The ash clung to my tongue like bitter grit, thick with the stink of charred wood and cooling blood. Dawn bled across the sky in a bruised grey, no warmth in it, only the promise of another day soaked in death. My knees ground into the mud, the wooden wolf still clutched in my fist, its carved fur slick with someone else's life. My fingers wouldn't open. They remembered Leo's small hands pressing it into mine two nights ago. Trust Mommy. I'll be brave.
A boot scuffed behind me. Ryan's shadow fell across the corpse I refused to look away from.
"Aria." His voice cracked like dry kindling. "We have to move."
I didn't answer. The rogue's throat was torn open, meat blackening where silver had kissed it. His eyes stared up at the colorless sky, surprised even in death. I wanted to crawl inside that surprise and stay there.
Ryan's hand closed around my upper arm. The second his burned palm touched me, acid fire raced across my skin. I snarled, twisting, but he yanked me upright with Alpha strength that slammed through my spine and locked my knees. The world tilted. My stomach lurched.
"Let go."
"No." His grip tightened until bone creaked. "You don't get to die here because you're too angry to think."
Anger flooded me, white-hot, tasting of copper. I shoved at his chest; the ruined fabric of his shirt peeled away under my palms, exposing blistered flesh that steamed in the cold air. He didn't flinch. His eyes—storm-grey, bloodshot—pinned me harder than his hands ever could.
"Look at the tracks, Aria. Really look." He dragged me three steps left, forcing my face down. "Four sets leave. Two come back to check their work. They're already six hours ahead, and these prints overlap like they knew we'd read them. This is bait."
I wanted it to be bait. I wanted to follow it straight into their teeth and rip until nothing moved.
He felt the tremor in my muscles—he always could—and his grip shifted, sliding down to my wrists, careful now, as if I were the one burned. "We do this smart, or Leo loses both parents today."
The fight bled out of me in one shuddering exhale. My knees buckled. He caught me before I hit the ground again.
We moved through the ruin like ghosts. Every breath dragged smoke and death deeper into my lungs. The safe house was a ribcage of blackened beams, still ticking as it cooled. Ryan kicked over a toppled steel cabinet near the back wall. The false floor beneath had warped but held. He pried it up with his claws.
Inside lay a small fireproof pouch, edges singed but intact.
My heart stopped.
I knew the weight of that pouch before I even touched it. Damon's emergency drop. Only three people on earth knew it existed.
Ryan handed it to me without a word.
The crest pin inside was still warm—Damon's Alpha sigil, a howling wolf circled by thorns. Pinned to it was a folded scrap of heavy paper, handwriting I'd recognize through blood and fire.
If you're reading this, I failed.
The boy is not in the city. Valen never intended to bring him there.
Head north past the three sisters ridge. Cave behind the frozen fall.
I bought you two days. Use them.
Tell the King I kept my oath.
Below the message, a rough map. One X, far from any road.
I pressed the pin to my lips. It tasted of Damon's blood and the lie we'd all lived for months.
Ryan's voice came out rough. "Iron Claw pack. Smell the foreign iron on the blades? Valen hired outside muscle. This wasn't a raid. It was extermination."
I closed my fist around the pin until the thorns cut. "Damon turned the safe house into a kill box for them. He planned to die here so we'd know where to go next."
Ryan's burned hand settled on my nape, gentle this time. "Then we don't waste it."
The stolen SUV waited half-buried under pine needles where we'd hidden it. Ryan drove. I sat in the passenger seat cradling Elias like a broken bird.
We found him exactly where we'd left him, curled inside the hollow of an ancient oak, wrapped in Ryan's jacket. The silver chains had done their work; his skin was parchment-thin, veins black beneath. Every breath rattled. But he breathed.
I slid into the damp leaves and pulled him into my lap. He weighed nothing. The King of the Blackwood wolves, reduced to bones and fever.
His eyes cracked open—milky, blind with pain—but his fingers found my cheek anyway. "Aria…"
"I'm here, Father." My voice didn't shake. I wouldn't allow it.
He tried to speak again. I shushed him, pressing my forehead to his. The monarchy was a chain around all our necks, yes, but it was also the reason my spine was made of iron. Without the crown, I would never have been strong enough to carry this day.
Ryan crouched, checking the shallow wounds on Elias's throat. "He'll live if we keep moving. Cave's two days on foot. One if we push the SUV till the axles snap."
I looked at the map again. The X sat inside a ring of ancient ward stones. Even from here I could taste the magic—old, sour, and very much alive.
Ryan met my eyes. "Valen's locked the boy behind a blood ward. My nose won't cross it. No wolf will."
I knew what that meant. We both did.
There was only one power older than the wolves, one bloodline the wards wouldn't recognize as enemy.
The Witches.
Ryan's knuckles went white on the steering wheel. "They'll ask a price."
"They always do." I stroked Elias's hair, silver strands coming out in clumps between my fingers. "But Leo is running out of time."
The engine roared to life. Ryan pointed the SUV west—no, northwest—toward the jagged silhouette of the Ironfang range where the forest turned wrong and the moon never set right.
I rolled the window down. Cold air slapped my face, carrying the last faint trace of smoke from the safe house. I pulled the burner phone from my pocket, the one with Leo's last photo as the lock screen—his gap-toothed smile, the wooden wolf raised like a sword.
I hurled it into the trees.
Rear-view mirror: the column of smoke from our ruined shelter rose thin and grey, already dissolving into the morning. Everything I had built—pack, territory, illusions of safety—gone.
All that remained was the carved wolf crusted with blood in my fist, the dying King in the back seat, and the man beside me whose burns I could still feel branding my palms.
This wasn't about territory anymore. Wasn't about succession or old grudges.
Valen had taken my son.
I would tear the world apart with my teeth to get him back.
The SUV lurched over roots and stone as we plunged deeper into the wild. Ahead, the sky darkened long before noon, clouds boiling black where no storm had right to be.
We were running toward darkness, but I welcomed it.
Darkness was the only thing strong enough to protect my son.