The scent hit her before the memories did. It rolled through the forest like smoke—faint at first, almost easy to ignore. But Aria didn’t ignore anything anymore. She stopped mid-step, her body going still as her senses sharpened instinctively. The wind shifted again, carrying the smell more clearly this time. Her chest tightened, her wolf stirred beneath her skin, restless, alert. Aria closed her eyes slowly and inhaled, pine, damp earth and beneath it Moonridge, her pack.
The place she had once called home, the place that had betrayed her, her fingers curled into fists at her sides. For a moment, the world around her blurred—not from weakness, but from memory. The night of her death, feeling cold, the betrayal and the silence when no one came to save her. Her breath hitched, but she fo
