Three days passed in the Whispering Woods, yet time here did not move as it did beyond the borders. There was no sun or rising to mark the hours—only the shifting glow of the altar, the soft hum of ancient magic, and the quiet guidance of the voice that had welcomed me home. It told me its name was Elowen, the spirit guardian bound to this sacred ground since the First Luna first knelt here, and she had waited all these years for one of my bloodline to return.
“Your mother knew this place,” Elowen’s voice drifted through the mist as I sat cross-legged on the moss, palms turned upward to catch the silver light spilling from the stone. “She came here when she was your age, when they first began to turn the pack against her. She took only what she could carry—secrets, fragments of power, the
