—Lyra's POV—
---
I didn't remember falling asleep.
But when I woke, the fire I had lit was out — just a faint curl of ash and the faint, acrid whisper of charred pine lingering in the air. Cold had crept into the den, slick and silent, numbing the soles of my feet and threading icy fingers into my spine.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
I blinked slowly, adjusting to the soft gray light filtering in from the den's mouth. Outside, the snow gleamed faintly — but not in its usual undisturbed way.
The snow had been swept aside. Neatly. In a wide arc, like a great paw or a cautious hand had cleared the space. Not scattered, not trampled, but deliberately moved.
No tracks.
No blood.
Just… absence.
My heart slammed once, a tight, painful thud in my chest. Then again, harder.
I reached to my right, fingers fumbling over the hardened dirt until I felt the wooden shaft of my makeshift spear. I'd carved it three nights ago with stubborn precision — pine bark stripped, tip sharpened by a chipped stone and fire-hardened.
My hand wrapped around it, but I didn't raise it.
Not yet.
I sniffed the air — deeply, like a wolf might. Like he might have taught me, had I ever been allowed to learn properly.
No rot.
No iron.
No scent of flesh or spilled blood.
Only sage.
Faint. Dry. Ancient.
It shouldn't be there.
---
The baby stirred within me. Not a violent kick — more of a shift. Like a stretch or a reach toward something out there. I pressed both hands to my swollen belly, murmuring softly, "Still now, my little spark."
My whisper seemed to hang in the den like fog. The silence answered — thick and breathing, almost alive. The sort of quiet that made your instincts coil tight in your gut. That watching kind of silence.
Then…
Crunch.
A footstep. Soft, deliberate.
Snow, disturbed.
Left of the den.
I froze — no breath, no sound. My body dropped low on instinct, pressing flat to the earth. My heart beat loud in my ears as I slid, snake-like, toward the entrance — spear still in my grip.
Eyes scanned the darkness between the pines.
Nothing moved.
But I could feel it.
That presence.
Watching.
Not hunting. Not hostile.
But not entirely kind, either.
Just… observing.
---
The carcass I'd dragged home yesterday — a rabbit, half-frozen and scrawny — was gone.
But that wasn't the strange part.
Its bones had been stripped perfectly clean. Arranged in a crescent on a flat rock just outside the den — every rib, every femur lined in deliberate symmetry.
And at the very center of the crescent…
A feather.
Black. Curved.
Raven.
I stared at it for too long. Longer than I should have.
Because I hadn't seen a bird in days. Not since the snowstorm. Not even the scavengers had ventured this far north.
My breath hitched in my throat.
This wasn't animal behavior. This wasn't rogue behavior either. Rogues kill, take what they need, and move on. They don't leave symbols. They don't leave gifts.
This was message.
This was ritual.
But from who?
And why me?
---
I didn't leave the den until after dusk.
I wrapped myself in the wolf-hide blanket I'd stitched from an old kill, and stepped into the forest. The cold gnawed at my skin with teeth of ice, but I barely felt it. I was focused. Tense. Watching.
Circling.
I widened the radius of my search step by step — boots crunching lightly in the snow, each exhale fogging the air like smoke. I scanned for tracks, disturbed twigs, animal scent, anything.
Nothing.
Whoever had approached had erased all sign of their passing...
Except one.
On the northernmost pine — bark stripped back with a knife, and embedded into the wood was a stone.
Small. Obsidian.
Sharp-edged. Ancient.
It pulsed slightly in my hand when I plucked it out, as if alive.
It stung.
I hissed, startled, and nearly dropped it.
I looked closer. A single drop of blood bloomed from my palm. Where the stone had bitten me.
I didn't know what that meant.
But I kept it anyway.
---
Back inside, I sat by the dead fire and watched the entrance until my eyes burned. I didn't dare sleep again.
The den felt... smaller now.
Not like a home.
Like a trap.
Like a box I'd made to keep I and the baby safe — but now we weren't the only ones who knew it existed.
I stared into the flickering dark beyond the entrance, my grip tightening on the obsidian stone now wrapped in a scrap of cloth beside me. Even wrapped, it hummed with a strange warmth — not heat, but presence.
Watcher's presence.
Who had left it?
Why not speak? Why the bones, the feather, the absence of prints — like someone wanted to be seen without being known?
They'd taken the rabbit. Left a gift in return. That meant they didn't want me dead. Yet.
But even gratitude carried sharp teeth in the wild.
I glanced down at my belly. It kicked again. Not harsh — firm. Steady. Like he knew. Like he was trying to ground me in this moment, to remind me that I wasn't alone.
I wasn't weak anymore.
No one was coming to save me. And no one was coming to claim me either.
I had to be both mother and monster.
I turned the stone over once in my fingers, then slipped it into the pouch I wore tied to my waist. The cloth there was already stained with blood and herbs. One more strange relic wouldn't change anything.
But I felt it in my bones — this wasn't the end of whatever game had begun in the snow.
It was the beginning.
---
I relit the fire at midnight.
Not because I was cold — but because the light made the dark less sure of itself. It flickered across the curved walls of the den and gave the illusion of control.
I sat with my back to the wall, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around my belly like a shield for the baby.
Sleep wouldn't come again.
Not this night.
And maybe not the next.
Not until I knew who was watching.
---
—Lucian's POV—
They brought me reports.
But I wasn't listening.
Names. Routes. Rogue sightings. Supply trains through the Southern Pass.
My eyes were on the map stretched across the war table in the council chamber — fingers pressed to a point just beyond the Frostfang Line. Where the woods grew darker. Deeper. Older.
Where she had vanished...
Then my mind went back to last night...
Thorne's words had haunted me...
"Could be remnants..." He said after I had repeated my question; 'Of?' with a sharper tone.
"...Of her."
I didn't sleep. I stood at the northern balcony of Bloodfang Keep until dawn painted the stone red and the frost stung through the leather of my gloves.
Something was shifting in the woods beyond Frostfang Line.
And for the first time in months, I let myself say her name.
"Lyra..."
A whisper, lost in the wind.
And somewhere far beyond that wind...
A wolf howled.
Now before me laid reports which I had to go through as part of my responsibilities as Alpha of the Clan.
General Varik cleared his throat, standing to my right.
"My Alpha," he said slowly, "these signs… They're faint. Could be coincidence."
I looked up at him. Sharp. Cold.
"You don't believe in coincidence. Not in war. And not when it comes to her."
His jaw flexed. No denial.
A low wind howled outside the tall windows. It echoed faintly inside the stone walls. A mournful sound. A call.
I closed my eyes for half a second, let it wrap around me.
"She survived," I said.
No one argued.
But no one agreed, either.
To them, she was still a ghost. A threat better buried. A scar on my name.
But to me...
She was the only truth I had ever betrayed.
And I had a feeling the forest wasn't finished with me yet.
---
I dismissed the war table. Left the generals to whisper.
And returned to the northern tower, to watch the line of trees swallow the sun once more.
The wind carried a scent that wasn't pine.
Something older.
Something returning.