Sleep didn’t come easy anymore.

When I finally drifted off, it wasn’t to rest but to a rhythm that didn’t belong to me — a heartbeat echoing somewhere beyond my ribs.

Every time it came, I felt the air thicken, my skin prickle, and my wolf stir like it was listening for something I couldn’t hear.

I’d told myself it was the bond’s ghost, some leftover curse of the Blood Moon.

But ghosts don’t breathe.

This one did.

________________________________________

The training field should have burned the unease out of me, but even the clang of steel couldn’t drown the pulse beneath my skin.

Mara’s voice broke through the noise.

“You’re off again.”

I blocked her strike, too slow, the wooden blade grazing my ribs.

“Guess I’m tired.”

“You don’t get tired.” She dropped her stance, brows drawn. “You get haunted.”

I forced a grin I didn’t feel. “That’s a dramatic way to say I need sleep.”

She wasn’t fooled. “Kane’s been quiet since his run west. You notice that?”

Of course I had. The Alpha of Ironclaw didn’t brood; he calculated. But now, his silences felt like walls.

“He’ll tell us what we need to know,” I said.

“Will he?” Mara’s eyes softened. “You trust him too much.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I just owe him everything.”

________________________________________

Later, when the others left the yard, Kane appeared at the edge of the trees.

The scars along his arms caught the evening light — pale reminders of a life that refused to fade.

“You’re slipping again,” he said.

“Trying not to.”

His gaze searched for mine, patient but sharp. “How bad?”

I hesitated. “It’s stronger. The pull. I feel him even when I’m awake.”

Kane’s jaw worked. “He hasn’t crossed again.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if he had,” he said quietly, “the forest would already be bleeding.”

That didn’t comfort me.

He stepped closer, his voice softer. “I met him, Lyra. He’s dangerous, but not aimless. You need to be ready for what that means.”

“What does it mean?”

“That he’s not here to destroy you,” Kane said. “He’s here to find something he lost.”

I swallowed hard. “And if that something is me?”

“Then you decide what he finds.”

________________________________________

That night, I couldn’t stay inside.

The wind carried the scent of pine and snow, and underneath — something older. Smoke. Iron. The echo of a promise I never made.

I walked to the river where Ironclaw’s border met the dark line of Nightbane’s woods. The moon hung high and thin, a silver blade cutting through cloud.

The water looked calm, but my reflection wavered — shifting between the woman I’d become and the girl who’d run from fire.

A ripple in the current.

Then another.

The wolf inside me froze.

The air tasted like him — wild, cold, deliberate.

My heartbeat stumbled.

“He’s here,” I whispered.

________________________________________

Branches snapped in the distance — faint, deliberate. I caught the scent again, stronger this time.

He’d crossed the line.

Every instinct screamed to move, to run toward it, to see. But Kane’s voice echoed in my head: You decide what he finds.

So, I stood still, breathing through the pull until it dulled enough not to rip me apart.

When I finally turned back toward camp, Mara was waiting by the tree line.

“You felt it too,” she said.

I didn’t ask how she knew. “Yeah.”

“Kane’s called a meeting. He says the Nightbane have breached the river trail.”

My chest tightened. “Then it’s starting.”

Mara nodded grimly. “What do we do?”

I looked once more toward the forest, the bond still thrumming faint beneath my skin.

“Whatever it takes,” I said. “But I’m done running.”