The Alpha’s question hung in the air, a challenge heavier than a mountain stone. “Who are you?” The single, intelligent eye bored into Elias, stripping away layers of lies and half-truths, searching for a core that Elias himself didn’t know existed. The surrounding lycans were a wall of muscle and teeth, their burning amber eyes a sea of judgment. Behind him, in the suffocating darkness of the den, Elias could hear Sarah’s ragged, terrified breathing. She was the proof of his crime, the human scent that painted him as a traitor.Elias’s mind, a maelstrom of panic and a strange, new clarity, raced for an answer. He couldn’t say he was Elias Ward, the hunter. That name was a death sentence here. He couldn’t say he was a lycan. He didn’t know how. He was nothing. A ghost. A lie.He fell back on the only tangible piece of his past that felt real. The only thing that wasn’t a memory twisted by lies or a sensation warped by his new senses.Slowly, deliberately, he reached into his satchel.

The silence that followed the pack’s departure was a physical weight, a suffocating blanket that pressed down on Elias, stealing the air from his lungs. He stood alone in the center of the clearing, the ghost of his past a heavy burden on his soul. The accusations of the lycans, killer of children, hunter of cubs, echoed in the cavern of his mind, a relentless, damning chorus. He was not just a hunter. He was a murderer. A killer of his own kind.A soft sob broke the silence. Sarah was standing at the edge of the clearing, her arms wrapped around herself, her body trembling. She looked at him not with the fear of a hunted animal, but with the dawning, horrified comprehension of someone who has just seen the truth. She had heard the accusations. She had seen his lack of denial. She knew.“Elias,” she whispered, her voice a fragile thread of sound. “Is it true? What they said? About the… the cubs?”He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t meet her gaze. He just stood there, the silence his confe

The silver was a cold fire, a poison that seeped into Elias’s very soul. It was a violation, a scream of pure agony that threatened to shatter his consciousness into a million pieces. But beneath the searing pain, something else was happening. The revelation Thomas had so cruelly delivered—they bought you—was not a wound; it was a key. It unlocked a door inside him, a door he hadn't even known was there, and behind it was a cold, silent, and utterly terrifying void.He stopped screaming.The sudden silence in the clearing was more shocking than the previous shrieks of agony. The hunters, who had been watching with a mixture of grim satisfaction and morbid curiosity, exchanged uneasy glances. Sarah stared, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs, a tear tracing a path through the grime on her cheek. She saw Elias on his knees, his body convulsing, but his face… his face was changing. The contortion of pain was being replaced by a chilling, unnerving calm.Thomas’s triumphant smirk fa

The words, “It’s him,” were a death knell in the suffocating silence of the cabin. But the attack, when it came, was not a brute-force assault of splintering wood and roaring hunters. It was a violation of a different, more terrifying kind. A high-pitched, almost inaudible hum filled the air, a sound that vibrated in their teeth and bones. The single, remaining window and the doorway were suddenly sealed, not by boards or bars, but by a shimmering, opaque field of energy that distorted the light, turning the outside world into a nightmare of warped shapes and colors. The air grew thick, heavy with the sterile, antiseptic scent of ozone and something else… a faint, chemical sweetness that made Elias’s stomach turn. It was the scent of the Mournshade, but refined, weaponized.“Do not bother,” a voice boomed from outside, amplified, cold and devoid of emotion. It was a voice of absolute control, the sound of a man who had never known a moment’s doubt. “The barrier is impervious to physic

The word, “sanitized,” was a death sentence. The female soldier, her face a mask of cold, emotionless efficiency, raised her rifle. The weapon didn’t roar; it hummed, a low, malevolent thrum that vibrated in the very air. A bolt of pure, white energy, crackling with silver light, shot across the valley and struck one of the frozen initiates.There was no scream. There was no explosion of blood and bone. The initiate simply… dissolved. Its body turned into a viscous, black sludge, its form collapsing in on itself with a sickening, wet sound. The silver light of its eyes flickered and died, and in less than a second, all that was left was a bubbling puddle of black goo and a few scraps of the dark, practical uniform.The silence that followed was a vacuum, a space where sound should have been. It was a demonstration so horrific, so utterly devoid of mercy, that it transcended fear and became a thing of pure, clinical horror. Ronan’s pack, a seething tide of fury just moments before, fro