We saw the smoke first. A black smear rose against the sky, curling above Hollowmoor’s southern ridge like a warning written in ash. The quiet we’d earned over the last few days shattered with the first distant howl.
Then came more howls—too many, too sharp, too wrong. Not ours.
“Rogues,” Kai said beside me, already drawing his blade.
By the time we reached the outer fields, the scent of blood hit us like a wall. Wolves lay scattered across the grass—some collapsing mid-shift, others clawing to stand. The attack was fast, coordinated, and clearly planned.
I shifted mid-run, bones snapping into form as my wolf surged forward—faster, stronger, angrier—and the ground shortened beneath our stride.
We tore through two attackers near the west tree line. A third tried to flank Kai; I reached him first and sent him sprawling.
That was when I found the branded rogue—one of the exiled, marked for betrayal, crawling back like a snake through grass that didn’t want him. He lunged with a blade in his human hand, and I met him halfway, claws out at full speed. We hit the ground hard and rolled through dirt and crushed clover.
My claws sank into his shoulder; he screamed, and I kept driving him down.
Within seconds I had him pinned, blood smeared across my chest. My claws pressed into the side of his neck—deep enough to promise death, shallow enough to hesitate. My wolf wanted more.
“Do it,” the rogue hissed, spitting blood at my feet. “Rip me apart like your father did to mine.”
I held still, breath sawing in and out.
“You’re no different,” he snarled. “You’ve got your daddy’s eyes. That same hollow soul. Your mother—she was weak, wasn’t she?”
My claws tightened without my permission.
He laughed through blood. “Died a coward’s death. Just like she lived.”
I raised my claws for the final strike.
And then—
“Silas.”
Her voice wasn’t shouted. It didn’t come from nearby; it rose from inside me, clear as a hand on my wrist.
“Don’t become him.”
Raena.
My breath caught. My claws trembled mid-air. The rogue’s face blurred and, for a heartbeat, became my father’s—the same angle of contempt I’d watched in our courtyard when he’d cornered a boy for stealing bread. I heard the crack of ribs, my mother’s quiet pleading, and felt my own childhood stillness—the same paralysis that owned me now.
I stepped back, shaking and ashamed. I did not kill him.
That night, I crossed into Ashfang territory. No guards tried to stop me. Maybe they could smell the bond. Maybe they simply refused to stand between two storms anymore.
Raena was already waiting. She leaned against the side of the old watchtower with her arms crossed, moonlight laying silver along her cheekbones. The wind pulled at her hair and made it look wild and deliberate at once. The first look she gave me ran the length of my spine—too quick, too knowing—before she tucked it away like a blade.
“You heard me,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Loud and clear.”
We didn’t touch. We stood a few paces apart, as if the tension between us needed space to breathe. Her gaze slipped to my throat and back to my eyes; I felt the ghost of heat rise where her mark hid beneath my collar. I straightened, pretending it was the night air and not want.
“You stopped,” she said.
“I almost didn’t.”
“But you did.”
I nodded once, the gesture smaller than the truth it carried.
“You’re not him,” she added after a moment, eyes narrowing. “No matter how much he haunts you.”
I swallowed. “He’s still there. In the way I hesitate. I think hurting makes me stronger.”
She stepped forward slowly, measuring each inch like we were crossing a boundary neither of us could afford to breach. “He’s still in there, huh? The fear?”
I didn’t need to ask who she meant. I looked away because looking at her made the want louder. “He never really left.”
We climbed the tower in silence. At the top, the wind came clean and cruel, stripping the scent of battle and leaving only pine and stone. We sat on opposite sides of a weathered bench, facing the forest—close enough to feel the heat of each other’s bodies, far enough to pretend it didn’t matter. Our shoulders almost touched.
I expected silence to win. Maybe another fight. Instead—
“When I was ten,” Raena began, “I watched my father break a vase because my mother laughed at a joke that wasn’t his.”
I turned. She wasn’t looking at me; she watched the sky like it might argue back.
“He told me love was loyalty. That to love was to control. That if someone disobeyed you, they didn’t care about you.”
“That’s not love,” I said quietly.
“I know that now,” she said. “But back then? I thought… being sharp, being feared, meant you wouldn’t be hurt.”
Her voice caught just enough to roughen the edge. I kept my hands flat on my knees so I wouldn’t reach for her.
“I didn’t learn softness. I didn’t know what tenderness looked like—until you.” She glanced at me. “Which is funny. Considering how much you flinch.”
I gave a small, humorless smile. “We’re a mess.”
“A beautifully bonded disaster,” she said dryly.
I glanced at her. “You talk like this is normal.”
Our shoulders brushed—the barest touch—then drifted apart. The contact flashed like lightning under the skin, quiet and dangerous.
“Do you ever wish it didn’t happen?” I asked. “The bond.”
She turned toward me. “No. Do you?”
I hesitated, tasting the truth before I let it out. “Sometimes I wish it hurt less.”
We let the quiet hold. My pulse stuttered when her knee knocked lightly against mine and didn’t move away. The bond warmed—subtle, patient, as if waiting for us to decide what we were.
I leaned in just enough to feel her breath and whispered,
“I’m not scared of the bond anymore.”
Raena turned, eyes locked with mine—open, unflinching, and dangerous in all the ways that made restraint feel like devotion. I looked away, because looking meant falling.
“I’m scared I’ll want more than it can give.”