Chapter 26
Nova
The firepit crackles in the pre-dawn darkness as I move through the compound’s eastern edge. Most of the pack sleeps, but not all.
Harper sits on one of the split-log benches, hands wrapped around a steaming mug, staring into the flames. Her head lifts when a cabin door opens across the clearing.
A female wolf I recognize but don’t know well—one of the newer arrivals—slips out, tugging her jacket closed. She moves quickly toward the main lodge, avoiding the firelight.
Ben appears in the doorway, pulling his shirt over his head. He scans the clearing and spots Harper by the fire.
Their eyes meet across the dying embers. Harper doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t move. But something in her posture folds inward, like armor closing over a wound.
Ben disappears back into his cabin and shuts the door.
I slip past the firepit, invisible in the darkness. Harper’s still staring at his closed door when I reach the treeline.
My pack-trained senses clock five wolves on perimeter patrol as I slip between shadows at the eastern edge of the compound. Two stationed at fixed points, three moving in rotation. Predictable. Easy to track. Easier to avoid.
Dane’s voice carries from the meeting hall—something about reinforcements and protocol. The words blur together, background noise that shouldn’t matter. But they do. Each syllable pulls at something in my chest I refuse to acknowledge.
I move fast, silent, staying downwind. My boots don’t snap twigs. My breath doesn’t cloud the air. I’ve spent a lifetime being invisible. This is what I do.
Three miles from the compound, the forest thickens. No paths. No markers. Just instinct pulling me forward like a compass needle finding north. The magic in my blood vibrates, recognizing something ahead before I can see it.
Something that wasn’t there yesterday.
But before I can investigate, my detection stone flares hot in my pocket—sharp, aggressive spikes that burn through the fabric.
Voices. Male. Close.
I drop behind a thick pine and pull out the stone. Violet light blazes across its surface. Active manipulation magic. Right here.
Through the trees, I spot them: Marcus and Phil, standing in a small clearing twenty yards ahead. Phil’s hand rests on Marcus’s shoulder—casual, friendly. But my stone tells a different story. Magic flows from that touch, seeping into Marcus like poison through a wound.
“You’re not wrong to question it,” Phil says, voice smooth and reasonable. “Dane’s made decisions that would concern any loyal pack member.”
“The missing wolves,” Marcus’s voice cracks. “It’s been weeks—“
“And instead of searching, he’s focused on other priorities.” Phil’s thumb moves in small circles against Marcus’s jacket. The magic intensifies with each touch. “You have options. Wolves who think like you do.”
I should intervene. Expose him.
But I can’t. Not without revealing I’ve been tracking him. If Phil knows I’m onto him, he’ll vanish. Change tactics.
“Think about what’s best for the pack,” Phil says, stepping back. “Not what’s easiest.”
Marcus nods, mechanical. Compromised. He turns toward the compound, walking like he’s moving through water.
Phil doesn’t watch him go. Instead, his eyes shift—not quite toward me, but close enough. His mouth curves into a satisfied smile.
Then he disappears into the trees.
I wait a full minute before moving, my detection stone cooling in my palm.
Phil’s been meeting with Marcus. Multiple times. Building this fracture piece by careful piece.
And I’ve just watched him seal another crack.
I pocket the stone and refocus on what pulled me here in the first place.
But not here. Not in Ash Hollow territory.
The pull leads toward Silverwood.
I kneel, pressing my palms flat against the forest floor. The earth hums beneath my fingers—ancient pathways carved by water and root and time. My fae blood recognizes them the way my wolf recognizes territory. Ley lines. Energy channels. The veins of the land itself.
I close my eyes and let my magic sink down, finding the current that flows toward Silverwood. The earth knows that town. Remembers the convergence building beneath its streets.
“Take me,” I whisper.
The ground softens beneath my knees. Not collapsing—accepting. The forest blurs at the edges of my vision, trees smearing into streaks of green and brown. I feel myself pulled along the ley line, my body dissolving into something between solid and light.
It’s not comfortable. My wolf howls in protest, hating the formlessness, the loss of muscle and bone. But my fae side drinks it in—the rush of earth magic, the intimate connection with the land.
Seconds stretch. Or compress. Time moves differently in the between-spaces.
When the world solidifies again, I’m kneeling in a different forest. The air smells wrong—charged, metallic. Silverwood’s energy signature pulses less than a mile ahead.
The light changes first. Not darker, just ... wrong. Like the sun forgot what color it’s supposed to be. Trees cast shadows that lean too far east. Birds fall quiet mid-song.
I check the knife strapped to my thigh. The silver vial of protective herbs Lyanna pressed into my hand yesterday. The small charm Rafe left on my doorstep without explanation.
I should have told them. Maybe. Probably.
No. This is mine. My risk. My call.
Silverwood appears ahead like it’s always been waiting, the main street empty under twilight.
The cobblestones under my feet pulse once. Twice. A rhythm like breathing.
“I hear you,” I whisper, not out loud. The words stay trapped behind my teeth.
I reach The Imaginarium—still and silent as a tomb. The book I touched sits displayed in the window, its spine cracked, pages slightly fanned. Like someone opened it after I left.
Beneath the pavement, tether lines of energy flex and twist. Reconnecting. Rebuilding. The convergence isn’t just waking up—it’s reorganizing.
My throat tightens. Every instinct screams to back away, return to the compound, tell Dane what I’ve found.
Dane. The name sparks guilt, then immediate anger at myself. Since when do I consult anyone? Since when does Nova, the perpetual outsider, need permission?
Since you kissed him beside the treeline. Since his hands left marks on your skin you can still feel. Since his cock—
No. Focus.
I draw the blade at my thigh. The metal gleams dully, absorbing rather than reflecting the strange half-light. I press the edge to my palm, clinical and precise. Blood wells dark against my skin.
This is the catalyst. This is the key.
I kneel and press my bleeding hand to the cobblestones. For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then the blood seeps downward—too fast, too hungry. The stone drinks it in, like its parched earth.
The pavement shudders. A sound vibrates through the street, too low to hear, but I feel it in my bones. My magic answers, rising up from my core, electric and raw.
The world pulls tight around me like a held breath. Then the sidewalk cracks. And the Fade opens its mouth.
The pavement unravels. Stone peels back like skin, revealing not earth but a pulsing membrane of silver-black energy. My blood disappears into it, and something reaches back.
I don’t fall in. I sink. First my ankles, then my calves. Cold spreads up my legs, not painful but invasive, like ice water flooding my veins.
“Shit.” My voice sounds flat, dimensionless. A single syllable that doesn’t travel.
The street around me warps. Buildings stretch upward, storefronts melting like wax. The Imaginarium’s windows turn liquid, books inside floating free of shelves. I brace myself against nothing, my hands grasping empty air.
My knife is still in my hand, but the metal feels wrong—humming at a frequency that makes my teeth ache. I grip it tighter anyway.
Then gravity shifts. Not disappearing, but changing direction. My body pulls sideways, then backward, then down again—but “down” isn’t the street anymore. Down is ... everywhere.
I close my eyes. Bad mistake. The darkness behind my lids swirls with fractured images, each one cutting like glass:
—A child with violet eyes running through silver trees—
—Faelan’s voice, a whispered command I can almost understand—
—Dane’s hands on my skin—
I force my eyes open. The world has transformed completely.
I stand in a vast space that isn’t a room, isn’t a field, isn’t anything with definable boundaries.
The “floor” beneath my feet glimmers like black water but remains solid.
Above, where sky should be, sheets of color ripple and fold—deep purples, midnight blues, flashes of silver that might be stars.
“Focus.” My voice sounds stronger now, but doubled—like I’m speaking underwater.
The cut on my palm throbs. I look down and watch blood pool in my cupped hand, then rise upward in defiance of gravity, forming globules that float around me like tiny red moons.
My magic surges in response—not the controlled power I’m used to, but something wild and hungry. It spills from my skin in threads of violet light, reaching out to touch the darkness.
The Fade shivers.
A path forms beneath my feet—not solid, but less empty than the void around it. I follow.
The air fills with sounds that aren’t sounds: crystal chimes, distant thunder, the rhythm of a heartbeat too slow to be human. Each step I take echoes impossibly, as if I’m walking through a cathedral made of ice.
Structures begin to form in the distance—not buildings, but suggestions of them.
The Fade pulls from my mind, constructing familiar shapes: Ash Hollow’s lodge shimmers into existence, then dissolves into something older, a stone fortress I’ve never seen but somehow recognize.
The cobblestones of Silverwood’s main street ripple beneath my feet, then reform as The Imaginarium—but wrong, stretched into a library of impossible dimensions, shelves spiraling upward into darkness.
The Fade isn’t showing me a place. It’s showing me what I’m connected to. What matters.
“Not real,” I remind myself, but my certainty wavers.