Chapter 8, The Borderline
Seventeen years
Wren
The training camp was a pressure cooker, and we were currently deep in the Gray Zone.
The air here didn’t behave like the rest of the forest.
The mist didn’t sit on the ground; it hung in vertical ribbons, thick enough to hide a predator three feet away but thin enough to let the bruised light of the sun through in eerie, flickering patches.
For the trainees, the Gray Zone was a nightmare.
I could see us all stumbling, our heads tilting sharply as we tried to catch muffled echoes in the fog.
Killian had been acting like a man possessed ever since we entered the timber. He was overprotective to the point of suffocation, his hand constantly on my arm or my back. He had forced Sage and Elias to stay glued to my sides, forming a tight circle of “low-ranks” that he hovered over like a hawk.
“Stay within reach,” Killian muttered for the tenth time, his voice a low, jagged vibration. “Sage, Elias, if she’s more than a foot away from you, I want to know about it.”
“We’ve got her, Killian,” Sage whispered, though she looked exhausted. Being Omegas, she and Elias were already at a physical disadvantage, and the sensory deprivation of the mist was wearing them thin.
Selina was losing her mind. Every time Killian checked on me, every time he ignored her, her face twisted further. I could hear the venom in her breathing, the ragged, huffing sound of a wolf trying to keep its temper behind human teeth.
The opportunity she wanted finally came at the Crying Falls. The trail narrowed into a steep, treacherous rock slide. Up ahead, a massive hemlock had fallen, blocking the path for the entire group.
“Killian! We need your strength up here!” one of the other trainees shouted from the front.
Killian hesitated, his eyes flicking back to me. He looked at the falls, then at the thick brush of the Gray Zone. “Stay right here,” he commanded, his voice laced with the Alpha Command to ensure Sage and Elias wouldn’t dare move. “Do not move until I come back for you.”
The second Killian moved twenty yards up the trail to help with the tree, the atmosphere shifted.
I stood up, my gaze fixed on the dense wall of ferns ten yards away, the pack border.
I leaned toward it, my mind drifting into the shadows behind the ferns, trying to catch the rhythm of that strange, magnetic pull.
Then my world suddenly tilted.
A massive force slammed into the center of my back. One second I was standing in the hum of the forest, and the next, the ground was vanishing beneath me. My shins cracked against a moss-covered boundary stone and the final marker as I launched forward.
I landed hard on my hands and knees, the air driven from my lungs in a pained huff.
The dirt beneath my palms felt different here, colder, smelling of iron and ancient, frozen cedar. I gasped for air, my head spinning as I looked back over my shoulder.
Selina was standing ten feet away, her palms still out, her face twisted in a triumphant, ugly sneer.
“Go on then, Wren!” she jeered, her voice shrill and piercing. “If you love the dark so much, go see what’s waiting for you!”
But her laughter died in her throat.
The silence that followed was so absolute it felt like a weight. A shadow, deeper and heavier than the mist, detached itself from the trees directly in front of me. I froze. The air didn’t just turn cold; it turned still, as if the forest itself had stopped breathing.
From the ferns, three shapes emerged. They flowed like ink into water. The Night-Stalkers. They were enormous, their fur the color of a moonless sky.
Sage let out a strangled cry and Elias froze, staring. Killian bolted toward the line, his face a mask of pure terror. “Wren! Get back! Now!”
He tried to cross the line to get to me, but two Night-Stalkers stepped forward, a synchronized snarl vibrating through the very ground. It was a warning: Step over, and you die.
“Shit, Wren!” I heard Killian shouting behind me as the biggest wolf walked directly toward me.
He didn’t crouch. He didn’t snarl. He moved with a heavy, regal slow-motion. I stayed on my knees, my breath hitching, but I didn’t feel the prey instinct. I didn’t feel the urge to scream.
As he stepped into the pale light of the Gray Zone, I saw them. His eyes weren’t anything like the ones of the High-Ridge. They were a piercing, hypnotic violet, the color of a storm at twilight.
The giant wolf stopped so close I could smell the iron and cold cedar on his coat. He leaned his massive head down. His wet nose brushed the pulse point on my neck, right where the mate mark would be.
He took a long, deep breath.
Then, the wolf pulled back and looked me dead in the eye. He stared calmly, blinked those violet eyes slowly, and let out a growl that was so low it felt like a hum in my own chest, a sound of deep, guttural respect.
He looked past me at Killian, who was trembling with a mix of rage and impotence, and then at Selina, who had gone pale as bone. The wolf let out a sharp, mocking chuff, almost a laugh, before bowing his head just an inch to me.
With a single fluid motion, he and his sentinels vanished back into the black pines.
I stood up, shaking the dirt from my hands, and stepped back over the border.
“Wren,” Sage breathed, her voice shaking. “What... what the actual fuck was that?”
Selina backed away from me, her eyes wide with a new kind of fear. “He didn’t kill her,” she whispered, her voice rising into a shriek. “He looked at her like he knew her! You saw it! The Night-Stalker bowed to a Null!”
Killian reached for me, his hands grabbing my waist, pulling me so close I could feel his heart hammering like a trapped bird. “What did he do to you? Did he mark you?”
“He just... smelled me,” I said, my voice steady.
Killian’s grip tightened, his eyes flashing a dark, possessive silver. He wasn’t just relieved I was alive; he was horrified. He knew that in a pack built on the hatred of the Night-Stalkers, my “connection” to them was a death warrant.
“We’re leaving,” Killian barked to the group, his voice thick with a desperate Alpha Command that forced even the terrified to move. “Now.”