Nerissa POV
The howls started at night.
It was distant and faint enough that I might have told myself it was wind through the mountain passes if I hadn't spent weeks inside Obsidian Keep.
I lay in the small room and listened.
Three howls, spaced unevenly.
My wolf was immediately awake inside me.
I pressed my hand flat on my stomach and lay still until the sounds faded and the night settled back into its ordinary quiet.
Then I lay there in the dark and thought about what ordinary quiet felt like before I knew what I knew.
Harper heard them too.
She found me in the outer yard the next morning with her jaw tight and her soft brown eyes carrying something she had been sitting with since the night before.
"The howls,you heard them too,right?" she said.
"Yes," I said.
"The border p
