ELLIE’S POV
The night air was cool when I reached the edge of Moonshade’s land. The trees that had once felt like bars of a cage now thinned, their shadows stretching long and brittle across the earth. The soil changed under my feet—the scent of ash and sorrow giving way to something else. The earth here carried a different fragrance, cleaner, raw, alive with wild grass and pine. It was grounding, familiar, safer than I had dared to hope for.
My steps slowed as the forest opened, revealing the invisible line where Moonshade ended and Crimson Fang began. That border had always felt like an unreachable horizon, a place I was never meant to touch. Yet now, after all that had been burned and broken behind me, here I stood.
And there he was.
Jovani.
He waited at the border as though he had
