Chapter 1 The Forest Watcher

Lupinara Forest, Midnight

Coci's POV

There are some inscribed on stone. Others are burned into your blood. I broke both tonight.

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Wind breathed out secrets between trunks ancient as the earth itself, leaves shivering like parchment pages ripped by misty fingers. Lupinara Forest never sleeps, though. It listens. It recalls.

I moved slowly by trunks grayer than memory, breath quiet, senses sharp. The night itself clung thickly with pine, wet moss, and something more-something just out of naming. Primitive. Electric. As if the storm would pause to take breath.

Every inch of my body had been drilled for this-watching, protecting, listening. A Night Sentinel of the Drowmere Pack, I had learned to fade in the trees, to read the language of bent grass and broken twig. Nothing could pass me by. And tonight, the woods felt. wrong.

A ripple in the quiet. An unfamiliar odor to puzzle out.

I knelt behind a fallen log, fingers tracing moss, smelling the air. Not animal. Not human. Smoke or memory. It wrapped around my head and pulled something loose from deep inside.

My fingers roamed to the mark beneath my collarbone-the sigil of the Blood Vow. It glowed softly, as it always did when Kael was in my mind. My future. My destiny.

My prison.

Duty had ruled my life. Kael Blackthorn, Alpha of Drowmere, would make me his mate. A union of politics. An ancient agreement. A fate written in prophecy and sealed in blood. Love was never an option.

And yet, within me tonight a stirring began. A restlessness foreign to me for years.

A twig snapped to the south.

I had been moving even when I had yet to see-feet racing, heart solid, cloak coming behind like ash. I slid across the river with well-oiled style, arriving on the ridge with the moon touching down on canopy.

And I saw him there.

Stooped. limping. Dirt and dabs of color. His clothing tattered, he clung to a satchel like a lifeline on his soul.

A man?

Out of the question.

No one enters Lupinara. The borders shoo strangers away before they come. And yet, here he was-glaring up at me as if he had been waiting for me.

"Who wanders here alone?" I said, voice cold, cutting through the darkness like a sword.

He jumped back, eyes wide-not because he was scared, but because he recognized me.

"I wasn't trespassing," he rasped. His voice was gravelly, like someone who yells more than they speak.

I stepped forward, letting my golden eyes blaze just a fraction. "Your name."

"Elipha. Elipha Moonhart."

The world reeled.

That name. It was spoken in old legend, in songs of the Moonborn Prophecy.

"Are you injured?" I asked, catching the stumble in his gait, the dried blood on his arm.

"Not so. Just... weary. Lost."

"Clearly."

He paced about uncertainly, eyes on trees, moon, on me. "Where am I?"

"Somewhere you don't belong."

He climbed down onto a rock, groaning in a low voice. "I didn't intend this. I followed... something. I paint what I see in dreams. They brought me here."

I raised an eyebrow. "Dreams led you into werewolf country?"

He nodded. "Since I was a kid. This forest. This river. You."

That froze me.

"Me?"

"I always see you," he said quietly. "Watching. Waiting."

For the first time in years, I didn't know what to say.

His face was smudged with charcoal and dirt, but his eyes-storm-gray and almost silver-were too flawless. Not wolf, not human. Something that was old seemed to thrum beneath his skin.

"You got attacked," I said, looking at the ripped claw in his sleeve.

He nodded. "Some sort of animal. Red eyes. Quick."

A rogue. My gut twisted.

"We need to leave."

"What? Why?"

"You're not safe here. And if Kael gets his hands on you-neither am I."

"Kael?" he said warily.

My fiancé, I said, digging my fingers into the word.

"You don't sound thrilled."

"I'm not."

I stopped at that. We walked on in silence, my stride definite, his reluctant. I didn't shift-not yet. My senses were already screaming.

At last, he began speaking. "I never felt like I belonged. Even as a kid, I used to have dreams about wolves and moons. Once I drew a symbol in my sleep. My mother was terrified."

"What was it like?

He rummaged through his satchel, pulled out a creased drawing. My breathing stopped.

Same symbol that burned under my collarbone.

"That can't be," I panted.

"I've dreamed about it since I was five."

The forest remained motionless. The moonlight thickened, brighter. Observing.

Fate wasn't knocking-she'd thrown the door wide open.

"You're coming with me," I said.

"To where?"

"Drowmere. You'll have to hide. If the pack sees you-"

"They'll kill me?

No," I said seriously. "They will use you."

At the verge of a knot, I placed a hand on a root and mouthed an elder magic word. Forest shimmered with light. The concealed way slid open, shining on white magic.

He stared bewildered.

"I have no idea how this is," he breathed.

"Don't matter. Yet."

We passed through the curtain together. Behind us, forest waved once more in silence.

Inside me, war drums stirred.

I had violated a divine law.

And in the process... generated a myth.

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