LUCIEN'S POV
There was no reason to have been as anxious as I have been over the scout’s message. Just another border disturbance, traces of magic that were not necessarily tied to any single cause. But something about the description set my hair on the back of my neck bristling.
"Tell it to me again," I said, of leaning over the chair. "The magical signature. What specifically did it feel like?”
The scout fidgeted, a young wolfling named Marcus. "It was cold, Alpha. Not cold as in temperature cold, but in being-cold-to-your-soul cold. As if something was simply wrong there. And there were scorch marks on the trees, but not those of ordinary fire. They were black, as if the wood itself had been burned from within.”
Dark magic. The sort we had to pay for, which distorted nature into som
