Chapter 34:
ALESSIA
The forest swallowed me whole the moment I crossed into Shadowmoon territory, and with every step the mark on my wrist burned hotter, as though the pact itself was dragging me forward by a chain I couldn’t see. The whisper never stopped, it wound through my head in a dozen layered voices, calling me _Luna_, telling me to finish what my mate started, and the sound of it made my teeth ache and my vision blur at the edges. I kept moving but because stopping meant listening, and listening meant giving in, and I had not come this far just to hand myself over without a fight.
The trees here were older than BloodNight’s, their trunks gnarled and blackened like they remembered the blood spilled twenty years ago, and the air hung heavy with the scent of damp earth and old ir
