The howl echoes across the mountain.
Once.
Twice.
Then silence.
A terrible silence.
The kind that makes every wolf on the ridge listen harder.
No one moves.
Not Moonridge.
Not Greymoor.
Not even the Silver Fang envoys.
The sound had come from the southern tree line, below the ridge and beyond the patrol routes.
Wrong place.
Wrong timing.
Wrong everything.
Rylan's eyes never leave the forest.
"Report," he says.
One of the Silver Fang envoys lowers the field scope from his eyes.
"Movement confirmed," he says.
"Numbers?"
The envoy hesitates.
That alone is enough to make my stomach tighten.
"At least twenty."
The air changes.
Twenty wolves.
Not a patrol.
Not scouts.
A force.
Mara swears quietly.
Fen goes pale.
Not visibly pale—werewolves don't do that easily—but so
