POV: Raeban
The scent of blood reached us before the bodies did.
Kaide and I had been tracking Soraya’s trail for hours—following the sharp twists through Ashra’s dunes, racing past the outer gates before the guards could stop us. My wolf pulsed under my skin with frantic urgency, every instinct screaming at me to move faster, faster, faster.
But nothing prepared me for the sight we finally found.
Ashra training grounds—torn apart. Dunes—stained with crimson. Two masked bodies lay twisted in the sand, throats ripped open, limbs mangled. The scene reeked of violence and terror, but also something else—power. Soraya’s power.
Kaide crouched beside one of the corpses. “Raiders,” he muttered darkly. “Zarek’s men.”
“They came for her again,” I growled, fists clenching so tight my nails broke skin. “Inside our walls.”
“And she fought,” Kaide said quietly, gesturing to the deep claw marks carved into the sand. “Harder than any wolf I’ve seen.”
My heart thundered. Pride and horror twisted together. “Where is she?”
Kaide didn’t answer.
We followed the tracks deeper into the night. Her wolf form left enormous prints—far larger than any normal wolf—her paw marks glowing faintly in the moonlight, tinged silver like stardust. But as the trail continued, the pawprints began staggering, tilting, smeared with blood.
A wounded animal’s path.
My chest tightened painfully.
“She shifted,” Kaide said softly. “The second full shift.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
The scent of her blood thickened with every step—sharp, metallic, burned by poison. Each breath I took seared my lungs. My wolf clawed at my insides, desperate to run ahead, tear through the dunes until he found her.
But the tracks grew harder to read as the sand grew colder, the dunes taller.
Then something changed.
Kaide stopped abruptly. “Raevan. Look.”
The prints angled north—toward the last place a wolf should ever go.
Human territory.
My pulse crashed.
“Why would she—”
“She didn’t mean to.” Kaide’s voice was tight. “She was running blind. Injured. Instinct-driven. Wolves don’t sense human borders the way they sense pack ones.”
My breathing turned rough. “She wouldn’t have made it far. Humans kill anything that moves in the dunes.”
Kaide swallowed. “Not just wolves. Anything.”
I closed my eyes, a wave of nausea twisting through me. The thought of Soraya—alone, bleeding, hunted—made my vision blur with rage.
“We keep going,” I said.
We ran.
The dunes grew harsher here—less golden, more gray. Sharp stones jutted from the sand, and the wind carried faint traces of smoke. When I reached the ridge of the final dune, I stopped so abruptly Kaide crashed into my back.
Below us, in the moonlit valley, was a battlefield of tracks.
Wolf prints. Human boots. Blood splatters. Broken arrows. Signs of struggle everywhere.
Kaide knelt, examining one of the arrows. “Human-made. Ironwood shaft. Their hunters must’ve seen her.”
My throat tightened so painfully I could barely speak. “They would have shot her on sight.”
“She’s Zehrael-marked,” Kaide reminded me grimly. “Her wolf looks like a desert demon to them.”
I sank to my knees, running a shaking hand through the sand. I found a tuft of silver fur—hers—still warm. A trail of blood drops led deeper into the valley.
We followed it.
The path grew unsteady, wobbling left and right before cutting sharply toward a cliffside. There, at the edge of a sharp drop, the blood trail pooled.
Kaide’s breath hitched. “Raevan…”
I stared at the cliff’s edge.
The drop was steep—impossibly steep—jagged rocks lining the bottom like teeth. The kind of fall no wolf could survive. The kind of fall a wounded wolf could easily stumble over.
My heart cracked. Something inside me split open, raw and violent.
“No,” I whispered. “No. She wouldn’t—”
Kaide placed a hand on my shoulder. “Raevan… the trail ends here.”
“That doesn’t mean she fell,” I rasped.
“There’s no sign of her climbing back,” Kaide said gently. “No tracks. No further blood. If she were alive, her scent would continue.”
I shook my head violently. “She wouldn’t die like this. She wouldn’t—”
“Raevan,” Kaide said softly, painfully, “I think she’s gone.”
The words shattered the last piece of me holding on.
I pressed my palms against the sand, breathing hard, desperate to find anything—any trace, any sign, any scent. But the wind had already begun erasing the prints, carrying them into the night. Every second made it harder to believe she had survived.
My wolf let out a sound I’d never heard before—a strangled, broken howl inside my chest.
“She can’t be gone,” I whispered. “Not like this.”
Kaide knelt beside me. “I’m sorry.”
The world tilted. The stars blurred. My vision swam with grief so sharp it left me gasping. I clenched the sand in my fists, shaking violently.
“I was supposed to protect her,” I choked. “I promised her—”
“You did everything you could.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
Tears—hot, furious, helpless—blurred the valley before me. I bowed my head, shoulders trembling, swallowing a sob I couldn’t contain.
“She was everything,” I whispered.
Kaide didn’t speak. He didn’t try to comfort me. He simply placed a hand on the back of my neck, grounding me as my world cracked open.
The moon hung cold and merciless above us.
Wind howled across the dunes, scattering the last traces of Soraya’s path.
And for the first time in years—long before I became the dread wolf—I felt truly, utterly alone.
“She’s gone,” Kaide murmured.
But in my chest—where bond scars still burned—
A faint, stubborn whisper answered:
No. She’s alive. She has to be.
I didn’t know whether it was hope or delusion.
Only that I refused to believe the desert had taken her from me.
Not when losing her felt like losing the beat of my own heart.