“Beware,” she whispered, her cold hand closing around mine. “You are light, but the dark has tasted you now. It will not stop until it devours you whole.”
I pulled my hand free, pulse quickening. “Who are you?”
Her mouth twitched. “The one who remembers what you’ve forgotten. Beware, daughter of moonsilver. The shadows know your scent.”
Before I could press her further, she turned and melted into the forest mist.
Uneasy, I shook it off and climbed the monastery steps. The heavy doors loomed ahead, carved with the sigils of the Moon Priesthood. I reached for the iron handle—
—and something slammed into the back of my head.
Darkness swallowed everything.
When I came to, ropes bit into my wrists, my body hanging between pain and numbness. My blindfold stank of iron and dirt, and the air pulsed with a rank mix of sweat and musk—wolf musk.
Claws tore through my skin. Again. Again. Again.
Each strike burned like fire. Ninety-nine lashes—each one peeling away more than flesh. It stripped my pride, my power, my wolf.
“You shouldn’t have punished her,” a gravelly voice said. “She’s precious. You angered the wrong man.”
“Wh—who are you…” My throat bled with every word.
He didn’t answer. Just pulled out his phone.
“She’s done,” he muttered.
And then came the voice from the other end of the line—low, familiar, steady. [Leave her there.]
Even through static and pain, I knew it. Kael.
My wolf knight. The man sworn to protect me.
He’d ordered this.
By the time they dumped me on the roadside, I was barely conscious, skin flayed and blood slicking the asphalt beneath me. But I crawled. Half-shifted. Flagged down a cab. The driver screamed when he saw me—half-wolf, half-woman—but I growled, “Drive. Hospital.”
The emergency ward reeked of antiseptic and fear. I lay on a gurney, staring at the flickering ceiling lights, listening to the nurses whisper.
“Did you see him? The man who brought that girl in—gorgeous. Never left her side.”
“And that other one? Torn up bad. Looked like a rogue attack. Poor thing.”
My fingers clenched around the IV line until I yanked it free.
I knew who they were talking about.
I staggered into the corridor, ignoring the pain that split my shoulder open again. And there they were. Kael. Elowen.
He was holding her hand. Stroking her hair. Whispering softly like she was something fragile and holy.