The fire cracked in the old hearth as Wren sat cross-legged on the stone floor, ash smudged across her brow, sweat beading along her collarbone. The potion was complete—at least, she thought it was. Silvery wisps coiled inside the cauldron like ghost smoke, laced with fragments of her memory, a sprig of feverleaf, and the blood from her palm.
But it wasn't the potion that haunted her tonight.
It was the dream.
It had started a few days after the Bonefire Pact had been sealed, after her magic had fused itself into the Alpha's bond and twisted it into something neither of them could understand. At first, it was just flickers—an ache in her chest, a burst of emotion that wasn't hers.
But now?
Now she saw him in her dreams. And she wasn't alone.
The first time, the landscape was burnt black—forests reduced to cinders, the sky bleeding copper. Cassian stood at the center, naked and clawed, his wolf form flickering like a broken lantern between man and beast. A figure loomed across from him, tall and shadowed, eyes glowing silver—not gold like any wolf she'd ever known.
Antlers. Not real ones, but spectral—growing from his brow like smoke-wrought crowns. And then Cassian would scream her name.
And she would wake, gasping, with ash in her mouth.
Tonight, she refused to sleep.
"Rest will eat at you if you keep denying it," croaked Elsha, her mentor, from the shadows.
Wren didn't respond. Her mind was already chasing something else—the silver-eyed figure. She'd drawn him from memory in her grimoire. The antlers. The scar across his jaw. The strange, watching hunger in his expression.
Not wolf. Not witch.
Something… else.
She looked toward the window. Moonlight spilled in cold and blue. Cassian would be dreaming again tonight. She could feel the pull already, the way his pain tried to tunnel into her chest like a root system gone wild.
She would not go to him. Not tonight. Let him feel it. Let him know what rejection tasted like when it licked at your soul and left scars behind your ribs.
Cassian woke with a roar.
Sweat slicked his chest. The sheets were twisted, claw marks ripped into the mattress. The dream again—the fire, the figure, Wren vanishing into smoke.
It was always Wren.
He stumbled to the basin, splashing cold water over his face. He gripped the porcelain so hard it cracked beneath his fingers.
"She's doing this," he growled to himself. "She's in my head."
"No," came a voice behind him—his Beta, Marek. "You let her in. You marked her. And then you shattered the bond."
Cassian turned, fangs flashing. "She's a witch."
"She was your mate."
Cassian flinched. The word felt like venom now. The Pack was restless. The elders wanted Wren cast out—burned, even. But the Bonefire Pact had changed everything. She wasn't just a mate he'd rejected. She was tethered to him now, by something older than mating laws. Something not wolf-made.
"She's angry," Marek said softly. "And her anger is waking things we haven't seen in centuries."
In the forest beyond the ridge, where the wolves never roamed, the fog was beginning to churn.
Wren stood in the grove of bones. She had followed the pull in her veins, something ancient and unspoken. Something that called her here.
She wasn't alone.
He stepped out of the mist like a memory. Silver eyes. Antlered shadow. Tall, lean, powerful in a way that wasn't just physical—it was primal. His skin was marbled with dark veins of magic, his voice low and unhurried.
"You saw me," he said.
"In my dream," she answered.
"You summoned me."
"I didn't mean to."
He smiled, slow and dangerous. "But you did."
She stepped back. "What are you?"
His expression shifted—something painful flickering through the mask of calm. "I'm what wolves fear. What witches forget. And what you, Wren of the Ashthorn line, are about to need."
"Why help me?"
He tilted his head. "Because I've been waiting for someone like you. Someone who has lost too much to still play nice with fate."
She swallowed. "What's your name?"
He leaned closer, the air between them humming with tension. "They once called me Veylan. But the shadows call me something else now."
"What?"
He smiled again. "The Shadow Wolf."
Then he was gone.
Cassian staggered to the council chambers the next morning, his vision haunted.
"She's consorting with shadow creatures," hissed Elder Korin. "Her blood is awakening the cursed ones."
"She is cursed," spat another.
"She's mine," Cassian snapped. "By bond. By law."
"You rejected her."
"And yet I dream her screams every night," he growled. "What does that tell you?"
Silence fell.
It told them everything.
Back in her hut, Wren stared at the antlered figure she'd painted in charcoal on the wall.
Veylan. Shadow Wolf. He hadn't touched her. But something in the air when he'd spoken her name—it felt like the flicker of a match before flame. Like the breath before a kiss never given.
Dangerous. Forbidden.
Tempting.