The shrine was older than the pack.
Older than the keep.
Older than the lies carved over its bones.
That was how Frostclaw slipped inside Blackthorne.
Not through gates.
Not through walls.
Through devotion.
The western shrine lay beneath a collapsed watchtower, its steps hidden by drifting snow and a tangle of dead ivy. Few wolves still prayed there. Fewer guarded it. It was considered harmless—an echo of an age when the Moon answered directly and alphas kneeled like the rest.
Tonight, it opened.
The key slid into the inner ward with a soft, traitorous click.
Elder Vesh—council loyalist, prayer keeper, and quiet architect of betrayal—exhaled a trembling breath as the runes dimmed to a sickly gray. Beyond the shimmer, a narrow tunnel of frost-cut stone stretched inward toward the
