บททั้งหมดของ Bloodmoon Rising: บทที่ 21 - บทที่ 30

We ran.But not away from it. That’s what threw me, Rhydian said, “Run,” grabbed my arm, and off we went, but we didn’t head for the Greycliff boundary, didn’t dash south into the wild forest, didn’t escape in any direction at all. We ran parallel to the line, eastward, racing through old-growth trees at a speed that said we weren’t looking for distance, but for the perfect position.I got it without anyone spelling it out. Whatever that light was, whatever that sound had been, our instinct to just run away wouldn’t have helped. You don’t bolt from something you don’t understand, move sideways until you can actually see it, then figure it out.We pulled up on a natural rise, a rocky shelf breaking through the moss and roots, high enough to get a look without standing exposed. Rhydian was already crouched at the edge. I slid in beside him and peered down.The light was there.Further in. Deeper. It moved between the trunks, slowly. Not like someone carrying a torch, but as if the light

I spotted Rhydian at the edge of the clearing and called out, “Teach me something.” He glanced up. “Good morning.” “I’m serious.” “I know you are.” He gave me this long look. “What do you want to learn?” “Everything the mark can do in a fight,” I said. “Not what it does when I’m desperate. What it does when I choose it.” He thought it over for a second, then stood up. “All right.” “Now.” “Now,” he echoed. He came at me, no warning, no stance, none of that ritual stuff. Just sudden movement and I barely had half a second before his weight slammed toward my left. I leapt right, felt the air slice where I’d just been, and spun to face him. He was already resetting, watching with those pale eyes that miss nothing. “You pulled left first,” he said. “Before you went right. That half-second costs you.” “Do it again,” I said. He did. This time I caught the shift in his lead foot just before he went for it, so I moved into him instead of away. I got my forearm up betwee

I didn’t sleep. Not because I was scared, but because every time I shut my eyes my mind took off, Voss in that chair, the layout of the Elder hall, the four different routes Rhydian made me rehearse until he finally let me alone and told me, “Kaelis. Sleep.” I hadn’t slept then, either.By the time the black of the old-growth turned to a dim grey, I was already out there, sitting against the fat root of the closest tree, texts in my lap, reading the third page for the fourth time. The bond. Three Alpha bloodlines. Irreversible.Soren walked out from the settlement entrance and sat across from me, uninvited.“You’ve been out here for hours,” he said.“I know.”“The texts again.”“The third page.”He eyed me carefully. “What’re you looking for?”“Something that tells me the bond can wait,” I said. “That I don’t need it to do what I’m planning on doing today.”“Can it wait?”I stared at the page, the tight script, the word that came up in the bit about a mark fully awake. Accelerating. W

I stared at the vial in my hand. The cold biting into my shoulder didn’t hurt, but it felt wrong, like the mark on me recognized something it had seen before. Something built just to shut it down.Four centuries ago, someone figured out how to do it. My uncle dug it up.“Put it down, Voss,” I said.He grinned. “You walked into my building.”“Your building?” I snorted. “You’ve had it for what, twelve hours?”“Long enough,” he said.“Long enough to set up forty-three murders. How many of those wolves have you even met?”His face shifted, not guilt, just pure irritation. Like I’d brought up an annoying detail. “This isn’t personal.”“You stabbed me and buried me. Find a different word.”“It was necessary.”“So is this,” I answered.I let the mark come up, no holding back. Not the careful version, not the sharpened-for-a-fight version. All of it, just awake, and the Elder chamber flooded with silver light. The mark burned through my leathers and threw glowing streaks up the stone walls. V

“She was in Greycliff territory two hours ago.”Isara’s voice hit my ear before Rhydian had a chance to get a word out. She’d clearly taken the phone, I could tell by the shift in background noise, the fire, those low stone walls. The sound had its own signature.“How do you know?” I asked.“Because I know her patterns,” Isara said, straight to the point. “Eighteen years I’ve watched that girl move through the pack. She hides when she’s about to do something you can’t take back. Two hours ago, she reached out to everyone she still trusted in Greycliff. And then she just… disappeared.” She paused. “She isn’t hiding. She’s getting ready.”“Ready for what?”“Delivering the records. Whatever she’s been building toward, tonight’s when she does it.”I looked over at Aldric. “Your surveillance network. Wolves in all eleven territories. Can any of them find her tonight?”He was already across the room, grabbing his phone. “Three wolves in Greycliff. Give me two minutes.”“You have one,” I tol