Page 54 of Fated Wolf's Redemption

I freeze.

“They’re calling,” he says.

“Who?”

He shakes his head. “Not a voice. Not like language. Just a sound. Like thunder under the skin. It’s coming from the gate. From beneath. I can feel it… like it’s inside me now.”

I cup his face in both hands. “Look at me.”

His breath hitches.

“Lucas. Look at me.”

He blinks. Gold flickers through the black, flickering like a flame trying not to go out.

“I’m here,” I say. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

His forehead presses to mine. His voice is quiet. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep it back.”

“You don’t have to,” I tell him. “You just have to hold it long enough to end this.”

He nods, jaw clenched, but I can feel it too now. Not the sound—but the shift in the air.

Something in the Deep Below has found his scent, and it wants him… badly.

We slip away through the kitchen, out past the garden, and into the ridge path without stopping for coats. The cold doesn’tbother either of us. Not when the air is this clear, this still. Up here, above the lodge, the forest sprawls like a sea of black and silver, moonlight dancing off the frost-covered treetops. The quiet helps. For a moment, I can almost forget what just happened.

Lucas stands beside me, matching my silence with his own. He’s always done that. Known when to push and when to stand still. It’s a strange comfort—this man who carries storms like they’re stitched into his bones, choosing to be quiet next to me instead of commanding the world to listen.

I reach out, brush my fingers over his, and he twines them with mine without a word. The wind catches my braid, flicking strands of my hair into my face. We strip and stuff our clothes into a run pack. He always seems to know what I need—sometimes, I think, even before I know it myself.

I close my eyes and let the cold bite through the last of my restraint. The storm inside me surges, and I let go.

Mist coils around my ankles, then climbs. It gathers fast, streaked with violet and silver, humming through the air like it’s been waiting. Lightning skims along my skin, and then I’m gone—two-legged form replaced by four. Silver fur, storm-marked eyes, heart pounding with wild rhythm. The world sharpens into instinct and scent and the deep, quiet call of the forest.

Lucas doesn’t hesitate. A breath later, he follows. His form slams into place beside mine—dark fur like smoke, eyes catching the moon. For once, his wolf isn’t straining or snarling beneath the surface. It’s there. Whole. Present. He runs toward me, not away from himself.

We take off into the trees.

No plan. No map. Just movement. Power. Unity.

The forest opens before us like it remembers who we are. Frost snaps under our paws. Birds lift from branches in startled silence. We weave between trees, vault fallen logs, scale a ridgethat splits the mountains like a scar. Every turn, every pulse of our feet against the earth is synchronized.

We don’t need words. He runs ahead. I catch him. I dive low. He leaps over. We move as one. Wild. Whole.

I don’t know how long we run, only that when we stop, I’m not shaking anymore. Speed and wind and the steady presence at my side have burned away the fear, the pressure.

We shift back under a canopy of pine. The stars flicker through branches overhead. My breath comes fast, but I’m not tired. Just clear.

Lucas brushes his thumb over my jaw. We don’t speak.

Slowly, we dress again, pulling on the spare clothes tied to our run-packs, and wander the last few yards back to the hollow tree that sits at the edge of a clearing most wolves don’t know exists. It’s older than Nightshade. Older than any of us. Windriders used it as a burial site for broken glyphs and spent wards. Windriders used it to store magic that wouldn’t fade naturally.

I kneel beside it, fingers brushing moss away from the base until I find the seal etched in the bark—a crescent line, one dot above it, two below. My stomach drops.

The bark is split. The glyph has been ripped open. Inside, I find the fragments of an old sigil. Paper. Twine. A bead made of windglass—all of it, broken.

Lucas crouches beside me. “What does it mean?”

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