The air was heavier than before. Not just thick with mist or the metallic scent of blood still clinging to the scorched Council ruins—but charged, like the world itself was holding its breath.
Kael stood at the edge of the war chamber, knuckles pressed into the cold stone of the table as his pack leaders whispered around him, sensing something… ancient. Something wrong.
And Seren felt it too.
She had barely slept since the vision in the moonlight—the twin flames, the ash, the storm that had spoken in riddles through her unborn children’s bond. Her body was changing again. Not visibly. Not yet. But inwardly, there was a hum beneath her skin. Like her soul had been rewritten in fire.
“I don’t trust this,” Kael muttered, eyes fixed on the edge of the horizon. “The border scouts should hav
