SCARLETT
The plain shimmered like powdered moonlight, endless and silent except for the steady crunch of my own footsteps.
No scent. No wind. No pack-bond hum.
Just the laugh low, deliberate rolling across the horizon like distant thunder.
I turned in a slow circle.
“Kael?” My voice cracked in the empty air.
“Darius? Lucien?”
Only the echo answered, thin and mocking.
The shadow loomed larger with every heartbeat. At first it seemed like a mountain, then a storm front, until I realised it was neither. It moved a living mass of black mist threaded with silver sparks, undulating as if it breathed.
The crescent mark on my shoulder burned white-hot.
The voice came again, now a whisper brushing the back of my neck though nothing stood there.
Moonbane… you keep running to Alphas. But
