Rafe didn’t sleep that night.
He lay on his pallet in Ironclaw’s den—stone walls cool at his back, the faint drip of water somewhere down the corridor, the low breathing of other wolves nearby—and stared at the rough-hewn ceiling.
He counted heartbeats.
Not his.
Hers.
It was ridiculous. Impossible. Yet there it was.
A faint echo in his chest that was not quite his own rhythm. When she rolled over in her narrow bed on the other side of the river—he knew exactly how it sounded now—her pulse spiked, then settled. When she laughed, it jumped. When she muttered curses under her breath at a stubborn wardstone, it did something complicated he didn’t have a name for.
Tonight, it was steady.
Tired.
He listened until dawn smeared grey across the sliver of sky visible through the high shaft that served as the glade’s chimney.
“Rafe.”
Joren’s voice cut through his reverie.
Rafe rolled to a sitting position in one motion, ignoring the twinge in his side, and swung his legs off the pallet.
“Alpha,” he said, pushing to his feet.
Joren stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette.
“Walk,” he ordered.
Rafe suppressed a sigh.
He grabbed his cloak and followed his alpha out into the predawn chill.
They didn’t speak until they were free of the main den complex and climbing a narrow path toward the upper ridge.
The wind up here bit harder.
It smelled of snow and distant smoke, of Ironclaw’s dens behind them and Ashridge’s pines far ahead. The sky was a low, unbroken sheet of cloud, the world washed in shades of grey.
Joren walked with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, strides measured.
Rafe matched his pace.
“You went to Ashridge’s stones,” Joren said without preamble. “You saw the scorch.”
“Yes,” Rafe said.
“And?” Joren prompted, tone mild.
“It’s… the same,” Rafe said slowly. “Almost. Spiral around the base. Eye at the center. Smell like thinned-out rogue. Wrong. It… pushed. When we warded it.”
“We,” Joren repeated.
Rafe didn’t flinch. “Ashridge’s healer. Their alpha. Me. Reva watched. It seemed… prudent.”
“Prudent,” Joren murmured. “Not ‘comfortable.’ Not ‘inevitable.’ Prudent.”
Rafe kept his mouth shut.
Joren stopped at a rocky outcrop overlooking the valley.
From here, they could see the river, a faint glitter in the distance. The line of trees that marked Ashridge’s inner lands. Even, if one squinted, the darker smudge of the healer’s clearing.
Rafe did not squint.
Joren rested his hands on the stone.
“I do not like old things carving their own sigils into our boundary markers,” he said. “I like even less that they’ve chosen ours and Ashridge’s to do it first.”
“Corin says they’re testing,” Rafe said. “Looking for where the tension’s highest. Where the lines blur.”
Joren’s lip curled. “We give the council too much credit if we assume all tension is their doing. Bonds like yours… were not their idea.”
Rafe swallowed.
“No,” he said. “They’re older than them.”
Joren’s gaze slid sideways, pinned him.
“Do you blame me,” he asked quietly, “for sending you to Ashridge that night?”
Rafe blinked. “For the arrow?”
“For the patrol,” Joren said. “For the ‘test.’ For the fact that if you had not stepped over that line when I said so, you would not have taken that arrow, and you would not have ended up on her table, and we would not now be dancing to the council’s tune.”
Rafe’s mouth went dry.
Honesty.
He’d promised it to Mira.
He hadn’t promised it to his alpha.
But the bond tugged, a low, insistent hum under his ribs.
“No,” he said slowly. “I… chose. To step. To test. You ordered. I obeyed. That’s our… contract. I knew what that meant.”
Joren’s jaw worked.
“And now?” he asked. “Now that you’ve… scented… the other side. Would you step again?”
Rafe thought of Mira’s face when she’d seen the black tendrils writhe in her arm. Of the way she’d gritted her teeth and shoved steel into her own flesh. Of the way her hand had tightened around his without her noticing when the curse had screamed in the hearth.
“Yes,” he said, softly but firmly. “I’d step. With more… caution. Less arrogance. Same purpose.”
Joren’s lips twitched, the faintest hint of a smile.
“Good,” he said. “I’d hate to think one healer’s scent could unravel a lifetime of training.”
Heat crawled up Rafe’s neck. “It hasn’t.”
“Hasn’t it?” Joren asked.
He pushed off the rock and paced a slow half-circle around Rafe, like a wolf circling to inspect.
“You smell different,” he said. “Not just her. Herden. Ashridge. The way they burn their herbs. The way they feed their pups. You carry it now. They marked you when you bled on their stones.”
Rafe resisted the urge to sniff himself.
“It doesn’t erase Ironclaw,” he said.
“No,” Joren said. “It muddies it.”
Rafe bristled. “Is that… a problem?”
Joren came to a halt in front of him.
“That depends,” he said. “On whether you let their ways weaken ours. Or whether you learn what you can and bring it back.”
Rafe blinked.
“I—”
“You think I do not see it?” Joren went on. “Their healer is… effective. Brutal. Creative. She cut curse out of her own flesh and spat in old magic’s eye. That is not… nothing. The council drools over it. They want to put her in a neat little box. Label her. Use her. Wren wants to wrap her in pine and keep her safe as Ashridge’s pretty secret.” His lip curled. “No one seems to be asking what happens if she looks… outward.”
Rafe’s throat worked.
“She already is,” he said. “Outward. Toward us. Toward the curses. She doesn’t… stop at her den door.”
“Good,” Joren said. “Then she’s dangerous. To them. To us. To whatever crawls under the stones. Dangerous things are not to be leashed lightly. Or left to others’ hands.”
Rafe stared at him.
“You want… to recruit her,” he realized slowly. “You want Ashridge’s healer in your ledger.”
Joren huffed a short, humorless laugh.
“‘Recruit’ is a strong word,” he said. “I want her… not solely Wren’s. Not solely the council’s. If the Mother insists on tying my teeth to her, I will not pretend she doesn’t exist and hope the problem goes away.”
Rafe swallowed.
He could see it now—the shape of Joren’s thinking.
Use the bond.
Not by cutting it.
By… widening it.
“Rafe,” Joren said quietly. “Look at me.”
He did.
Joren’s gaze was very clear.
“You are my enforcer,” he said. “My eyes. My teeth. My… emissary, whether you like the word or not. The council has dumped you in the middle of this mess as their convenient bridge. Wren sees you as a way to keep me leashed. The thing under the stones sees you as a crack. I see you as… ours. First. Last.”
Rafe’s chest tightened.
He’d grown up on words like this. On the thrill of being claimed. Needed. Trusted.
They didn’t land quite the same anymore.
Mira’s voice whispered in the back of his head: You don’t owe them your soul.
His own father’s voice overlapped: You owe the pack everything.
Between.
Always between.
“I know,” he said quietly.
Joren nodded once.
“Good,” he said. “Then here is what you will do.”
He laid it out in simple, brutal terms.
“You will go to Ashridge when the council howls. You will stand on their stones. You will watch. Listen. Learn. You will not let them blame you or your bond for what crawls up from the dark. You will not let them cut it without our say. You will not…” his mouth quirked “...let their healer be carved into a tool for soft-hearted alphas.”
Rafe bit back a retort about Wren’s lack of softness.
“And,” Joren added, voice flattening, “you will not forget, in all this… balancing… who dragged you out of the snow when your father’s blood steamed on it. Who put a sword in your hand. Who taught you to stand at a border and not flinch.”
Rafe’s throat closed.
He remembered.
He remembered being eight, teeth chattering, grief a hollow cavity in his chest. He remembered Joren’s hand hauling him up by the scruff when he’d tried to throw himself at an Ashridge patrol in a rage.
Not like this, Joren had snarled. You want to bite them, you train. You bleed here first. You learn to hit where it hurts.
“I don’t forget,” Rafe said hoarsely.
“See that you don’t,” Joren said.
He stepped back, gaze turning outward again.
“Go,” he said. “Eat something that isn’t ashes. Sleep when you can. We’ll see what fresh chaos the council drags us into next.”
Rafe inclined his head.
“Alpha,” he said.
He turned and walked back down the path, the weight of Joren’s words sitting weirdly beside the pull of the bond.
He did not notice, as he passed the old hunting marker half-buried in moss, the faint shimmer around its base.
The eye carved there pulsed once, almost lazily.
Listening.
* * *
Mira didn’t go back to the wardstone the next day.
She made herself stay in her den.
She saw patients.
A young mother worried about a feverish pup. An elder with a cough. A warrior with a twisted knee who swore it didn’t hurt even as he winced when she prodded it.
She brewed tonics.
She argued with Harn over his insistence that his stomach ailments were the result of “evil air” rather than his habit of eating twice-cooked pork at midnight.
She napped, once, for ten full minutes in her chair.
Her wolf paced, restless.
The bond hummed, background noise.
Every time it flared—a spike of irritation from Rafe when Oris needled him in training, a jolt of amusement when Reva told some cutting joke, a wash of bone-deep weariness when he finally collapsed onto his pallet at night—she felt it.
She pretended she didn’t.
By the third day, pretending got harder.
She woke from an actual decent stretch of sleep to an echo of Rafe’s heartbeat racing, a sharp burn down her own ribs, and a flash of fear.
Not his.
Someone else’s.
It jolted her upright.
“Enough,” she muttered to herself. “This is ridiculous.”
She stomped out to the clearing, squinting up at the sky.
It was midday. Cloudy. The light a diffused, unhelpful wash.
She whistled sharply.
Kai’s head popped over the low brush at the edge of the path, bow half-raised, expression wary.
“You always appear when I do that,” she said.
“I was already here,” he protested. “Guarding. Subtly. As per Wren’s orders.”
“Of course,” she said. “Come walk with me.”
“Where?” he asked.
She didn’t answer.
He sighed and fell into step beside her.
They headed north.
She didn’t mean to beeline for the ridge.
Her feet did it for her.
When the river came into view between the trees, she cursed under her breath.
“Thought you weren’t going to… hover,” Kai said gently.
“I’m not hovering,” she snapped. “I’m… checking the wards.”
“Near the border,” he said. “Where Ironclaw patrols. Where your bond hums like a kicked beehive.”
She glared at him. “When did you get so poetic?”
“Been hanging around you too long,” he said.
They stepped onto the stones.
The river whispered by, low and cold.
Ashridge’s bank was quiet. No sign of Wren. No sign of other warriors.
On the opposite shore, a flicker of movement.
Rafe.
He stood alone at the water’s edge, cloak drawn close, hair mussed by the wind. He wore no armor, no visible weapons. Just a plain tunic, loose trousers, boots dusty from the path.
His eyes found her immediately.
Of course they did.
“Mira,” he said.
Her heart did something she absolutely did not like.
“Rafe,” she replied. “Skipping drills?”
“Wren sent a raven,” he said. “Corin answered. He wants… more information about the scorch. About the way it reacted to your wards. And…” his mouth twisted “...about us.”
“Of course he does,” she muttered. “Elders can’t resist poking things that don’t belong in neat boxes.”
“He asked if we’d… meet,” Rafe said. “Here. Neutral. To… test something.”
Kai lifted a brow. “Did he now.”
Mira’s stomach sank. “Test what.”
Rafe hesitated.
“The way the bond reacts when the ward is… pushed,” he said. “With us both touching it. Together.”
Mira stared at him.
“What,” she said flatly. “He wants us to stick our hands on cursed rock like idiots and see what happens?”
Rafe winced. “He phrased it… more… ‘carefully.’ But yes.”
Kai made a strangled sound. “You’re not actually considering this.”
“We are not lab rats,” Mira snapped. “He can test his own wards if he wants to fling himself at old magic.”
“I told Reva the same thing,” Rafe said. “She agreed. Then she said if you agreed, she wanted to watch.”
“Of course she did,” Mira muttered.
The bond thrummed, agitated.
She felt… something… under the stones.
Not the full press of the curse. Not the hiss of the eye.
A… waiting.
“Maybe he’s not entirely wrong,” she said reluctantly. “If this thing is sniffing for us—” she gestured between them “—better we know what happens when we stand on its nose than find out when it swallows us in the middle of a war.”
Kai groaned. “You two are going to kill me.”
“You don’t have to be here,” Rafe said wryly. “I’m sure Wren would forgive you if you said ‘they decided to be morons on their own, Alpha.’”
“I’m not leaving my healer to shove her hands on cursed rock alone,” Kai said. “Or with you. No offense.”
“Some taken,” Rafe said.
Mira rubbed her temples.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll… test. Carefully. If it feels wrong, we stop. Immediately. I don’t care if Corin sends a raven screaming ‘go on, one more push.’”
“Agreed,” Rafe said.
Kai muttered something about wolves and their death wishes, but followed as they climbed back to the wardstones.
The scorched one pulsed faintly as they approached.
Mira’s skin prickled.
“Last chance to back out,” Kai said.
“Shut up,” Mira muttered.
Rafe snorted.
They stood side by side in front of the stone.
Close enough that their arms brushed.
The bond thrummed louder.
Mira took a slow breath.
“You ready?” she asked.
“No,” Rafe said honestly. “But I’ll do it anyway.”
“Same,” she said.
“Count of three?” he suggested.
“On two,” she said. “Three is for cowards who need extra time to panic.”
He huffed a laugh.
“Fine,” he said. “One… two.”
They laid their palms on the stone.
* * *
Heat slammed into Mira’s hands like a hammer.
Not physical heat. Not skin-scorching. Something deeper.
It shot up her arms, dove into her chest, hit the bond like a thrown rock.
Her breath punched out of her.
She heard Rafe grunt beside her.
Images crashed through her mind.
Not hers.
Not his.
Not entirely.
A forest, older and darker than theirs. Trees with trunks thick as houses. Shadows moving between them, too quick to see. The feeling of hunger that was not about food. The taste of stone and old bone.
Voices.
Not words.
Whispers. Laughter. A hissed finally.
The bond flared.
Mira felt Rafe’s fear—not for himself. For her. For what might be crawling up her veins again.
He felt her fury—not at the curse. At being touched like this without consent. At being used.
They both pushed back.
Instinctively.
Not with spells or herbs.
With will.
“No,” Mira snarled, out loud and in.
No, Rafe’s wolf roared.
The wardstone shuddered under their palms.
The scorch spiral flared, black deepening, then… cracked.
Hairline fissures spiderwebbed through the burned lines.
A shriek tore through the air.
Not audible at first. Not with ears.
In their bones.
In their teeth.
The thing under the earth recoiled.
It tasted iron.
Pain.
Defiance.
Bright, it hissed. Sharp.
It did not like sharp.
It liked cracks.
This… was something else.
The contact snapped.
Mira staggered back, gasping, clutching her chest.
Rafe stumbled too, dropping to one knee, hand braced in the dirt.
Kai swore, leaping toward them.
“Mira!” he grabbed her elbow. “Rafe!”
They both panted for a few heartbeats, vision swimming.
Then the world steadied.
The wardstone stood before them, unchanged to a casual glance.
To their eyes, though, the scorch spiral looked… dimmer.
Weaker.
“You two are insane,” Kai said. “You could have—”
“Helped,” Mira rasped.
He glared. “Helped what? Your odds of early death?”
She laughed weakly.
“It pulled,” Rafe said hoarsely. “Harder. When we were both… touching. It… tasted the bond.”
“And?” Kai demanded. “What did it do?”
“It tried to climb,” Mira said. “Under our skins. Connected by this.” She pressed her fist to her sternum. “Bad idea.”
“We shoved it,” Rafe said. “Together. Back. It… didn’t like that.”
Kai eyed the stone. “Good. Fuck it.”
Mira sucked in another breath.
Her hands still tingled.
The bond hummed, but not with pain now.
Something… else.
Satisfaction.
“Corin’s going to write an essay about this,” she muttered.
Rafe huffed a tired laugh. “He’s going to want us to do it again. ‘For consistency’s sake.’”
“Next time,” she said firmly, “we bring Wren. And Reva. And every elder who thinks it’s fun to stick their noses in cursed spirals. They can take a turn.”
“Agreed,” Rafe said.
Kai shook his head, muttering about idiots and their shared suicidal tendencies.
Mira flexed her fingers.
The wrongness she’d half-expected to feel creeping up her arms was… absent.
Her skin burned, but in a normal, overused-magic way. Her wolf panted, but from exertion, not panic.
“It’s learning,” she said slowly. “But so are we.”
Rafe looked at her.
“Then we stay ahead,” he said. “As long as we can.”
She nodded.
The wind shifted, carrying a whiff of Ironclaw’s scents.
Home for him.
Nightmare for her.
Except now… there was a note in it that wasn’t just blood and snow.
Her own herbs. Her own fire.
She scowled.
“Go,” she said abruptly. “Before Joren decides to tug your leash and I have to listen to you whine from across the river.”
He smirked weakly. “You’d… hear it?”
“Unfortunately,” she said.
He sobered.
“Mira,” he said.
She frowned. “What.”
He hesitated.
“Thank you,” he said simply. “For… pushing. For not… letting it in. Even if it meant linking with me to do it.”
Her throat felt tight.
“Don’t make me regret it,” she said. “Or I’ll shove the next curse into you and watch you deal with it.”
He grinned, a flash of teeth.
“I’d pay to see that,” Reva called from the trees, where she’d apparently been lurking the whole time.
“Of course you would,” Mira muttered.
Rafe chuckled.
He nodded once, then turned and headed back toward the river, steps a little unsteady but shoulders square.
Mira watched until he crossed the water and disappeared into the pines.
Only then did she let herself sag against the wardstone, Kai’s hand steady at her back.
“You’re going to kill each other,” he said quietly. “Or save us all. I can’t tell which.”
She laughed, shaky.
“Me neither,” she said.
The bond throbbed.
Not with pain.
With possibility.
It scared her more than any curse.
She pushed off the stone.
“Come on,” she said to Kai. “We have letters to write. Elders to annoy. Wards to bleed on. No time for existential dread.”
Kai snorted. “You say that like existential dread isn’t your favorite hobby.”
“It’s in my top three,” she allowed. “Right after ‘stabbing curses’ and ‘yelling at warriors.’”
He grinned.
They walked back toward Ashridge’s heart.
Behind them, under the earth, the thing that had tried to climb through their bond curled up around its wounded tendrils and considered.
Too bright, it thought. Too sharp. Need… different angle.
It turned its attention elsewhere.
For now.
Because if one pair of wolves could shove it back, there were others.
Weaker.
More afraid.
More… alone.
It only needed one crack to widen.
It had time.
It had hunger.
And now, it had learned something valuable.
The bond could hurt it.
Which meant it could also be hurt through it.
It smiled, a soundless, awful thing.
The game had just become more fun.
---