The packhouse is a mess of shifting paws and low murmurs, tension weighing upon my chest, heavy as any weight I’ve ever tried to heave and couldn’t shake.

Aurora’s sharp command cuts through the chaos, and for a moment, everyone is still.

“Prepare for defense,” she says, firm and unyielding. “No one leaves the territory until we know what we’re dealing with.”

I stood at the edge of the room, my claws pressed into the wood of a window frame. Outside, fog thickens, curling and twisting around itself almost as if alive.

“This isn’t natural,” Dane says from behind me. The metallic ring of his blade emerging from its sheath immediately follows.

I don’t need him to tell me that. The way the mist moves, it’s like it’s alive—watching, waiting.

The silence outside feels louder than the noise in the packhouse. The usual sounds of the forest—leaves rustling, crickets chirping—are gone, swallowed by the dense, unnatural fog.

Aurora steps beside me, her face pale but determined. “We’ll get through this,” she says softly, her eyes scanning the horizon.

The packhouse is dead silent in their shocked state. Eira is the first among them to show she is brave, her face pale yet firm, her voice low.

“I need to tell you all something,” she says, her voice shaking.

Aurora whips to her, eyes keen. “What?”

Eira hesitates before speaking. “The Forgotten once offered me a place among them,” she says. “I refused. But now… now I think they’ll stop at nothing to reclaim what they believe is theirs.”

Her words hang in the air, heavier with the sense of confession and an unseen gale across each one of us.

Aurora rises; her face is a mask. “We’ll discuss that later,” she says, clear as crystal. “Right now, what awaits us.”

She speaks to Dane, who since Callen fell has been a dead weight on his shoulders and hasn’t shown much sign of life. “We gotta think up some kind of plan of action."

He nods, his jaw set tight. “First, we figure out what they want. And then we stop them.”

The fog presses in closer until the tension in the packhouse builds up, near to snapping. The werewolves' pace and their fear can almost be touched.

Aurora moves among them, reassuring words given, but she cannot hide her own worry either.

Lirien watches from the darkness, putting into perspective how little we really know about what we’re up against.