Alle Kapitel von CHASING MONSTERS: Kapitel 231 – Kapitel 240

The pack was already failing when Abel arrived.He felt it before he saw it. The land itself carried the strain, an unsteady thrum beneath his paws, like a heartbeat out of rhythm. Wolves moved without cohesion, their patrols uneven, their borders slack. Too much noise in the wrong places. Too much silence where command should have been.An alpha-less pack never collapsed all at once.It unraveled.Abel slowed from a run to a powerful lope as he crossed into the heart of the territory, shifting back only when he reached the inner compound. He straightened, rolling tension from his shoulders, his gaze sweeping the space in a single, ruthless assessment. Structures still stood, banners still hung, but there was no order in the way wolves moved through the pack. No center of gravity. No authority anchoring instinct to discipline."I'm here for the prisoner, Lucian." He barked at the nearest guard who looked like he was in charge.The guard stuttered. "He, he killed a guard, and escaped."

Xavier’s office felt smaller than it ever had.The walls were thick stone, ancient and reassuring, meant to hold the weight of kings and wars alike. Today, they pressed in, as if the very mortar between the blocks had turned to iron bars. Dust motes danced in the slanting afternoon light, but there was no warmth in it, only a cold reminder of the shadows lengthening outside. Sophie stood near the window, arms folded loosely, watching the courtyard below where guards moved with renewed urgency. The rhythm was wrong. Too fast. Too alert. Their boots echoed like war drums, a stark contrast to the usual lazy patrols. She could almost feel the pulse of the castle quickening, mirroring her own heartbeat.Xavier stood behind his desk, one hand braced against its surface, the other clenched at his side. He hadn’t sat since the runner left, his posture rigid as if movement might shatter the fragile control he clung to. The desk, carved from ancient oak and scarred by generations of rulers, see

Abel had been there the whole time.Close enough to feel the shift in the air when Lucian’s madness sharpened into violence.He watched from the shadows above Lumden’s office, pressed into an old maintenance crawlspace that had once served a purpose before Wildbourne buried its sins beneath layers of stone and ceremony. Abel had learned long ago that places built by hunters always hid more than they admitted.Lucian hadn’t disappointed.Abel had tracked him cleanly to the academy, followed the twisted trail through forgotten corridors and sealed wings, listening, watching, memorizing. When Lucian slipped into Lumden’s office, Abel had already been there for several minutes, breathing slow, heart steady, instincts coiled tight.He heard everything.The voice Lucian spoke to.The name.Della.At first, Abel had thought another hunter had slipped in unseen, some remnant of the old guard lingering where they shouldn’t. His muscles had tensed, ready to strike.Then he realized.There was n

Jax had always trusted his instincts.They had carried him through blood, through war, through corridors where other men hesitated and died. He had never been afraid of danger. He laughed at it. Mocked it. Used it.This was no different.He hadn’t expected Xavier to be here.That part complicated things. The wolf king was not a variable Jax had planned for, and Sophie… Sophie’s presence burned in a way he refused to examine too closely. Still, none of that changed the truth pulsing in his bones.This was his chance.One chance.If the stone existed, if the stories were even half true, then Wildbourne was the only place it could be. And if anyone knew how to reach the buried places beneath this academy, it was him. He had one thought racing through his mind. The secret room directly under the statue.He had been a boy here once.Not the obedient kind. The curious kind. The kind that slipped away from dormitories at night, counted steps, tested locks, pulled at tapestries and listened t

Abel advanced with murder in his heart.Jax. The stone. The breath between now and the moment Abel finally got his hands around the hunter who had carved pain into him.Across the courtyard Xavier was moving too, fire and command fused into something unstoppable. Sophie beside him, winter given purpose, her presence cold enough to bite through smoke and blood.Three predators closing.One prize between them.The battle around Wildbourne had become a broken chorus: wolves crashing into hunters, mages throwing power like lightning, Malik’s men holding the line with the kind of discipline that had kept packs alive for centuries. Above it all the statue loomed, cracked open from Jax’s first ascent, its stone belly exposed like an old wound.The stone lay ahead, faintly glowing on the ground, calling to every creature with blood in its veins.Abel could feel it.He could feel everything.The air shifted and the world slowed, as if time itself hesitated.Wind rose suddenly, not a breeze but