The land around Hollowmarsh hadn’t changed in years—and yet to Ashyra, it felt entirely alien. The moss-covered earth oozed memory, and the heavy mist clung to her like forgotten grief. This was Silverclaw territory, but not the part celebrated in stories. No wide training fields. No proud howls. Just marshland thick with rot, silence, and a sense that something ancient had gone to sleep here and never truly woke up.
The last time she’d stood near the Old Tree, she was seventeen. A Beta in name, still grieving her sister, barely holding her mother’s fragmented mind together. That night had carved a scar in her she’d never let heal.
Now, she returned not as a broken girl—but as a warrior, a leader, and the unwilling mate of the very Alpha who marched beside her.
Stephan moved through the
