The forest breathed like a sleeping beast.
Magdalene moved through the mist-veiled trees with her heart thundering, every sound amplified, every scent sharp and primal. Cold bit at her bare arms, but she didn’t slow. Couldn’t. Maddox’s howl still echoed inside her bones like a siren—low, mournful, and soul-wracking.
She didn’t know where she was going.
She just knew.
The moon above was fractured, glowing through the thick canopy in ribbons of ghostlight. Shadows shifted unnaturally, as if watching her, judging her. The Veil was thinning here. She could feel it.
The Shadow Pass.
The place where fates were lost and rewritten.
Her boots squelched in the mud as she ran, panting, her wolf clawing just under her skin. Magdalene was trained to be quiet, restrained, collected. But now—now s
