Kyree's POV
The forest smelled wrong. The wind carried traces of metal and something sharper underneath. I walked beside Cutter, each step slow and deliberate, while my eyes locked on the ground where the faint blood trail crossed into the dead land.
"This path wasn't made by just any old wolves," Cutter said quietly. I nodded once. "Too clean and too measured. Whoever did this knows how to hide scent. They walked against the wind and buried their prints in dry soil."
Cutter crouched and brushed his fingers across a patch of disturbed dirt. "See this? It seems she was bleeding heavily here, but the blood stops five feet forward. Someone carried her."
I knelt and touched the ground. The scent was fading, but not gone. Faint iron, sweat and a trace of something else, something that is half human. My chest tightened. "Hybrid."
Cutter looked up sharply. "The same one we tracked last night?" "Yes," I said. "The one who fought our scouts before vanishing."
