The Council’s retaliation didn’t come as a decree. It came as a dream.
Not mine.
I woke to my son screaming. Not the halfhearted yelp he gave when Wolfie fell off the bed. A full-bodied, throat-shredding sound that had me out of my room and at his door before my brain caught up.
Mara was there first, hair wild, ward charm glowing in her fist. El scrambled up from the floor fort, tangled in blankets. Grace hit the doorframe with a shoulder, halfshifting, eyes gold.
I pushed past them.
He was sitting bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat, eyes huge and unfocused, Wolfie clutched in a whiteknuckled grip. The air around him felt wrong—thick and cold, overlaid with a smell that didn’t belong in a child’s room: old ash and damp stone.
My stomach dropped.
“Nolan,” I said, before I realize
