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“Joshua,” a female warrior calls from the far side of the clearing. “Over here. Blood trail leading toward our border.” Joshua, the leader, joins her. He studies the ground, then looks toward Silver Moon territory.

“Whatever happened here,” he says, “it’s connected to what the Luna found.” My pulse spikes. I force myself to breathe through my nose, slow and silent.

“The rogue pups?” another warrior asks.

“And that shewolf,” Joshua confirms. “Brought them to the hospital half an hour ago. Luna’s orders.”

Mate. Pups. My wolf stirs, pressing against my skin. They’re alive.

“Think they’re being interrogated?” someone asks.

Joshua shrugs. “Not our problem.”

Shewolf. Pups. My wolf presses harder against my skin, a low vibration building in my chest that I clamp down before it becomes sound. Joshua goes still. He turns slowly, scanning the tree line. His eyes move across the hollow, across me, and stop. The silence stretches. A bead of sweat traces my spine. Then his gaze slides past.

“Move out,” he says.

I don’t breathe until the last footfall fades. Then I’m up, cutting north through the dark, back toward the split pine where I left Arlene and the pups. I need to see them before I do anything else. Before I even think about what it means to cross into Silver Moon.

The split pine is exactly where I left it. Arlene is not. I circle the tree twice, reading the ground. Her scent is here, layered, hours deep, and then it simply stops. No struggle. No blood. The pine needles are barely disturbed. The pups’ smaller prints press into the soft earth and then vanish alongside hers, as if the three of them stepped off the edge of the world.

My wolf goes very quiet. I crouch where her scent ends and press my fingers into the cold ground. The forest offers nothing back. No sound, no trail, no direction. Just the dark between the trees and the distant border of Silver Moon territory, and the words Joshua said still turning in my chest like a blade finding its angle.

Shewolf. Brought them to the hospital. I stand. The silence is different now than it was in the clearing among the dead. That silence was mine. This one belongs to no one.

I move.

The border markers hit my nose first, silver, iron, the layered musk of a hundred wolves pressed into the soil like a fence made of scent. Silver Moon territory. Enemy ground. I don’t slow. I don’t hesitate. I cross the line the way water crosses stone, without permission, without sound, without the courtesy of announcing myself.

Mate. Pups. Hospital.

The village materializes through the trees in pieces, first the smoke, then the rooftops, then the low hum of voices and the sharper tang of cooking fires. Pack life. Ordered. Comfortable. The kind of place I haven’t walked through in four years.

I stick to the shadows. The buildings are close together here, the gaps between them narrow and dark, and I move through those gaps the way my wolf moves through tall grass, low, fluid, every step placed with the precision of something that has learned to survive by being invisible. A patrol passes twenty feet to my left. Two warriors, laughing about something, their backs to me. I press flat against the wall of a storage shed and let them go.

Hospital. Find the hospital.

The scent of antiseptic and herbs reaches me before I see the building, a long, low structure near the center of the village, its windows glowing warm against the dark. My chest tightens. Arlene’s scent is there. Thread thin, muffled by walls and distance, but unmistakable. Vanilla. Lavender. The faint copper undertone of blood that’s been cleaned but not erased.

She’s alive. She’s in there.

I’m halfway across the open square when the first shout goes up.

“Rogue! East side!”

The word hits me like a slap. I don’t turn. I don’t look. I run. The hospital doors are sixty feet away. Fifty. Forty. Boots hammer the packed earth behind me, closing fast.

“Stop! Halt!”

I don’t halt. I drop my shoulder and plow through the first warrior who steps into my path. He goes down hard, his head cracking against the corner of a rain barrel, and I’m past him before the second one reaches me. I pivot, catch his wrist mid swing, and drive my elbow into his chest. He crumples.

Three more. They come from the side street, fanning out, trying to box me in. The nearest one shifts mid stride, a big grey wolf, teeth bared, and launches himself at my throat. I meet him in the air. Our bodies collide with a sound like wet canvas tearing. My claws find his flank. His teeth find nothing. I throw him into the second warrior, and both of them go down in a tangle of limbs and snarls.

The third is smarter. He hangs back, circling, buying time. I can hear more boots now, more voices, more wolves converging from every direction. The village is waking up. Every second I spend here is a second I lose.

I fain left. He commits. I go right instead, driving my fist into his jaw with everything I have. Bone cracks. He drops. I don’t watch him fall.

Thirty feet. Twenty.