Page 47 of Fated Wolf's Redemption

The ground trembles behind me, and I whip around, but it’s just Kylie. She stands a few feet away, casually wiping her blade on a patch of moss. Although her crossbow remains loaded, she doesn’t need it now. The fight’s over.

“Told you something was off,” she says. “That thing looked like it crawled out of Cain’s garbage disposal.”

I flick an ear.

She walks over and nudges the corpse with her boot. “Next time, can I kill first and ask questions never?”

I drop the form and stand, mist unraveling from my limbs in slow coils. I’m breathing hard. Not from exertion—adrenaline. Something about that scout was different. More distorted. Like Cain is getting bolder with whatever experiments he’s running.

“He was watching us,” I say, pulling my clothes from the saddle pack. “Tracking us the entire way.”

Kylie nods. “Think he saw what we got?”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s not reporting back.”

She grins. “Dibs on the next one.”

We make the rest of the ride in silence. I stay alert, but the forest settles again. Whatever that scout was, he was alone—maybe sent ahead.

Cain knows. And if he didn’t before, he will now. By the time we return to the lodge, the sun has dipped behind the mountain’s ridge. Long shadows stretch across the yard, cast by towering pines and flickering torches. A few guards nod to us as we pass, but no one speaks.

Everyone feels it. The build-up. The storm gathering beyond the edge of what we can see.

Inside, Lucas is waiting by the stairs. He looks me over once—slow, deliberate—and something in his jaw loosens when he sees I’m fine. Not injured. Not bleeding.

He says nothing. He just reaches out, brushes his knuckles down my arm once, and then turns toward the war room, but I don’t follow. Not yet. I need space.

The observatory sits on the third floor of the lodge, overlooking the northeast range. It’s a quiet place. One the younger wolves avoid. Too many books, not enough action—perfect for what I need to do.

I close the door behind me and move to the center of the room. The floor is bare stone, polished smooth from decades of footsteps. I kneel and pull the chalk from my satchel. My fingers are still trembling, but the lines come steady. I’ve drawn this sigil three times today already. In dirt. On paper. Once on my skin.

But this is different. I mark the outer circle first—wide, even, enclosed. Then the threshold glyph. Next, the fracture runes.The banishment lines. I work slowly and precisely until I have replicated the entire seal on the stone below. Then I place my palm over the center and whisper the Windwoven call.

The air goes still. The glyph begins to glow. Faint at first—just a flicker. Like a coal catching light. But it pulses. Once. Twice. A steady rhythm.

Alive!

I press harder, trying to hold the connection. To read the glyph from the inside out, as the Windrider elder must have done all those years ago. And that’s when I see it—the reflection in the window beside me. Not the glyph. Not the glow.

But my face. Only—it’s not mine. The features are mine but altered. My eyes are darker. My hair is pulled back in a braid that looks too tight. Lines of script running down my cheek like carved lightning. The sigils are familiar. But they’re wrong. Twisted. The reflection smiles.

I jerk back so hard I fall onto my side, chalk scattering across the stone. The image vanishes.

I scramble to my knees, heart pounding so loud I can barely hear the wind outside. The glyph is still glowing. Still pulsing. I know what I saw.

It wasn’t just a vision. Or a trick of the light. It was her—Lina. She’s not just walking the world again. She’s watching me… and waiting.

CHAPTER 13

LUCAS

The frost hasn’t burned off the ground yet when Max and I hit the southern patrol line. I’m amazed at the Ironclaw warrior’s ability to recover from whatever was done to him in that horrible place. The sun’s not even up, just a dim glow brushing the mountains behind us, and the air tastes like ash and rain. Something’s coming. Every instinct I have says so.

Max doesn’t talk much, not anymore. But he walks beside me like a shadow, his gait steadier each day. He still flinches when the wind kicks too hard, and his eyes go distant every time a bird call sounds too close to the frequency of the lab alarms. But when his boots hit the dirt, he’s a soldier again. Not whole. But enough.

He pauses at the ridge line, gaze narrowing. “You smell that?”

I nod. Copper and sulfur. Wrongness baked into the bark of the trees ahead. We move in tandem, cutting through a thicket that’s thicker than it should be. Brambles snag at my arms. Max pushes ahead, crouching low, and I follow until we reach the edge of the clearing.

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