Semua Bab Claimed by the Enemy Alpha: Bab 51 - Bab 60

The scent turned again. Off. Too sweet this time—like something dead, soaked in honey.Kaela crouched low, fingertips skimming the moss-slick earth. A stick snapped behind her. Just a bird. Still, her wolf bristled.Something had passed through here. Not long ago.“Smell that?” she asked.Ronan’s voice came from behind her. “Yeah. Been tracking it for the last hundred feet.”He sounded more tired than usual. Not physically—but something deeper. Frayed at the edges.She stood, brushing her hands off. “It’s wrong. Too clean.”“Clean,” he echoed. “But rotting underneath.”Their eyes met. No more needed to be said.They moved through the trees slowly, side by side. The deeper they went, the quieter it got. Not the normal forest quiet—this was hollow. Airless. Like sound had been vacuumed out of the space between the trunks.It had started after the mimic in the tent. After it said her name. Called her White Wolf like it meant something ancient.And it did.Her wolf knew before she did. Kn

They left at first light. No fanfare, no briefing, no maps—just instinct. Kaela in front, Ronan at her side, Lira behind, watching their backs. Dax had stayed behind without argument. Maybe because he knew they wouldn’t be coming back the same way.The wind was colder today. Not sharp, not biting. Just wrong. Like it had passed through too many graves on its way here.Kaela didn’t speak much. Something about the pull in her chest—magnetic, ancestral, terrifying—kept her mouth shut. Every step toward the Hollow Teeth felt like digging up something she didn’t bury but had still mourned.The forest gave way like it didn’t want them.And there it was.The Hollow Teeth.Spines of rock and ash jutted from the ground, crooked and splintered. Some narrow as blades, others thick and jagged like broken ribs. The kind of place that didn’t whisper “go back”—it screamed it.Lira let out a low breath. “Place smells like rot and old gods.”“No birds,” Ronan said quietly. “No wolves. Nothing.”Kaela’

The steps were slick with something older than water.Kaela didn’t slip.She should’ve. They were steep, damp, breathing cold against her boots like the stone itself exhaled. But her feet found each edge with eerie precision, like she wasn’t walking so much as being drawn.She didn’t look back.Behind her was firelight, murmured warnings, Ronan’s voice still echoing somewhere in her blood. But that belonged to the surface. This place—this dark—had its own rules.Ten steps down, the light from above vanished. Not gradually. Not dimming. Just gone, swallowed like a snuffed candle.Kaela blinked once. Twice. Didn’t matter. Her vision stayed the same.Black. Pure and endless.Still, she moved.The air was changing with every breath. Damp to dry. Dry to stale. Stale to sharp—like iron. Like rot. Her skin prickled. Her wolf stirred, low and uneasy, pacing just beneath her skin.You remember.The whisper wasn’t sound. Not truly.It slithered along her spine, a pressure behind the eyes, an ac

The air in the tent was wrong. Too still. Too heavy. It pressed against Kaela’s ribs like it was trying to hold her in place.She sat on the edge of the cot, elbows digging into her knees, staring at her hands. The marks were still there—sharper than they’d been this morning—threads of pale light winding deeper into her skin like roots. Every beat of her heart made them flicker. She tried to close her fists, but the glow leaked out between her fingers, stubborn.She remembered the first time she’d heard the name. The High Council. Her mother had whispered it in the dark like speaking it too loud might summon something that would find them, even miles away. Stories told in fragments—wolves who ruled the old way, absolute and unchallenged, until the world turned on them. Until they burned their enemies and then themselves right out of history.At least, that’s what everyone else liked to believe.“They’re gone,” Dax said from the corner, leaning against the center pole, arms crossed. Hi

The snow swallowed sound.Kaela had never liked that—how the white could make the whole world go quiet in a way that didn’t feel peaceful, just wrong. Every breath came out in clouds, hanging too long in the frozen air before fading. Her boots crunched in slow, deliberate steps.Ronan was ahead of her, a dark figure against the endless pale, shoulders squared, scanning the tree line like he was trying to catch something in the act of looking back. He hadn’t said much since they crossed into the White. Neither of them had.The White was its own kind of territory—no map for it, no real edges. You didn’t survive here unless you were born to it, and even then, it still found ways to take you.By the time they reached the old hunting shack, night had fully dropped. The wind was a blade now, cutting through her cloak. Kaela ducked inside first, boots sinking into the warped wooden floor. The air smelled of dust and ash—someone had used this place recently enough for the scent to linger, but