Chapter 83

• The forest slept uneasily that night.
• Wind threaded through the trees like whispers between ghosts, carrying scents of damp earth and the faint tang of magic left over from the trial. Ariana had left the keep hours ago, restless. The quiet inside the fortress felt too heavy; every wall still echoed Demion’s confession, and her thoughts could find no peace inside them.
• She walked without destination, guided by the pulse beneath her skin—the mark that never stopped glowing now, faint as a heartbeat. It led her to the ruins east of the cliffs, a place even the wolves avoided. Legends said that was where the first Alpha had bargained with the shadows. Tonight, the air there smelled of rain and iron.