WESLEY’S POV
The whispers came to me first like gnats in the dark. It was faint, irritating, and impossible to swat away.
Ellie is living stronger.
The name rattled in my skull until sleep became a battlefield. I woke drenched in sweat, the sheets strangling me, my chest heaving as though her ghost had pressed its hand against my throat. I didn’t know who had breathed the rumor first — some coward muttering by the fire, perhaps, or a scout too clumsy to guard his tongue, but I knew it had spread like disease.
My wolves were muttering in corners, glancing over shoulders, passing it like an ember they were too afraid to hold yet too unwilling to stamp out. I could feel it in the walls of Moonshade itself, the very air buzzing with treachery.
By dawn I stormed into the council chamber, f
