Semua Bab Claimed by the Enemy Alpha: Bab 41 - Bab 50

They didn’t talk on the way back.The silence wasn’t heavy—it was sharp. Like the edge of something unsaid, pressing closer every step.Kaela kept glancing at Ronan. He was too still. Not physically, he walked like always, a blade waiting for permission—but his eyes were somewhere else. Somewhere deeper. She could feel it.Lira split off halfway to report to Dax. Not a word, just a nod, then vanished through the trees.Kaela and Ronan didn’t go straight back to camp. They veered off. Toward the old watchtower ruins—half-collapsed stone and ivy, barely holding up against time. A place no one bothered with anymore. A place quiet enough to think. Or yell. Or both.Ronan stepped inside first. Sat down on a broken pillar. Elbows on knees. Hands locked. Not looking at her.Kaela stood in the doorway, arms crossed, watching him.Finally—"You gonna tell me what that was back there?" she asked.His jaw flexed. “You don’t want to know.”“Try me.”Silence. Then—“My father called it the Hollowb

Kaela didn’t sleep.Not that she really tried.The camp buzzed long into the night—boots thudding, weapons sharpened, the air laced with too much adrenaline and not enough answers. Every rustle in the trees felt like a warning. Every shadow seemed too deep.By the time the moon dipped low and the last fire was smothered, she was already slipping through the perimeter, cloak drawn tight, blades strapped.Lira waited at the marker stone east of camp, crouched with her back to a tree. She looked up without surprise. “Thought you’d come.”“We leave a trail,” Kaela said. “Let it think it’s tracking us.”“It already is.”They moved in silence. Familiar now. This kind of silence—jagged, watchful, charged like storm air.They looped south, where the last of the Hollowborn signs were found. Charred trees. Old blood. A half-buried ribcage still smeared with something Kaela didn’t want to name.“This thing…” Lira muttered, running a finger through the soot, “It’s not just killing. It’s crafting.

The howling started just after dusk.Not the usual patrol calls. Not rogue signals. This was different—off. Too long, too low. Like something trying to imitate wolves and missing by just enough to make your skin crawl.Kaela froze mid-step, half a piece of jerky still in her mouth, pulse slamming against her ribs. She spat it out without thinking.Ronan was already moving—silent, focused, cutting across the camp like the howl had snapped some wire inside him. Dax followed close, tension in his shoulders like he was ready to shift. Lira emerged from the dark like smoke, bow slung low, her eyes finding Kaela’s through the firelight.“You heard that?” Lira asked, voice flat.Kaela nodded. “It’s learning.”They didn’t need to say more.The outer patrols returned fast, breathless, nervous. Nothing to report. No tracks. No scent. No signs. Just the air humming too loud, the shadows looking wrong. That kind of nothing that meant something.By midnight, no one slept.Kaela sat at the warded e

He shouldn’t have been breathing.They laid the man down just inside the ward line, near the eastern firepit, where the ground was soft and steaming from the earlier rain. His body twitched like it hadn’t realized it was finished yet. His skin blistered in strange patterns—burns that didn’t look like fire, more like rot kissed by lightning. One eye was swollen shut. The other—too open. Like he was stuck mid-scream and forgot how to blink.Kaela knelt slowly beside him, ignoring how her wolf paced in her chest like it wanted out. Not to run. To sniff. To know.Ronan hovered just behind her, arms folded, jaw tight. Lira stood to the side, eyes sharp, shoulders tense—like she was already expecting the corpse to sit up and start speaking in tongues.“He’s not supposed to be alive,” Lira muttered, low.Kaela nodded. “And yet.”The man’s fingers twitched. His lips cracked as he exhaled, sticky with something black and syrupy. A cough followed, wet and too loud in the quiet.Kaela leaned in.

The rain came just before dawn.Not hard, not cleansing. The kind that soaked in slow and clung to your bones, like it knew you didn’t want to be touched.Kaela didn’t sleep.She sat cross-legged on the ridge above camp, eyes tracing the distant tree line. Watching. Waiting. Trying not to think about the spiral, the dream, the heat of Ronan’s hand wrapped around hers like he didn’t trust himself to let go.Footsteps behind her. Light. Familiar.“You gonna sit up here until you turn to stone?” Lira dropped beside her, breath fogging in the wet air.Kaela didn’t answer right away. Then: “Maybe.”Lira pulled her hood lower. “You look like you’ve been up all night thinking about the end of the world.”Kaela almost smiled. “Close.”Silence settled between them for a few beats. The forest shifted in small ways—rain on leaves, creaks in bark. But the wrongness was still there. A hum beneath the quiet.Then Kaela spoke again. “What do you know about the first white wolves?”Lira blinked. “You