SKYE POV – CHAPTER 47
Blue Lake doesn’t scream.
It tightens.
The wards don’t flare or shatter or announce themselves with spectacle. They constrict—subtle, instinctive, like muscle locking around bone. The land recognizes distress before sound ever reaches the air.
I feel it first.
A sharp pull behind my sternum. A pressure drop in the pack bond. Wolves across the territory pause mid-step, breath hitching in unison.
Something crossed our borders.
And it’s bleeding.
I’m already moving by the time the warning hum vibrates through the pack house. My chair scrapes back hard enough to bite stone, but I don’t look behind me. Iris is there—of course she is—her presence flaring warm and steady at my flank as we push through the hall.
The front doors open onto night.
Cold air. Pine. Water
