Marked by midnight.

Chapter 3: Stirring Shadows. River’s POV.

Glancing down at my watch, I sighed quietly.

This meeting felt like it had lasted a lifetime.

The early hours had been productive, reports on border stability, joint patrol strategies, rogues, magic.. .. but now? Now they were talking about combat games. Combat games. As if competitive sparring between packs was top priority when rogue packs were organising and murdering Alphas in their beds.

I resisted the urge to use my Alpha command to make them all shut up or leave. Or at least shout them into being silent.. .. instead I chose to run my hands through my hair in frustration.

If I weren’t the Lead Alpha, I would have walked out by now. But I was chairing this meeting. I had responsibilities. Expectations. Even if those expectations were currently testing every shred of patience I had.

And tonight, I had none left to spare.

Something about this place, this restaurant tucked into the edge of the Dark Moon Forest, was crawling beneath my skin.

Shade felt it too.

My wolf had been unsettled since we arrived. Pacing, tense, reactive; his presence constantly shifting under my skin like static electricity. Normally, Shade and I were as aligned as breath and heartbeat, our unity was what made me strong. It was one of the reasons I’d been chosen as Lead Alpha at only twenty eight and kept it until now. No one could command like I could. No one could fight like we could.

But tonight, he was off. Silent one moment. Growling the next. We felt disjointed and I didn’t like it. Even now, I could feel him pacing just beneath the surface.

“What is it?” I asked him again.

No answer.

Just a low, guttural growl that sent shivers down my spine.

I shifted in my seat, trying to appear at ease; I had to hide this but my Beta noticed. Of course he did.

Bay had been watching me for the last ten minutes, narrowing his eyes like he was trying to solve an equation he didn’t know the answer to. I had noticed of course, I just wasn’t letting him know that. His brow furrowed deeper, still staring and I tried desperately to not meet his gaze, to avoid his questions that I couldn’t answer. Continuing to look at me, he questioningly raised his eyebrows and tapped one side of his head on his temple, discreetly.

I realised then I’d blocked the mind link. Instinctively. Automatically. Damn.

I dropped the block and turned to him slightly.

“River?” he linked immediately, concern threading through his voice. “What the hell is going on with you?”

I hesitated, then lied. “Just tired. Shade’s bored. So am I.”

Bay didn’t buy it. His lips pressed into a thin line, but he nodded anyway, cutting the link. We’d talk later. He always let me have space before circling back with questions I couldn’t dodge. Or in this case answer.

Shade’s growl came again, louder this time, vibrating beneath my ribs. I clenched my fists beneath the table, needing to steady myself.

I didn’t like this.

Something was wrong.

It wasn’t just Shade that had me on edge. The truth was, this place stirred something in me. From the moment we crossed into the surrounding town, I’d felt.. ..haunted. A pressure in the air. A sense of watching. Of memory.

It had been more than a decade since I set foot in the little town near Dark Moon Forest; longer still since I walked through any other human town.

Not since the night that had never let me go. That was in a human town. The night of the masquerade ball.

I closed my eyes for a breath too long, pushing the image back.

Her face. A stranger’s mask. The press of her body. The taste of her lips. The sound of her laugh like rain on fire.

I never learned her name.

She had vanished before morning, leaving nothing behind but the scent of fresh water rain and moonlit woods on my skin. A wolf’s scent.

I’d spent years trying to forget her. And more years trying to remember everything about her.

Because for one night, I had felt something I’d never felt before or since.

Something that might have been.. .. more.

But she was not yet of age to feel the bond; close to it I think, yet not quite eighteen. I hadn’t realised until I couldn’t find her afterward. The bond hadn’t fully bloomed. She hadn’t felt it the way I had.

And then she was gone.

A week later, news broke of the Shadow Moon Pack’s m******e. Every member wiped out. Burned to ash. So I chose to tell myself she had died that night. That was my truth.

It was easier than hoping.

But part of me had always wondered.. .. what if?

What if she lived?

What if she wasn’t in that pack?

What if .. ..?

My throat tightened.

I wasn’t twenty one anymore; fifteen years had passed. I had responsibilities now. I had wolves to protect. Packs to lead. I didn’t have time for hope. But sometimes, when the night got too quiet and the silence was too loud, I still remembered the way she looked at me through that mask.

The way her soul felt like it was reaching for mine.

The voices in the room continued to drone on, strategies, legacy debates, gossip, but I wasn’t listening anymore. I didn’t care and Shade was growing more and more restless.

I tried to focus on calming him but I felt a strange pressure in the back of my skull, crawling down the back of my neck like icy fingers brushing bone.

It was subtle at first, an itch, a pulse. But it didn’t go away.

It grew.

By the time the others began debating over trade routes between the territories, I wasn’t sure I was even in my own skin anymore.

My body was here. My mind wasn’t. That was somewhere else.

Shade’s unrest was becoming harder to manage. He wasn’t pacing anymore, he was growling. Breathing heavily. Ready to shift, to fight, to run. I could feel his claws scraping against the edges of my control. It took all I had not to let him rise too close to the surface. And he was trying.

Then the heat started.

It wasn’t physical, not in the way humans describe heat. It was ancient. Buried. It clawed its way up from the pit of my stomach and spread through my chest like wildfire caught in a wind tunnel; pushing, pulsing, demanding.

My skin prickled. My breath caught.

It felt like something… familiar.

It moved like a memory. Not one I could name but one I could feel. It curled beneath my ribs, behind my heart, blooming through my senses with the sharpness of a forgotten scent.

The world around me dulled. The conversation, the clatter of cutlery, even the flickering candlelight, all faded beneath the weight of whatever this was.

A pull.

Low. Deep. Magnetic. Painful.

Shade stopped growling.

And started listening.

What for, I didn’t know.