looks like they left a while ago.”I waved him out before I said something I’d actually regret. The door clicked shut. I turned to Aldric.“Days,” I said. “They’ve been gone for days. And nobody thought to mention this to me?”Aldric didn’t even look up from that stupid book. “Did you ask anyone to check before now?”“That’s not the point.”“That’s exactly the point.” He turned a page. Slow. Deliberate. Like he had all the time in the world and I was just background noise.I wanted to throw something at his head. A book. A chair. Maybe him.Instead, I
Kade’s POV.The pack grounds below looked exactly the way I liked them to look. Ordered. Quiet. Every wolf in their place, doing their function, the whole operation running well. I found it satisfying for approximately thirty seconds before the patience wore through again."Anything?" I said, without turning from the window."Patience." Aldric said, from the table.My jaw tightened. "I've been patient. I went to the ruin. I went down into the heart of that place which I would not recommend to anyone and which I will not be repeating. I retrieved the book." He turned. "I have been patient for days. I would like results."Aldric did not look up from the page his finger was tracing, a diagram of a wolf split open by lines of light in a way that was either symbolic or deeply literal and I had not decided which reading bothered him more. "The First Ones were close." he said, in the tone he used for things he found genuinely impressive, which was rare enough to be notable. "The formula is
Aurelia's POV.I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this.We walked through and the settlement hit me all at once, the noise and the warmth and the sheer aliveness of it after days of that pressing wrong silence. Fires burning between buildings. People everywhere, all kinds. Ancient ston
Aurelia's POV.I didn't sleep and neither did Rylan.We just sat at the cave entrance together, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him in the cold, and watched the dark do nothing for hours. The silhouette didn't come back. The forest held its wrong silence and I held mine and som
Aurelia's POV.The cave was not comfortable but it was defensible, which was the only thing anyone cared about right now.The guard found it, or remembered it, pulling us off the main path toward a rockfall that looked impassable until he showed us the gap behind it, wide enough to get through in a
Aurelia's POV.I stared at him for a moment, just to make sure I wasn't imagining it. His eyes were open, glassy and confused, but open, and his hand was still around mine with that weak deliberate grip that meant he had chosen to reach for something and found it."Hold on." I said, and turned and







