POV: Riley
The night should have felt peaceful.
The war preparations had settled into a steady rhythm. The pack slept. The guards rotated their shifts. The forest lay quiet beneath the silver gaze of the moon.
But still… I couldn’t breathe.
I stood alone on the eastern balcony of the palace, the cool stone pressed against my palms as I leaned forward, staring at the treeline where darkness thickened unnaturally. My chest ached—not with fear exactly, but with a strange, hollow pull, as if something deep inside me were being called.
I pressed a hand to my stomach instinctively.
The air shifted.
The moonlight flickered.
And suddenly—I felt it.
A presence.
Not hostile.
Not gentle.
Ancient.
My breath caught as a rush of warmth flooded through my veins, curling through me in slow, s
