POV: Kyran
The air was too still.
Kyran rolled his shoulders as he stalked through the trees, eyes scanning the horizon, ears tuned to the hush that pressed too tightly against the forest edge. He hated how quiet it had become in his mind. Ever since Lyra. Ever since the whispers started.
Ever since Everly had begun appearing in places she shouldn't. Calm. Still. Watching.
"You're chewing the inside of your cheek again," Dax muttered from his left, brushing a low-hanging branch aside. "That means you're thinking too hard, which means you're in a mood."
Kyran didn't answer.
Talon smirked, falling into step beside them. "He's always in a mood lately. Guess we all are. Tension's thick enough to gut with a claw. Everyone's on edge waiting for the Red Moon."
Dax grunted. "He's the one who ordered this patrol. Figured he needed to run off the crazy."
"I didn't 'order' it," Kyran said. "I volunteered."
"For what?" Talon asked. "Fresh air or absolution?"
Kyran shot him a glare but said nothing. He couldn't explain the pressure building behind his ribs. The way his wolf had started pacing without cause. The low, persistent ache that echoed in the space between instinct and memory. A space that pulsed when Everly was near or even when she wasn't.
The three of them moved deeper into the perimeter, the scent markers growing faint.
"I thought rogues were supposed to be messy," Dax said after a while. "But this? This looks…"
"Intentional," Talon finished, crouching near a tree where the bark had been carved, not slashed, into curved symbols. "Almost delicate."
Kyran stepped closer, brushing his hand along the smooth grooves. The edges were clean. Twisting vines. A crescent hidden in the swirl. He blinked.
Moon-vine. The pattern felt familiar in a way that scraped behind his ribs. He didn't know why. But his chest tightened just looking at it.
"What is this?" Dax muttered.
Kyran felt Thorne stir, ears up, breath low. "Not danger," he whispered. "Not exactly."
"Could be a rogue sign we've never seen," Talon offered, standing. "Or a warning. Or... maybe art."
Kyran frowned. "Rogues don't make art."
"Maybe not the kind you're used to," Talon stated while shrugging his shoulders.
They moved again, quieter now. The deeper they went, the more the air changed, no birdsong, no rustle. Just that strange pressure. Like walking into a room after someone cried.
Dax muttered something under his breath. Talon glanced at Kyran. "You good?"
Kyran nodded, jaw tight. "Just… listening."
At the riverbend near the last marker, Kyran stopped dead. There on the far side of the bank, half-shrouded in fog and willow stood a figure. A woman, maybe. Still as stone.
Cloaked in something darker than shadow. He couldn't see her face. But she looked at him. And he knew.
Spirit.
She didn't speak. Didn't move. Just… watched. His heart was beating way too fast. The others didn't seem to notice her.
He blinked and she was gone.
"What is it?" Talon asked, following his gaze.
"Nothing," Kyran lied.
"Did you see something?" Dax asked.
"No."
Back at the camp's edge, Kyran lingered behind. Talon and Dax moved ahead, arguing about stew or tactics or something Kyran couldn't hear over the sound of his own blood.
He knelt beside the stream and stared at his reflection. His eyes looked wrong. Too pale. Too tired.
Thorne stirred beneath his skin, not restless but almost reverent. "That place beyond the border… that's not rogue… it's reborn."
Kyran touched his chest. It didn't hurt exactly. But it…ached. For something lost. For something that hadn't belonged to him long enough.
Everly's name rose in his throat but he swallowed it down.
The moon climbed higher. And Kyran didn't feel like a future Alpha.
He felt like a boy too close to a truth that he'd already broken.
The wind shifted as Kyran rose from the stream's edge, a chill threading through the trees. Above him, the sky had begun to change, subtle at first, the clouds bleeding crimson at their edges, the moon swelling fat and low behind the tree line.
His wolf stirred uneasily. Not in warning. In mourning. "It's coming," the wolf whispered from deep in his chest. "The Red Moon."
Kyran didn't know what it meant. Only that it felt like something ancient had started counting down.
And something inside him had already run out of time.