The ground shuddered.
A roar of paws rolled through the trees, and then the forest broke open.
Shadowclaw burst from the dark like a storm given teeth—black fur, snapping jaws, eyes that burned with purpose. They hit the Darkclaw wolves in a wave and folded them under with ruthless efficiency. What had been a losing line for Elysia turned in a heartbeat, momentum snapping like a banner from Dimitri's first strike.
Elysia braced against a trunk, breath shallow, blood sliding warm down her forearm. She pressed her palm over the bite, ignoring the throb that pulsed venom-black beneath the skin. Wolfsbane. Old and bitter. Hunters' work. She watched through a haze as Shadowclaw fought like they were carved from a single order.
Dimitri cut through the chaos like a blade given a man's shape—larger than the rest, lethal without waste. He took a Darkclaw wolf low and ended the fight with a clean, merciless twist.
For an instant, his gaze found her across the madness. His eyes flicked to the blood on her sleeve, to the broken collar at her throat, and back to her face. No words. Only the question hanging between them is like a drawn bow.
Why are you here?
Elysia didn't have an answer that fit in a single breath.
Darkclaw broke. What survived of them fled into the pines, shadows folding into shadows until only the stink of fear remained. The clearing sank into a raw, ringing quiet.
Warriors closed around their Alpha, then—almost as one—shifted their attention to her. Elysia pushed off the tree and forced her shoulders straight. The world wanted to tilt; she didn't let it.
Dimitri strode toward her, expression locked and unreadable. The circle widened enough for him to enter and then sealed again.
"Who are you?" His voice still carried the edge of battle—low and rough, iron cooling.
"A rogue," Elysia said. Flat. "Passing through."
One of his brows rose. "You took down three Darkclaw, cut a hunter's leash, and shielded my heir." He didn't look away. "You don't pass through my woods. You choose them. Or they choose you."
"I heard a child in trouble," she said. "That's all."
"I don't believe in coincidence," he replied, stepping closer. His presence pressed the air thin. "Not here. Not now. Who sent you?"
"No one." She met his gaze and didn't blink. "Believe me or don't. I keep out of your war."
He held her eyes a few breaths longer than a stranger should have been able to bear. Then he nodded once, a concession that was not acceptance.
"You're injured." He flicked two fingers. Warriors moved. "We tend the wound. Then we talk."
She wanted to refuse on reflex. Then a heat-laced wave of pain hit her elbow to shoulder, and spots sparked at the edges of her vision. She shut her mouth and kept her feet.
They moved through the Highlands under a sky the color of bruised steel. Dimitri led. Elysia walked inside a loose ring of warriors who smelled of suspicion and relief in equal measure. Behind them, a young wolf carried Cathal on his back. The boy's head lolled against the warrior's shoulder, but his eyes kept slipping open just to find Elysia. When they did, something in her tightened.
They reached Shadowclaw ground at dusk. The settlement hid inside the woods—a cluster of timber halls and low cabins sunk deep into the roots of the land. Watch posts stood like patient trees. Fires burned banked and low. No one moved without a reason.
Dimitri dismounted and gave orders without raising his voice. "Get Cathal to the healer. Now."
The boy was carried away before Elysia could speak. She took one step after him and found the circle still there, not touching, but too close to pass. A voice cut the air behind Dimitri, sharp as a snapped bone.
"What is she doing here?"
The Beta came forward—Kieran—broad shouldered, scar down his jaw like a canyon in winter. His eyes were cold enough to scrape.
"We don't take strays," he said. "Not now."
"She saved Cathal," Dimitri answered.
Kieran's gaze slid to Elysia. It traveled over her like a blade measuring where to enter. "Or staged his end so she could stage his rescue. Darkclaw use rogues. So do the men who hunt us."
"If I worked for them," Elysia said, "we wouldn't be talking."
Kieran's mouth curved without becoming a smile. "We're not talking. We're deciding."
"That's enough," Dimitri said, not loudly. The sound of it cut the space clean. Kieran shut his mouth, but the heat in his eyes didn't dim.
Dimitri looked at Elysia again, as if the years were standing between them and he was taking stock of which ones still mattered. "You'll stay," he said. "For now. Under my protection." His tone made protection sound a lot like watch.
Elysia dipped her chin. She didn't thank him.
They put her in a narrow cabin with a cot, a chair, and a fire that sounded like it was trying to remember how to live. A healer—gray braid, steady hands—cleaned the bite without small talk. When she pried out a black shard from the wound, the smell of wolfsbane burned the air.
"Hunters," the healer muttered. "They're closer every week." She wrapped Elysia's arm in clean bandage and pressed a measured vial into her palm. "Don't drink this all at once. You'll stop hearing your bones rattle and start hearing your thoughts."
"Tempting," Elysia said.
The woman looked up, eyes unexpectedly kind. "Sleep if you can. The price of tomorrow is always higher when you don't."
When Elysia was alone again, she sat by the fire and unlatched the broken iron still around her throat. It clinked against the floorboards with the finality of a door shut. Burned skin throbbing, she let her head tip back against the wall. She had sworn she would never wear a collar again—metal or oath. Yet here she was, back under a roof that smelled of pine and promises.
A soft knock came. It didn't sound like a warrior's hand.
"Come in," she said.
The door edged open. Cathal stood there, tired and clean, hair damp, eyes too bright to have slept. He hovered inside like a question.
"Can I…"
She nodded to the chair. He sat carefully, as if the room might startle.
"I wanted to say thank you," he said, fingers worrying the hem of his tunic. "For not letting them… for saving me."
"You're welcome," she said, softer than she meant to.
"They don't trust you," he added, too honest to be cruel.
"I don't need them to."
"I do." He swallowed and lifted his chin. "But I trust you."
The words hit a place she'd kept hollow on purpose. Elysia looked away first. "Get some rest, Cathal."
He rose, then hesitated. "The charm—" His hand went to the moonstone at his throat. "My mother said if I was ever lost, someone would always find me. Someone who wore this before her."
Elysia's breath snagged. The sigil shone in the firelight—two crossing branches framing a single star. Once, she had painted that symbol on door lintels and oath cups. Once, she had worn it openly.
"What was your mother's name?" she asked before she could stop herself.
Cathal's mouth opened, then the door did. Dimitri filled the frame, shadow tall behind him.
"It's late," he said to his son. "Bed."
Cathal nodded and slipped past, but not before he glanced back at Elysia with a look that felt like a promise he didn't know he was making.
Dimitri did not leave. He didn't step inside, either; he stood in the threshold like someone who understood doors.
"You should be dead," he said without preface. "Hunters' collars don't slip."
"I'm hard to keep," Elysia said.
His gaze dropped to the bandage at her arm, then to the iron ring on the floorboards. "Hard," he repeated, as if testing a word that used to fit differently. A beat. "Why won't you shift?"
The question landed like a thrown stone. Elysia kept her face level. "Why assume I can?"
"Because I remember," he said simply.
The fire cracked. The room seemed suddenly too small.
He went on, softer. "Kieran wants you chained at dawn. He says it's caution. It's fear." He met her eyes. "You'll stay under my roof tonight. Tomorrow we decide."
"We?" she asked.
"I am Alpha," he said. "But I am not alone."
Elysia almost said something that would open old wounds and pour years out onto the floor. Instead, she nodded once.
Dimitri's head inclined. "Lock the door," he said, and was gone.
The night folded itself around the cabin. Elysia lay on the cot and let the healer's draught dull the edges of her thoughts. When sleep finally came, it came fast.
It didn't last.
A horn whispered in the distance—one low note, then silence. Not an alarm. A signal. Elysia sat up in the dark. The fire had fallen to a red eye. Her arm throbbed in time with her heart.
She was on her feet when the second sound came: the faintest scrape, wood on wood, from the window latch.
Elysia crossed the room without breathing and eased the shutter open with two fingers.
Outside, the settlement held still like prey. The sentries on the east post stared into the trees. Nothing moved. Nothing except a small shadow slipping from the cabin opposite—Cathal's—and ghosting along the wall toward the laurel beyond the fence.
"Child," she whispered, and the word fogged the glass.
She went for the door, hand on the latch—and paused. The floorboards near the threshold wore a smear no eye should have caught in the dark: a thin line of paste the color of old ash, drawn across the plank where a boot would step. Wolfsbane. Subtle. Enough to drop a body to its knees and keep it there.
Someone expected her to leave this room.
Slowly, Elysia took her fingers off the latch and backed away. She slid the window wider instead and slipped into the night, landing like breath on the damp earth. The paste glimmered on her door in the moonlight—careful, measured, planned.
She followed Cathal's small shape between cabins, keeping to shadows. The air held the same sour thread from the ravine. Hunters. But this wasn't a raid. It was a hand inside the walls, turning a lock from the other side.
The boy reached the laurel and disappeared. Elysia moved faster, every sense raked raw. A murmur floated from beyond the shrubs—two voices. One deep and smooth, the syllables oiled. The other a whisper she knew too well: Cathal's, trying to be brave.
"Just like we practiced," the deep voice coaxed. "Quiet feet. Your father need not wake. You'll be with your mother before dawn."
Mother.
Elysia's blood went cold.
She slipped around the laurel and saw them: a hooded man crouched at the gap in the fence, hand extended to the boy; a second shape farther back, holding the fence wire open with gloved fingers; the smell of wolfsbane heavy on both. The closer man's wrist bore a thin leather braid, marked with a double-carved brand—the same perverted sigil she had scrubbed from the dying wolf's shoulder.
Not pack. Not chance. A line straight back to the collector.
"Cathal." Elysia kept her voice low, steady. "Step away."
The hooded man lifted his head. Even in shadow, Elysia saw the smile. "There she is," he said softly. "The variable."
He straightened, and in the motion Elysia caught a second scent beneath the wolfsbane—a scent that lived in these halls, wore rank like skin, and smiled with its teeth in daylight.
Kieran.
Her heart went very still.
The laurel shivered. A third figure peeled from the dark on the other side of the fence and raised a hand in silent warning. Boots approached from behind Elysia—measured, confident, as if they belonged here.
"Enough," came Dimitri's voice, very quiet, very close.
He stepped into the space between Elysia and the boy, shoulders bare to the moon, eyes blown wide with fury he held by the throat. His gaze cut to the hooded man, then beyond him, to the shadow wearing his Beta's scent.
"Pack," he said without turning his head. "Wake."
From the hills, a horn answered—no whisper, this time, but a blade.
The hooded man's smile thinned. "Too late," he said, and flicked his wrist.
Four bolts sang at once.
Elysia moved without thinking. Dimitri lunged. Cathal cried out.
The first bolt hit wood. The second hissed past Elysia's cheek and burned the air. The third took the laurel itself and set it smoking with wolfsbane. The fourth vanished in a streak of black—
—and the chapter ends as Elysia spins toward the boy and sees only the moonstone pendant swinging in the air, its chain snapped, while the fence gap gapes wider and the night swallows a small shape whole.