A week after the vampire parley, border patrols found them.
Two packless wolves. Female. Starving. Desperate. Trying to sneak across the Direwild boundary under cover of darkness.
The week had been healing in more ways than one. My body had recovered from the venom, the silvery scars on my arms fading to thin lines that would disappear entirely within another moon cycle. Ronan and I had been rebuilding what Jasper's ghost had damaged: quiet mornings with Lucian, evening patrols together, nights spent proving that chosen love could be fierce and certain. The pack had settled after the vampire confrontation, warriors drilling harder, scouts mapping new routes, everyone preparing for winter's approach.
But now this.
"Should we kill them?" the patrol leader asked when they dragged the intruders to the den. "Or hear them out first?"
