They left for the south the next day.
Not with the full weight of Ashridge and Ironclaw behind them. Just a lean, uneasy group.
Wren.
Mira.
Yara.
Kai.
Rafe.
Reva.
Corin.
And one of the southern pack’s own—a wiry woman named Tansy, who moved like a cat and smelled faintly of river mud and wildflowers.
“The nightmares started last Moon,” Tansy told them as they trudged along a narrow deer trail, the forest thinning into scrub. “At first, we thought it was just… stories. Pups scaring each other. Then elders started waking up screaming. Black veins on their legs. On their arms. Our healer cut. Burned. Some… woke. Some didn’t.”
Mira’s jaw clenched.
“Did you feel… anything… at your stones?” she asked. “Scorch? Eyes?”
Tansy shook her head. “Our wards are old. Weak. We haven’t had reason to strengthen them in years. We’re small. No one raids us. We thought…” Her mouth twisted. “We were foolish.”
Rafe’s brows knit.
“Curses don’t care about size,” he said. “They care about cracks.”
Tansy shot him a wary look.
“You sound like Corin,” she said.
He grimaced. “Don’t tell him that.”
Mira smirked.
Corin, who walked a little behind them, pretending to be more winded than he likely was, hummed.
“I can hear you, you know,” he said mildly.
Rafe rolled his eyes.
The landscape changed gradually as they headed south.
Trees thinned into scrubby bushes. The soil grew rockier, tinged with red. The air warmed, carrying the faint scent of salt from some distant sea.
The southern pack’s den perched on a low hill, stone houses clustered like lichen. A thin stream wound at its base, more trickle than river.
It looked… peaceful.
Deceptively so.
As they approached, Mira caught the scent of herbs burned too fast.
Fear-sweat.
And under it, that thin, sour note of curse.
“We’re here,” Tansy said quietly. “Welcome to Red Hollow.”
The alpha met them at the edge of the main square.
He was an older wolf, beard gone mostly white, shoulders stooped. His eyes, though, were still sharp, a deep amber.
“Alaric,” he introduced himself. “Welcome. Ashridge. Ironclaw. Council.”
He said the last with a faint twist of his mouth.
“Elder Corin,” Corin said, inclining his head. “We come at your healer’s request. And the council’s… insistence.”
Alaric snorted. “They always insist. Rarely help.”
“We’re trying to change that,” Wren said.
He eyed her, then Rafe.
“And you,” he said to Rafe. “The bonded one. With the Ashridge girl.”
Mira bristled. “I have a name.”
He smiled faintly. “I know. Mira. Healer. With the sharp tongue.” He inclined his head. “My thanks for coming. Both of you.”
Rafe dipped his chin. “We’re all in this,” he said. “Whether we like it or not.”
“True,” Alaric said. “Come. See what has its teeth in our dreams.”
The southern healer’s den was different from Mira’s, from Sera’s.
Open.
Curtains instead of doors. Beds separated by woven reeds, not walls. The air rich with the scent of incense—not just herbs, but resins. Frankincense. Myrrh. Old, heavy things.
The healer herself—an elderly woman named Brinna—looked like she’d been carved from driftwood. Thin. Knotted. Tough.
“You brought them,” she rasped to Alaric. “Good. Maybe they’ll scare the nightmares off.”
“Unlikely,” Mira muttered.
Brinna’s sharp eyes pinned her.
“You’re the one who cut curse out of her own arm,” she said. “Mad. Brave. Good.”
Mira flushed. “Two of three.”
Brinna cackled.
She led them to the back of the den.
Four pallets lay there.
On each, a wolf.
Two elders. One young man. One boy, barely past his first shift.
All four lay still.
Eyes closed.
Faces twisted in silent distress.
Black veins crept up their legs from their feet, webbing over their skin like spiderwebs.
Mira’s stomach lurched.
Rafe’s wolf snarled.
“They scream,” Brinna said quietly. “In their sleep. Sometimes. Not always. The black comes and goes. We cut. We burn. It crawls back. Not as strong. But always… back.”
Mira moved to the boy first.
He couldn’t be more than thirteen.
His dark hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. His lashes were clumped. His lips moved, forming shapes with no sound.
“Name?” she asked.
“Finn,” Tansy said softly. “Lark’s boy.”
“Mother?” Mira asked.
“Outside,” Brinna said. “Pacing herself raw. I told her to let us work. She threatened to bite me. I told her she’d break her teeth.”
Mira smiled grimly.
She reached out and laid her hand on Finn’s ankle.
The wrongness there was… different.
Not like the rogue. Not like Tevan.
Thinner. Weaker. Like watered wine.
But it had sunk… deep.
“It’s been… longer,” she murmured. “It’s had time to… settle.”
Brinna nodded. “We didn’t know what it was at first,” she said. “Thought it was bad meat. Bad air. By the time we realized… it had roots.”
Mira’s bitten arm throbbed, phantom.
Rafe stepped up beside her.
He reached out without being asked and let his fingers rest over hers.
Heat.
Bond.
They both closed their eyes.
They pushed.
Not as hard as they had with Tevan.
This was… different.
Tevan had been hiding, his will intact, his door slammed.
These… felt… tangled.
Like someone had thrown a handful of black thread into a basket of colored ones and stirred.
Pain.
Fear.
Echoing through.
“Careful,” Corin murmured from behind them. “You can’t just yank. You’ll tear more than curse.”
Mira gritted her teeth.
“I know,” she said through them. “Shut up.”
She focused.
Not at the roots.
At the edges.
Where the curse-fibers tangled with the wolf-fibers.
She breathed.
In.
Out.
Her own wolf flattened, ears back, ready to snap.
Gentle, she told it. Not knife. Needle.
Rafe matched her.
He’d never thought of himself as… subtle.
His fighting style had always been more hit hard, hit first.
But here…
He felt for gaps.
For slips.
For places where the dark thread had knotted but not sunk fully.
Together, they tugged.
Slow.
The black fibers shivered.
Not screaming this time.
More… protesting.
They recoiled, inch by inch, back toward the boy’s toes.
Finn whimpered.
His back arched.
“Hold him,” Mira barked.
Yara and Kai moved instantly, hands on his shoulders and hips, keeping him from thrashing.
Mira’s fingers dug into his skin.
“So much,” she whispered. “So much for such a small… body.”
“Curses don’t care about size,” Rafe repeated.
They pushed.
They pulled.
They sweated.
Time blurred.
One by one, the black threads retreated.
Not entirely.
They sank back into the boy’s feet, curling around his toes like cold water withdrawing.
His breathing eased.
His face smoothed.
The veins faded, a little.
Not gone.
Weaker.
Mira sagged.
Rafe caught her again.
“We can’t… rip it all,” she gasped. “Not without… shredding him.”
Brinna nodded grimly. “I felt that,” she said. “Like… pulling nettles. You get some. Some break.”
“We can make it… less,” Mira said. “Maybe… manageable. Like… a scar. Not a wound.”
Rafe swallowed.
He looked at the other pallets.
“Four,” he said. “If we do this for each… we’re going to be… wrecked.”
“Welcome to my life,” Mira muttered.
They did it anyway.
All afternoon.
All evening.
By the time they finished with the last elder, Mira’s hands shook so badly she could barely hold a cup of water.
Rafe’s vision swam in and out of focus.
Their wolves panted, exhausted.
They’d won no dramatic victories.
No curses ripped clean.
No miraculous awakenings like Tevan’s.
But the black had retreated.
For now.
Brinna’s face creased with relieved tears.
“It’s less,” she whispered, fingers trembling as she traced the faint veins on Finn’s leg. “It’s less.”
Mira nodded, too tired to speak.
Rafe squeezed her shoulder once, gently, then dropped his hand.
Later, after Brinna and Tansy had shooed them out of the den with orders to “rest or I’ll sedate you myself,” Mira found a quiet corner near the small southern fire.
She curled up on a low wall, knees to her chest, watching sparks float up into the star-pricked sky.
Rafe found her there.
Of course he did.
“How,” she asked without looking at him, “is it always you?”
He shrugged, settling beside her.
“Bond,” he said simply.
She huffed.
“Convenient excuse,” she muttered.
He smiled faintly.
They sat in silence for a while.
Her head eventually tipped sideways, settling against his shoulder.
He froze.
“You realize what you’re doing,” he said.
“Sleeping,” she mumbled. “Shut up.”
He huffed a quiet laugh.
He let her.
Let the weight of her head rest on him.
Let the warmth of her seep through his tunic.
Let his own head tip carefully until his cheek brushed her hair.
Sparks.
Dark.
Sky.
Under the earth, the thing that watched and waited shifted.
These two.
These stupid, stubborn, bright wolves.
They were tying more than just each other now.
Tying packs.
Curses.
Old magic.
New oaths.
It would find the cost.
It always did.
For now, it let them rest.
Because the next push would be harder.
And it wanted them awake when it came.
---
And the push began, quietly.
With a raven.
Carrying a letter from Joren.