Nadia couldn't sleep.
She lay in her bed in the warriors' quarters, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the pack compound settling into nighttime quiet — distant laughter from the patrol house, the creak of the old oaks in the wind, the soft padding of the night-watch wolves circling the perimeter.
In seven hours, Lucas and his team would leave for the northern forest. In seven hours, they would attempt to breach the Cult's sanctuary and rescue the girl Nadia had spent a decade tormenting.
She thought about her father.
Theodore Hale would be in the guard house right now, sharpening his weapons the way he did every night — methodical, precise, each stroke of the whetstone a meditation on control. He had built his entire identity around the idea that his daughter would be
