The camp fell into tense, coordinated motion within minutes, warriors from three separate packs setting aside old rivalries to form a defensive perimeter around the fire.
Kade positioned himself beside me without needing to be asked, his earlier softness replaced entirely by the sharp readiness of someone trained since childhood to expect danger from every direction. Isolde and Vesper flanked us on either side, an alliance that would have seemed impossible only months earlier now settling into something almost natural under the pressure of shared threat.
"There," Rowan called out, pointing toward the tree line where the darkness seemed to bend wrong, shadows pooling thick and unnatural around a shape that had no business existing in the physical world.
It emerged slowly from between the
