Semua Bab Marked for Betrayal: Bab 31 - Bab 40

POV: Mia (Zero)The door hadn’t opened in years—not since the old blood wars, not since the pack buried the remnants of what we once were. It groaned under its own weight as I forced it open, the rusted hinges howling like spirits still trapped beneath Darkhaven. Stone gave way to damp air and the cold breath of something old, something forgotten.Alex didn’t speak. He followed me with the patience of someone who had learned that silence, not comfort, was the only thing that helped me hold myself together. Nova trailed behind us like a shadow already half-merged with the darkness.We descended the stairs into the buried chamber—cut into the mountain stone generations ago, long before the Broker came, long before any of us understood what it meant to be shaped by a bloodline cursed to obey.I hadn’t set foot here since I was thirteen. The scent was the same—iron, ash, and old grief.Nova’s voice was the first to break the silence.“This place knows us.”Her words weren’t poetic. They w

POV: Mia (Zero)I didn’t rush the walk back to Darkhaven. The blood on my hands had dried to rusted streaks, and every heartbeat felt like it echoed down through the soles of my feet into the mountain itself. The woods were quiet, as if the trees understood that something sacred had been severed and that noise would only dishonor what had been done. I didn’t feel triumph. I didn’t feel clean. I only felt the cold truth of choice still pulsing through me, and the weight of the blade I had refused to use. Striker was still alive, broken but breathing, buried beneath the roots of the blackroot tree, left to rot with the memory of what he tried to make of me. I hadn’t killed him, but I had taken something far more permanent—his legacy, his power, his certainty. And I had left behind the dagger that once belonged to me, because it no longer did.The eastern path curved sharply at the rise above the main gate, and from there I could see the faint firelight flickering along the outer posts.

POV: Mia (Zero)The scent of the blood was old. Not from the wound. From the memory it carried. Wolves with age in their veins could smell it—Chito recognized it the moment he pressed his fingers to the dying scout’s shoulder. It wasn’t just a mark. It was a message. And not just any message. It was a calling card of a name we were never meant to speak aloud again.He looked up at me, eyes hollowed by recognition, and said the word I hadn’t heard in over a decade. “Oryx.”Everything in me stilled.I hadn’t heard that name since I was a child in the lower dens of the Broker’s early camps, when the whispers about the Oryx Clan were only muttered when the night was deep and the guards were drunk. The stories were wild and broken, half-lies passed down through mouths too afraid to admit they once called those wolves kin. It was said they didn’t howl—they screamed. It was said their blood ran black in the moonlight. It was said they had been exiled long before even the Broker’s time, not f

POV: Mia (Zero)Darkhaven had always smelled like stone and ash and pine bark—but as I stepped through the outer gate, the scent that met me first was unfamiliar. Not from the forest. From within. It wasn’t blood or danger. It was worse. It was the scent of indecision.The gates were unguarded. Not abandoned—left open deliberately. It took me two strides past the arch to realize the implications. The scouts had known I was coming. They hadn’t raised the alert. But no one had come to meet me either.Nova wasn’t waiting.Alex wasn’t there.The courtyard was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that followed a difficult truth.It had been seven days since I crossed the line into Oryx territory. Seven days since I walked away from what I was and returned with something older humming through my blood. I had expected tension. I hadn’t expected absence.I passed the forge. Cold.The training yard. Empty.The watchtower held a single figure.Nova.She stood at the top, arms crossed, eyes locke

POV: Mia (Zero)The emissary arrived just before the moon touched its peak. No call. No warning. No sound of footfall over the stone. One moment the watchtower was clear, and the next, Nova was at my door with blood on her sleeve and a grim line in her jaw.“He’s not armed,” she said, though her voice betrayed no relief. “But he’s not alone. Whatever follows him—it's not flesh.”I stepped into my boots, threw my cloak over my shoulders, and followed her to the central square. The torches burned low. No one spoke. Even Marcus, stationed at the edge of the barracks with three sentries, held back without comment. Wolves know when the air is thick with something older than fear.The figure stood calmly in the center of the courtyard, as if he had been waiting for us, not the other way around. He was tall, lean, wrapped in a dark cloak that smelled of rain-soaked stone and moss. His face was lined with age, but not weakness. His eyes were silver—not like a shifter’s, but like something dra