Chapter 33
Kyron
Rane was supposed to be with me.
He had a legitimate reason for bailing — something about Marcus needing help on the northern route — but the result is the same.
I’m walking the eastern perimeter alone, which is fine.
I prefer it. My brain works better without someone talking beside me.
And Rane doesn’t know how to shut up sometimes.
The forest is quiet, almost like it’s listening. It’s not calm. I don’t like it.
Two weeks of training and patrols and the Hollow has settled into something that looks like routine but it feels like everyone is holding their breath. People train in the morning. Shift patrols rotate through the day. The tree line gets checked every four hours. Everyone acts normal and nobody is.
I walk the route Brent mapped out. East fence to the creek. Creek north to the ridge. Ridge back around to the south trail. Forty minutes if I don’t stop. I usually stop.
Something is wrong.
I don’t know what yet. The forest sounds the same. Wind. Birds. The rustle of undergrowth doing what undergrowth does. But my skin is prickling and I’ve learned to trust that before I trust my eyes.
I stop walking. Listen.
Movement. Northeast. Low to the ground but not animal-low. Deliberate-low. Something trying not to be seen.
I crouch behind a fallen trunk and wait.
A raven comes through the canopy. Black. Sleek. Moving between branches with the kind of precision that isn’t natural. Ravens are smart but they don’t move with tactical spacing. They don’t stop at angles that provide sight lines to the Hollow’s eastern boundary.
This isn’t a bird.
This is Shadow.
Raven. It’s a fucking scout. Intelligence-gatherer. I know the form because I spent two years before I got to the academy watching Shadow operatives and learning their tells. Ravens don’t fight. They watch. They remember. They report back.
Which means this one has been watching the Hollow. For who knows how long.
My hands are shaking. Not from fear. From the certainty that this changes everything. Shadow didn’t stumble onto us. Shadow sent reconnaissance. Deliberate. Targeted.
Memory first, now Shadow. No matter what, this isn’t good.
Silas isn’t coming eventually. Silas is coming soon.
The raven drops lower and I see it. It’s tracking something on the ground — one of the Hollow’s patrol shifters. A fox. Small. Rust-colored. Moving through the undergrowth on a routine sweep, completely unaware of what’s above it.
The raven adjusts its angle. Descends.
It’s not just watching anymore.
It hits the fox from above. Silent. Fast. Talons first. The fox yelps — a horrible, cut-short sound — and tumbles. The raven pins it. Not killing it. Disabling it. Taking a messenger off the board.
My body moves before my brain finishes processing.
I’m running. Then I’m not.
Pain cracks through my spine like something splitting me open from the inside.
My knees hit the ground and my hands — my hands aren’t hands anymore.
The bones are breaking and reforming and it’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt, white-hot and absolute, and I can’t breathe and I can’t scream because my throat is changing too.
Then it stops.
The world is wider. Sharper. The trees are smaller. The ground is further away. Everything is detail and distance and I can see the raven from above now because I’m above it, I’m above everything, and my wingspan is wider than the trail.
I don’t think about it. I can’t, that fox shifter needs my help.
I drop.
The raven sees me too late. My talons close around it and the impact sends it tumbling. It shifts mid-air — the raven becoming a man, dark-clothed, rolling, scrambling. He looks up at me and I see the recognition in his face. He knows what I am. He knows this is wrong. He knows I’m wrong.
He runs.
I let him. Because the fox is still on the ground, bleeding, and that matters more.
I land beside it. The fox is breathing. Shallow.
One leg bent wrong. A gash across its flank where the talons caught it.
It looks up at me with wide, terrified eyes and I make a sound — low, quiet — that I don’t know how to make but my body does.
I try to reassure it, that I’m here and it’s safe.
I’m not sure if that’s what comes through.
I pick it up. Gently. My talons close around its body carefully. It probably shouldn’t be possible because it seems so small. Like holding an egg. Like holding something that matters.
I fly.
The Hollow opens up below me. The rooftops.
The main street. The community hall with people milling around outside.
I can see Nova. She’s standing with Cal and Brent and Locke, talking.
Laughing about something. Locke’s leaning against the porch railing and Nova has a water bottle in her hand and they look like people who aren’t about to have their day ruined.
I don’t know how I can see that far in so much detail.
I come down.
Steady, wings wide, the fox cradled in my talon. My shadow crosses the ground before I do and I see Nova look up.
She goes still.
I land in front of the community hall. Set the fox down carefully. It whimpers but it’s breathing and Lena is already moving.
I look at Nova.
She’s staring at me. Her mouth is slightly open. The water bottle is forgotten in her hand.
“Kyron,” she says.
Not a question. She knows. Because my eyes are the same. Even in this form, even with wings that stretch wider than the porch, even sitting here as something that shouldn’t exist — my eyes are the same blue they’ve always been. They must be.
“Holy shit,” Cal says.
“That’s a snow owl,” Brent says. His voice is different. Tighter. “He’s—”
“Huge?” Locke finishes. “Yeah. He’s fucking huge.”
Nova walks toward me. Slowly. She reaches up — way up, because I’m taller than Vaelor like this — and puts her hand on the feathers at my chest.
“Holy fuck, Kyron.” she says nearly gasping. “You’re massive. And no wonder you run cold.”
I can’t answer. But something in my chest hums.
Then her face changes. Because she’s looking past me at the fox that Lena is crouching over. At the blood.
“What happened?” Locke says. Not asking me. Reading the scene.
I can’t speak in this form. But I turn my head — farther than a human neck should allow, which is disconcerting from the inside — and look toward the eastern tree line. Toward where the raven fled.
“Something attacked the patrol?” Brent says.
I dip my head. Once.
The shift back hurts almost as much as the first one. My wings fold and my bones crack inward and for a second I’m something between both — not owl, not man — and then I’m on my knees on the ground, shaking, human, naked.
Someone throws me a blanket. I pull it around me without looking at who threw it because my hands are trembling too hard to care.
Nova crouches beside me.
“Hey,” she says.
I look at her. Pale eyes searching mine. Making sure they’re still the same. Probably making sure I’m still the same.
“Shadow,” I say. My voice is wrecked. “A raven. Reconnaissance. It attacked the fox on the eastern patrol.”
The laughter is gone. Cal straightens. Locke pushes off the railing.
“It got away?” Brent asks.
“I let it go. The fox was bleeding.” I look at Lena crouched over the fox. The gash is ugly but she’s already wrapping it, steady and practiced. It’ll survive.
“You let it go,” Brent repeats. He’s not mad, just trying to figure out the best way to deal with it.
“It was intelligence, not muscle. A raven. It wasn’t there to fight — it was there to watch. Which means it’s been watching.”
Brent looks at Cal. Cal looks at Brent. A conversation happens in that look that doesn’t need words.
“He’s going back to report,” Brent says. “Which means we just lost the element of surprise.”
“We never had the element of surprise,” Cal says quietly. “We just had time.”
“And now we have less of it.”
Nova puts her hand on my face. Just for a second.
“You okay?”
“I just turned into a giant owl and fought a Shadow operative in the woods.” I manage something close to a smile. “I’m great.”
She almost laughs. Almost.
Then she stands. Looks at Brent. Looks at Cal. Looks at Locke.
“How long?” she asks. But she’s not panicking this time, she’s steady.
“Days,” Brent says. “Maybe less.”
Nova is watching the tree line. Her mark is pulsing on her wrist. The water bottle is on the ground where she dropped it.
“Days,” she repeats.
Everyone nods.
The Hollow just ran out of time.