Chapter 15
Kaldrek felt the darkness all day. It clung to the lodge like damp rot, bleeding off Alaric’s unconscious body in waves that never fully stopped.
Even asleep and bandaged, Alaric radiated wrongness.
Kaldrek kept himself coiled tight because of it, every instinct braced for a threat that might not be outside at all.
By the time the sun sank and Wrenford gave itself over to night, the cold had turned sharper.
Kaldrek sensed it before Nathan reached the lodge, a wash of frost creeping over his skin like a warning.
But the village was saturated now. Alaric’s corruption, the residue of blood magic, and the lingering shock of the light that had poured into Kaldrek’s hands earlier had all begun to blur together.
That flare of sunfire had left him briefly unsteady, as though his senses had gone dim and returned out of rhythm.
A few lost heartbeats of distraction might already have cost him.
He stepped outside with Holden and Nathan close behind, and regret struck at once. He should have trusted the warning sooner. Moonshade and Glaciermaw were already shouting, herding villagers inside. Doors slammed. Footsteps scattered.
Farther out, wolves had shifted and moved to the perimeter, shadows threading through darkness with teeth, muscle, and silent precision. Kaldrek felt them all, a living ring drawing tight around Wrenford.
Then he heard it.
“He’s heeere,” a chilling voice whispered, like a secret breathed against skin. “Yesss. Yesss. I feel him.”
Kaldrek’s head snapped toward the sound.
“What is it?” Holden asked, instantly alert.
“You don’t hear them?” Kaldrek growled.
“Hear what, Alpha?” Nathan asked, his gaze already sweeping the treeline.
“They’re whispering around us.”
Holden frowned. Nathan’s eyes narrowed. Neither moved, but confusion passed plainly between them.
“I hear nothing,” Nathan said, slow and sure.
Then the voice came again, closer this time, slick as oil.
“We are speaking to youuu, Alpha.”
Kaldrek’s teeth clenched. He forced himself to breathe, to separate signals from noise, to keep his focus from splintering. The whispers clawed at the edges of his mind, trying to pull his attention away from what mattered.
He didn’t let them.
“Nathan,” he said, voice clipped. “Do not let Evelyne leave that lodge.”
Nathan’s posture shifted immediately.
“Keep Cillian and Alaric inside with Heidara. Stay there with her.” Kaldrek’s gaze sharpened. “If Alaric wakes and he isn’t himself, they’ll need you. All of you.”
Nathan nodded once and took off at a sprint, disappearing into the dark.
Kaldrek turned to Holden.
They needed no words. Understanding hardened across Holden’s face, and Kaldrek felt the old rhythm settle back between them.
They stripped off their belts, leather and steel striking the ground, then shifted, bones cracking as heat surged through them and the world snapped sharp through wolf eyes.
A heartbeat later they were moving, fast and low, disappearing into the night to hunt whatever had come whispering for an alpha.
Kaldrek tore through the wet grass, breath steaming in white bursts that vanished almost at once.
In wolf form, scent became map. Sound became distance.
Movement became truth. He tasted fear on the wind drifting from the village, heard the distant shouts of Moonshade and Glaciermaw driving civilians indoors, heard the pounding of paws as the perimeter drew tight.
Beneath it all, threading through everything like smoke in his lungs, the whisper came again. Closer now. More voices.
He felt them moving in the dark, slipping from mist to flesh and back again, never staying solid long enough to be caught. A taunt. A trail laid with purpose.
“He follows,” the voice purred, shivering with delight. “Yes. The alpha follows.”
Holden moved behind him like a second shadow, never straying far. He did not serve from a distance. He served with teeth and blood.
Kaldrek reached for him through the pack bond.
Stay back. Let me scout.
A hard pulse of stubbornness answered at once.
No.
Kaldrek felt the refusal more than heard it, felt it settle into Holden’s stride and the set of his body.
Holden.
Not without you, Holden sent back.
Kaldrek’s frustration flared, then faded. Holden was not acting from pride, but from loyalty too fierce and deeply rooted to challenge.
The whispers slid through the trees again, drawing them onward. “Come farther,” they breathed. “Follow us.”
Kaldrek did not slow, but his mind stayed focused. This was not a raid. Not the sloppy hunger of Noskari drawn to easy prey. They were not rushing the village. They were not tearing into civilians. They were not even trying to breach the packs’ ring of teeth.
Instead, they were scattering themselves like bait.
One thin wisp of black mist streaked across the path ahead, taking human shape just long enough for Moonshade wolves to give chase, then dissolving again.
Another figure appeared near the eastern edge, a silhouette meant to be seen, meant to be followed, dragging the other packs outward in a wide sweep.
Like a distraction.
A net.
And Kaldrek was the intended catch.
The whisper nearest him deepened, as if it had leaned close to his ear. “South,” it urged. “Go south, Alpha. To the place she came from. The place your blood remembers.”
Kaldrek’s stride faltered for half a heartbeat. Not because he believed them. But because the word landed in a place inside him that had no business responding.
The south. Velenshire. The home of his mother.
The voice smiled into his mind.
“Yes,” it crooned. “You feel it. Your magic is stirring. It wants a vessel. It wants purpose. It wants to be used.”
Kaldrek bared his teeth as he ran, a silent snarl. They were lying.
“You are more than wolf. More than teeth. More than scars.”
Visions flashed at the edge of Kaldrek’s mind like some dream not his own: a tree blazing with unnatural light, bloodroot veins throbbing beneath black soil, a woman’s hands stained with crimson. A cradle. A crown. Vaelora.
He forced the images back and felt Holden press nearer.
Kaldrek sent again, harsher: Circle back. Stay where you can see the treeline. If they’re drawing us out, they want space.
You’re not going alone, Holden responded with annoyance.
Before Kaldrek could snap back, three shapes coalesced ahead, too solid to be coincidence.
Human forms, pale gray, standing in a loose arc that blocked the path like a casual invitation.
They didn’t look like villagers. They looked like echoes of people.
Skin stretched too tight over bone. Eyes too black. Smiles too wide.
Kaldrek slowed just enough to read them, to map angles and exits, to smell the cold decay under their flesh.
“Alpha,” the center one said aloud, voice thrilled. “We have been waiting.”
Kaldrek did not answer. He lunged. The Noskari dissolved into mist at the last instant, slipping past his teeth like smoke, reforming behind him in a laugh of shadows.
They wanted him to chase.
They wanted him to go deeper.
Why me? he asked himself.
In answer, the voices whispered back. “Because you can hold what others cannot. Because you will survive what would break them.”
They began to steer him with their presence.
A figure formed to the left, only to vanish.
Another took shape to the right and fled the moment he turned.
Each time Kaldrek shifted course, they adjusted.
Each time he tried to circle back, one appeared just long enough to draw him onward again.
Holden stayed close at his flank, teeth flashing in the dark, yet the ground between them and the village kept widening all the same.
“Go south,” they coaxed. “Take what is yours. Your power needs the source. It will make you stronger than any of them.”
Why did they care what power he carried? It reeked of a trap.
Kaldrek’s hackles lifted. At last he slowed, refusing to be drawn another step. He planted his paws in the grass and raised his head, a low growl rolling from his chest. Holden stopped beside him at once, ready.
The night fell still.
For one suspended breath, the whispers quieted, as though resistance had caught them off guard. Then three shapes burst from the dark at once.
Noskari bodies hit Kaldrek from three sides, all claws and weight and teeth.
He snapped at the first and caught only a shoulder, diseased blood smearing his tongue as it tore free.
Another slashed across his side. The third came from above, faster than it should have been, claws driving for the vulnerable place beneath his jaw.
Kaldrek twisted, but not fast enough. Claws found his throat, tearing straight into the freshly healed wound that still ached when he swallowed.
Pain burst white behind his eyes as the Noskari ripped through the weakened flesh with cruel precision, as though they had been waiting for that exact place.
Warm blood poured down his chest, steaming in the cold. Kaldrek stumbled, his legs buckling as he fought to stay upright, fought to drag air through the sudden flood of agony in his throat.
Holden hit them with a snarl, slamming into one attacker hard enough to send it skidding. Teeth sank deep. Bone cracked. But the other two were already retreating, dissolving into mist the moment they had done what they came to do, leaving Kaldrek bleeding into the dirt.
He hit the ground hard, the world pitching with him.
Each breath came wet. Blood filled his mouth. The cold land beneath him bit deep, and for one wild instant his wolf instincts screamed at him to rise, to run, to fight, to live. His body would not answer.
A delighted whisper brushed his ear. “This is the beginning,” it breathed. “This healing you now crave will be the trigger.”
Kaldrek’s vision blurred at the edges. The voice threaded through the haze like both promise and curse.
“When the kin touches you again,” it murmured, “your true power will wake.”
Kaldrek tried to answer, but only a torn rasp left him.
“We will come for you again,” the voice whispered. “Kaldrek… son of Vaelora.”
Then the darkness scattered, leaving him on the frozen ground, blood soaking into the soil. Holden’s snarls faded at the edge of hearing as he fought to reach him, the village impossibly far away, the cold closing over him like a mouth.