Five days until the Blood Moon.
Dax spent the morning in the training yard, pushing his wolves harder than he ever had before. They needed to be ready — not just for Magnus, not just for Shadow Fang's remnants, but for this. For the thing that was coming, the thing none of them fully understood.
Sera watched from the porch.
She'd told him about the Bond being the key — about how, if they completed the Mate Bond during the Blood Moon, they would become the key to the Ancient Blood Lock. Not Lumi. Not a blood sacrifice. Them. Together.
Dax had smiled when she said it. Not a happy smile — a dangerous one. The kind that meant he'd already started planning.
Now, as the afternoon sun slanted across the yard, he walked up the porch steps and sat down next to her.
"I have a proposition," he
