Semua Bab Witch Among Wolves - The Alpha's Enemy Bride: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Three days after the raven’s wing, Silverpine is restless. The nights are full of rumor and the scent of old smoke. In the mornings, I find Fen at the borders, pacing, eyes sharp and wolf-bright. Mara helps Agatha in the kitchen, wielding a bread knife like a dagger, and Bram—quiet, reliable Bram—has become Rowan’s shadow, listening more than he speaks. The pack is shifting, uneasy, testing new boundaries like wolves in a strange den.After breakfast—porridge, bacon, tense silence—Rowan tells me, “We need to go. The Iron Hollow pack sent word, and Knotweed’s witches expect us.”His jaw is set, but his eyes flicker, and I know this is no ordinary introduction. This is politics in a rawhide glove.Outside, the morning is all fog and wet leaves. Fen and Bram flank us, Mara close behind, a loose guard that’s also a show of trust—or muscle, depending who’s watching.We travel south, the old river mist curling at our boots, dew soaking the cuffs of my stolen coat. Rowan walks ahead, posture

The warning comes not with a horn, but with a scream—sharp, ragged, ripped from a woman’s throat and snuffed out almost as fast as it began.By the time I reach the courtyard, Rowan’s already strapping on his sword, jaw set in a line I’ve only seen when death is on the air. Fen’s eyes are wild, Mara’s voice is tight as wire as she yanks a quiver over her shoulder.“You hear it?” Fen asks, voice a low rumble.Rowan only nods. “East fields. Too close to the river. We move.”I barely have time to grab a cloak. The sky is dark, clouds rolling, wind carrying the copper-sweet scent of blood and the stench of char. Behind us, the packhouse glows warm, falsely safe. Ahead—the world goes wrong.We run, four wolves and three witches, cutting through underbrush and bracken. Every step, every heartbeat, every shattered branch tells me: too late, too slow, too soft. I push magic through my veins, but it’s slippery, unpredictable, bristling with Fyre’s old rage and wild hope. The ground grows wet u

Elowen and her witches sit at the long table in the hall, their faces drawn, hands wrapped around steaming mugs of soup. They speak in low, rapid voices, tracing maps in spilled broth and dust. By noon, the news spreads through Silverpine like wildfire: the south is breaking, and we are all the refuge left.Elowen’s voice is soft at first, but it fills the hall. The witches from the south speak not only in words but in tremors that seem to pass through every floorboard, every wary heart listening. She describes the Hollowing—a devourer, ancient and without true name or shape. It is not a demon and not a spirit, but something that eats the world’s heart quietly, leaving nothing behind. No bodies, no bones. Only the hush of something erased, the faint, acrid scent of a scorch mark in the grass, or, in the coldest dawns, a rim of white frost swirling in unnatural spirals around the ruins of vanished homes.Magic, she says, cannot hold against it. In the Hollowing’s wake, the strongest wi

The days are indistinguishable now—white, gray, black, white again. Snow piles thick on the eaves, muffling every sound but the wind’s endless howl and the rasping coughs of the sick. The stewpot in Agatha’s kitchen holds little but melted snow, a few bitter greens, bones picked clean. Even the youngest pups, once wild with hunger, now lie curled together, silent and thin as shadows.Inside the main hall, warmth is a memory. The hearth burns low, the air dense with fear and the metallic stink of desperation. Thalia moves among the cots with handfuls of stale bread and herbal teas so weak they taste of nothing. “There’s not enough,” she mutters, mostly to herself, her hands shaking as she tucks a threadbare blanket around a fevered child. “Never enough.”Tempers snap like brittle wood. Rowan paces, jaw clenched, watching as quarrels break out over water rations, over a dry crust, over who deserves medicine and who can do without.Near dusk, the latest argument boils over.“I worked the

It’s strange what you notice when the world is ending.Not the big things, like the wolves pressed in tight, Rowan’s jaw clenched in silhouette against the last sickly glow from the hearth, or Agatha’s endless muttering as she circles the children, handing out hope like crusts of stale bread. It’s the little things that catch in your teeth and won’t let go: the taste of metal on your tongue, the way the frost creeps in not just at the door but through the cracks in your mind, the way even magic feels thin as old bone, brittle, barely enough to keep a spark alive.I sit on the floor, back pressed to the wall, knees tucked to my chest. If I focus, I can almost ignore the press of bodies—fur, flesh, fear all mixed together. The air is thick, heavy, and every breath tastes of smoke and despair. Someone’s crying, muffled in a stranger’s coat. Someone else whispers a prayer that stumbles at the same spot every time.I try to count the heartbeats in the room, just to distract myself. It’s im