Chapter 5: The Border
993 Words
The eastern border of Blackmoon territory smelled like blood before Mika even saw the damage.
She arrived at dawn with four of her twelve wolves — Sera, Finn, and two older survivors named Talia and Rhys, the only ones she trusted enough to bring into hostile territory. Diego was already there, along with Marcus and a dozen Blackmoon warriors, all of them tense and hollow-eyed from what looked like days without proper sleep.
"You actually came," Marcus said, falling into step beside her as she surveyed the torn-up ground near the tree line — claw marks gouged deep into bark, scorched earth where something had clearly fought hard enough to leave scars on the land itself.
"I said I would." Mika crouched near a particularly deep gouge in the dirt, running her fingers along its edge. "How many attacks this week?"
"Three. Getting worse each time." Marcus's easy demeanor from their last meeting had vanished, replaced by the exhaustion of a man watching his pack bleed out slowly. "Kade's wolves are testing us. Probing for weakness before they commit to something bigger."
"And Diego's read on it?"
"Diego thinks Kade wants the territory outright. I think Kade wants Diego to look weak in front of his own pack." Marcus glanced toward where Diego stood at the border's edge, arms crossed, jaw tight as he studied the damage. "Either way, it's working. People are scared. Some are talking about leaving."
Mika stood, brushing dirt from her knees. "Show me where the last attack happened."
They walked the border for the better part of an hour, Mika's silver markings pulsing faintly beneath her skin every time she crouched near the worst of the damage.
She could feel something in the claw marks — not just violence, but a kind of hunger that made the hair on her arms rise.
"These aren't ordinary wolves," she said finally, straightening up near a boulder split clean in half.
Diego, who had been silent since her arrival, finally spoke. "What do you mean?"
"I mean whatever attacked here wasn't fighting to test your borders. It was fighting to feed." Mika turned to face him, and for the first time since the ceremony, something other than anger passed between them — a shared, professional urgency that neither of them could afford to ignore. "There's a wrongness in this ground. Like something old was disturbed."
"Old like you?" Diego asked quietly.
Mika's eyes narrowed. "Not exactly. What I carry is old power, but it isn't hungry. This—" she gestured at the scorched earth "—feels like something that hasn't eaten in a very long time and just remembered how."
Yara had warned her about this, in vague and frustratingly incomplete terms, during her training — old things stirring in old lands, disturbed by the same kind of grief and rage that had woken Mika's own bloodline six months ago. She hadn't expected to see the evidence so soon, or so close to Blackmoon's border.
"Can you stop it?" Diego asked.
"I don't know yet." Mika crossed her arms. "But I know Kade's pack isn't your only problem anymore. If something ancient is waking up on this border, it won't care whose territory it's standing on when it decides to hunt."
Diego's expression tightened, some of the diplomatic distance he'd maintained since her arrival finally cracking under the weight of genuine concern. "Then what do we do?"
"We watch. We wait for the next attack, and this time, I want to be there when it happens." Mika turned back toward the tree line, already calculating the risk of what she was about to propose. "I need to see it myself. Whatever's out there, I need to understand what we're dealing with before it decides for us."
"Absolutely not." The words left Diego's mouth before he seemed to fully consider them, sharp with an urgency that surprised even him.
Mika arched a brow. "I wasn't asking permission."
"You're not equipped to face something like this alone."
"I'm not planning to face it alone. I have my own wolves." Mika's voice hardened. "And in case you've forgotten, Diego, I don't answer to you. Not anymore."
The words hung between them, heavier than either of them probably intended. Diego's jaw worked like he wanted to argue, but something in Mika's expression — steady, unflinching, utterly certain of herself in a way she'd never been six months ago — made him hesitate.
"Then let me send warriors with you," he said instead. "Not because I don't trust your people. Because I'd rather have more wolves out there than not enough, if something goes wrong."
Mika studied him for a long moment, weighing pride against practicality. Finally, she nodded once. "Fine. But they follow my lead once we're out there. This isn't a Blackmoon operation."
"Understood."
As the group began preparing for the watch, Sera fell into step beside Mika, voice low enough that only she could hear. "You're being careful with him."
"I'm being tactical."
"You didn't used to separate those two things so carefully." Sera's eyes flicked toward where Diego stood issuing quiet orders to his warriors, something almost gentle in her tone. "Six months ago, I don't think you would have let him send anyone with you at all."
Mika didn't answer, because there wasn't a good answer to give — not one that didn't require admitting something she wasn't ready to look at directly. Whatever was shifting in the space between her and Diego, it was easier to focus on the monster in the woods than examine it too closely.
By nightfall, they were spread along the tree line in careful, silent positions, waiting.
They didn't have to wait long.
A roar tore through the darkness — inhuman, ancient, hungry — and the ground itself seemed to tremble beneath the weight of something that shouldn't have existed anymore.
Mika's markings flared to blinding silver as she rose to meet it.
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