Chapter 45
Noa
The first warning our waiting game was over wasn’t the rush of dark magic that ripped through the trees and lit everything with a green hue.
It was the sound of Tanith’s coven and a few unlucky members of Pack McNamara fighting their way through the protective spells the Ashvale Coven placed all around the territory.
It was the wet, unmistakable noise of bodies being ripped apart by magic joined by the symphonies of screaming.
It was these noises that told Siggy and I during our walk back from our supply run to the healer’s cabin that something horrible was about to happen.
We heard the warning sounds of wolves in the distance. Unfamiliar. Dangerous. We didn’t hesitate from there. We slipped off the dirt road, out from open, and into the dense tree line, choosing cover over speed as we began making our way back toward Rennick’s house as quietly as we could.
It was during our stealthy trek—staying low, flinching every time a twig snapped or another pained howl split through the night—that dark magic flooded Amara’s ward, forcing it into a shape it was never meant to hold.
The air shifted around us, corrupt and stifling, and then the green glow flared to life.
For a while, our plan seemed to be working. The trees closed in around us, their branches and trunks masking us from sight, and we were lulled into thinking we’d bought ourselves time. That we’d stayed unseen.
We were wrong.
The howls behind us shattered that illusion.
Close enough that my stomach dropped.
They caught our trail and just like that, the forest stopped being our shelter and turned into a hunting ground.
I don’t know how long we’ve been pushing ourselves like this.
Long enough that direction stopped having any meaning many minutes ago, my bearing so twisted that I couldn’t tell you where we are even if I had time to stop and think about it.
Long enough that every step is now a chore, my muscles screaming, my lungs burning as I drag in air and force myself to keep going anyway.
The trees blur as we run, all of it washed in the ward’s unnatural green light—the ward that was never meant to be a visible force.
I can feel it from here, wrong and corrupted, and my magic recoils the way any living thing does to poison.
It screams inside my veins, a frantic warning that can’t be ignored.
Siggy’s hand is locked around mine, her grip unyielding. She’s the one pulling us forward, choosing our turns, seeing paths in the terrain I can hardly process. Her senses are sharper, her wolf fully present, and she knows this land in a way I can no longer compete with.
Each time the deep snow trips me, she hauls me upright and keeps us going.
Behind us, bodies crash through brush and powder, the sound of wolves closing fast.
Siggy’s voice slips into my mind, strained and breathless despite it only being a thought. I know who they are, I recognize their scents. They’re pack. Ours.
She tells me their names next, explaining how both men had been figures in the pack since before she was born, and my stomach drops as the truth settles.
I know those names because they were scribbled below the printed pictures taped to the board in Rennick’s conference room just days ago. Only suspects then but confirmed traitors now. Wolves who are supposed to be locked in the reinforced holding cells beneath the lodge.
They’re free now.
Someone let them out. Cathal. Tanith’s coven. Or the other ones Rennick hasn’t uncovered yet. I don’t know who opened those doors, only that the consequences are crashing through the snow and nipping at our heels. Our own pack mates helping the coven do exactly what Cathal promised.
To collect and take every Fallamhain pack omega they can get their hands on.
Amara’s hijacked and altered ward only makes that task easier.
Rennick and most of the pack’s fighters were on patrol when it went up. Now they’re stranded on the wrong side of it, cut off where they can’t reach us, while the omegas inside are boxed into a fixed radius. Where running and hiding has just become a stalling tactic.
They’ve turned the heart of the territory, where most of the pack lives, into a cage and left our strongest wolves outside of it.
Nothing more than shooting fish in a fucking barrel.
They didn’t care about the cost of entry.
They sent in a first wave knowing Ashvale’s protections would tear bodies apart—they already tested this theory with Darran and the two others.
Yet, they sacrificed their own to clear a path.
Because followers are expendable to people like Cathal and Tanith and there’s no limit of acceptable losses if it means control of the airstrip and this territory again.
If it means keeping trafficked omegas moving under the world’s nose.
If it means rounding up every Fallamhain Pack omega and selling them for a profit.
And the added bonus of it all? Getting to remove those of us fighting back.
Malvina’s cold comment about pest control surfaces again.
A branch snaps too close behind us. Siggy veers hard to the right, dragging me around a thick pine and sending us away from the house instead of toward it. Not because she doesn’t want to reach it, but because she knows we’ll get boxed in if we continue straight.
I’d love nothing more than to be in the safety of Rennick’s house, but the goal right now is just to evade long enough for help to come.
I squeeze Siggy’s hand and force words past my burning lungs and dry throat. “Shift. You’ll be faster.”
She risks a glance at me, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, breath smoking out in quick white bursts.
In some ways I’m lucky this is happening now. If this had happened while I was still rotting from the inside by sickness, I wouldn’t have been able to run ten feet before collapsing.
Siggy’s grip tightens instead of loosening like I’d asked. “Shut up. No,” she pants. “I’m not leaving you.”
I’m proud of her in a way that hurts, because she’s already done this.
She’s been hunted before by people who didn’t see her as anything but something to be taken and used. She ran until her feet were torn up and her bones were broken. She kept going and only stopped when she finally reached safety with me.
And I know all of it has to be crawling up now—old fear feeding new—but she isn’t breaking. She’s still here with me. Present and fighting.
Siggy pulls us around another thick group of trees, our boots skidding in the powdery snow as we turn.
I stumble and barely manage to catch myself before we both slide to a sharp, halting stop.
Two hooded figures emerge from the darkness between the tree trunks across from us.
Siggy doesn’t hesitate. She’s already pulling me into another turn, pivoting to run, when a voice rings out through the glowing green woods.
Singsongy. Deceitfully smooth. Almost playful.
I know that voice.
“Oh, and where do you think you’re going?” it calls. “Heel, puppy.”
The words are light, amused even, but the power woven through them cracks like a whip. Siggy freezes mid-step, every muscle locking at once. She stops so abruptly that my momentum carries me forward, my grip on her hand tugging uselessly as I try to take her with me.
She doesn’t budge.
“Stay,” the voice continues. “That’s a good puppy.”
Siggy’s body obeys because it doesn’t have any other choice.
I know exactly what this is even before the figures step closer and pull back their dark hoods in practiced unison.
The remaining triplets.
Zephira, the illusionist, stands on the left, long dark braid hanging over her shoulder, her face blank in a way that goes beyond composure or calm.
Her eyes are the same polished and empty glass I remember them to be, and for a fleeting second, I find myself wondering if she’s alive in any way that actually matters.
Evara, the silver-tongued compeller, stands beside her, with her messy pixie cut framing her face and bouncing on her toes, looking far too pleased to have cornered us.
Behind me, I feel their arrival before I hear it. The two wolves who were chasing us arrive and block the path we just came from, their bodies closing off our exit.
Evara steps closer, her attention fixed on Siggy.
“You really should have shifted when she told you to,” she croons, clearly having heard every word we exchanged while running.
“We could have kept this fun going a while longer. I do love a good game of hide-and-seek.” Her gaze drifts over my Nightingale’s frame with open appraisal.
“I would’ve liked to see your wolf too. If you were pretty enough, I might have decided to keep you for myself and make you into a fur coat. ”
She grips the lapels of her black coat and draws it tighter around herself, swaying slightly, as if picturing it.
I’m torn between watching her and watching Siggy, who stands frozen at my side, eyes empty and unblinking.
Zephira steps forward, all business, impatience sharpening her tone. “Stop wasting time,” she tells her sister, voice flat. “We’re on the clock. The plane is scheduled to land in the next hour, and we need the new stock gathered and waiting before the inverter’s magic on the ward fails.”
Inverter. The word slots into place instantly.
I’d already guessed what had happened with Amara’s magic, but this confirms it.
Inverters are rare, but it seems rare magic is something Tanith’s coven collects like stamps.
These witches or charmers can’t actually form their own magic.
They can only commandeer what’s already there, keeping a spell intact while twisting its purpose.
Amara’s ward is still standing. It’s just been turned into something else. A cage infused with dark magic.
The word plane is just as important, if not more so.
They aren’t just containing my pack’s omegas, they’re transporting them. Tonight.