The rain hadn't stopped since dawn, and neither had the pounding in my skull. I stood at the window of Kael's study — no, our study, though the word still felt like a stone in my mouth — watching water carve silver rivers down the glass.
Behind me, the fire crackled low, and I could smell him before I heard him: pine smoke, rain-damp wool, and that deeper thing, the Alpha scent that made my wolf pace restless circles inside my ribs.
"You've been standing there an hour," Kael said quietly.
I didn't turn. "The Nightfang scouts crossed the eastern ridge at midnight. Your patrols found their scent markers by the river."
Silence. Then the soft scrape of a chair as he sat. "You read the patrol reports."
"I read everything you leave on that desk." I finally turned to face him. "You told the council it was nothing. A wandering rogue, you said."
His jaw tightened. In the firelight, the scar along his left cheekbone looked darker, angrier. "I told the council what they needed to hear."
"And what do I need to hear, Kael?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "That Dain is testing our borders three weeks before the Blood Moon? That he's counting how thin you've stretched your warriors to guard both the northern pass and the Vale lands?"
He rose slowly, the way a predator rises — no wasted movement. "Seraphina—"
"Don't." I held up a hand. "Don't do the thing where you decide what I can handle. I'm not some fragile Luna you married for show. My bloodline is older than your pack's founding stones, and I—"
The door crashed open.
Marcus stumbled in, rain streaming off his leathers, his face white beneath the mud. "Alpha. Luna." He bent double, gasping. "The eastern watchtower—it's burning. And there's—" He swallowed hard. "There's a body on the threshold. One of ours."
The room tilted. Kael was moving before Marcus finished, grabbing his blade from the desk, and I was right behind him, my bare feet slapping cold stone as we ran through corridors that suddenly felt too long, too dark.
The rain hit like needles. The watchtower was a skeleton of flame against the black sky, and the smell — gods, the smell of burning wood and worse — made my stomach heave. Warriors were already forming a perimeter, their faces grim in the firelight.
And there, laid out on the wet stones of the courtyard like some obscene offering, was Joren.
Young Joren, who'd laughed at my terrible jokes just last week, who'd blushed when I asked about the girl in the kitchens. His throat was torn out. And carved into the stone beside him, in letters of his own blood, were three words: SHE IS OURS.
My wolf rose up inside me with a snarl so violent my vision went red at the edges. Kael's hand clamped around my wrist — not gentle, not claiming, just anchoring.
"Get her inside," he told Marcus, his voice like grinding stone.
"No." The word tore out of me. "No, I am not—"
"Seraphina." He turned to me, and his eyes had gone full wolf-gold, burning in the dark. "This is Dain telling us he can reach inside our walls. He wants you afraid. He wants you running." His thumb pressed hard against my pulse point, and I felt his heartbeat hammering against mine. "Are you going to give him that?"
The rain streamed down my face, mixing with something hotter. Joren's sightless eyes stared up at the burning sky.
"No," I whispered. Then louder, so the gathered warriors could hear: "No. We don't run."
A murmur went through them — approval, or maybe just relief that their Luna wasn't breaking. Kael's grip tightened fractionally. Pride flickered across his face, there and gone.
"Double the eastern patrols. I want the river watched day and night. And send word to the Vale —" He stopped, glancing at me.
"Send word to my father's warriors," I finished for him. "The Vale stands with Thornwood. Dain wants a war over bloodlines?" My voice didn't shake. I made sure it didn't shake. "Then he'll learn what my bloodline does to men who threaten what's mine."
As the warriors scattered to their orders, Kael pulled me against him, rain and all. His mouth found my temple, and for one stolen second, the Alpha mask cracked, and I felt him trembling.
"They wrote it in his blood, Sera," he murmured, so low only I could hear. "To get to you, they'd walk through me first. Through every warrior I command."
I pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. "Then we'd better make sure they never get the chance."
Behind us, the watchtower groaned and collapsed in a shower of sparks, and in the distance — so faint I almost thought I imagined it — a wolf howled. Not one of ours.
Dain was watching. Waiting.
Let him watch.