Gregor POV
The moon bled out of the sky and the world went gray—too gray for comfort. My wolf churned beneath my skin the entire night, pacing the edge of my bones like an animal that knew the hunt hadn’t ended. I thought it was nerves. I thought it was habit. I thought a lot of things that were easy to tell myself.
Near dawn, while the cottage still slept under Nonna’s stubborn hearth, I heard it: soft at first, the way a predator pads in the dark—footsteps on the path, careful, practiced. Not the clumsy tread of villagers. Not the heavy thud of my pack’s patrols. Precise. Silent. Wrong.
My hand tightened on the whittling wood until my knuckles whitened. The hair on my arms lifted. I listened for anything else and the world narrowed to sound: breath, a rustle of fabric, a blade whisper
