The Mate Hunters did not speak at first.
Their presence alone was a kind of declaration—tall, towering figures that looked carved from bone and moonlight, antlers fanning wide like ancestral trees, each etched with runes older than the pack stones.
The first, a female Hunter with hair like spun frost, scanned the room. Her gaze paused only briefly on Rowan—before traveling to Quinn… then Jace.
The second, broader and darker, stood unmoving by the door, as if guarding more than just an entrance.
But it was the third, the one without antlers, whose presence made the pack stir. He bore no adornments. No armor. Only a strip of leather at his throat—an unbroken mark on it, shimmering faintly.
He had once been bonded. And the bond was still alive.
Even now.
The silence stretched like wire
