The woods around the Alpha’s house had always felt like an extension of Kael—ordered, guarded, alive with quiet authority.
Tonight, they felt wrong.
I noticed it first in the silence.
Not the peaceful kind, where insects hummed, and leaves whispered secrets to one another, but a hollow stillness, like the forest itself was holding its breath for what was about to come. My boots pressed into the damp earth as I walked between Kael and Orion, the three of us moving away from the house and into the tree line.
“Do you feel that?” I murmured. Orion’s hand drifted closer to the hilt of the blade strapped across his back.
“I do now.”
Kael didn’t answer immediately. His gaze was sharp, sweeping the shadows between the trunks, his shoulders tense beneath his dark coat. The bond between him
