Chapter 127 Hundred and thirty two
“Ryder was here,” Sienna said, her voice sharp enough to cut through the cold morning air. “I can feel him.”
“Or someone wants you to think that,” Mira replied, crouching near the fallen arrowheads scattered across the frost-crusted ground. “Look at these. They weren’t dropped. They were torn from bodies.”
“They weren’t our rebels’ arrows,” Sienna murmured, kneeling beside her. She picked one up, brushing her thumb along the shaft. The wood was clean, untouched by poison. “These belong to Zane’s hunters.”
“And they’re dead now,” Mira said quietly.
Sienna rose to her feet, ignoring the tremble running up her arm. “He saved them.”
“Saved who?” Mira asked. “Your rebels?”
“Who else?” Sienna’s gaze swept the border forest, the skeletal trees bending under a heavy winter wind. “Who else would tear arrows out mid-flight, break sigils with bare hands, and leave no tracks behind?”
Mira exhaled slowly. “You really think the Ghost Alpha everyone whispers about is Ryder?”
The name rippled through Sienna’s chest like an ache she had been holding too long. “I don’t think,” she said. “I know.”
A gust of wind swept past them, cold enough to steal breath, and she closed her eyes. The air carried a trace of burned sigils, the faint scent of singed leaves, Ryder’s unnatural curse flaring just long enough to stop the assassins but quiet enough to vanish before the rebels could see him.
He had been close. Close enough that her bones felt warmer than they should. Close enough that the world itself felt different.
“Sienna,” Mira said carefully, “if he’s still near the borders, it means he’s watching you. Protecting you. From the shadows. Like he always did.”
“That’s exactly what scares me,” Sienna whispered.
“What scares you?” Mira asked.
“That he thinks he needs to hide from me.”
Mira’s eyes softened, but she said nothing. The forest around them was quiet, too quiet. Even birds avoided this path now. Word had spread that something invisible guarded the Moon Court’s borders at night, something that tore through enemies with unnatural silence. Rebels called him a myth. Loyalists called him a protector. Zane called him a threat worse than Sienna herself.
And Sienna…
Sienna called him a wound that refused to close.
She walked deeper along the path, every sense sharp, every breath rising in faint clouds. “Look at this,” she said, crouching near a charred sigil burned into the ground. “This belongs to Renna’s assassins.”
Mira knelt beside her. “It’s fresh.”
“Hours old at most.”
“And the ashes?”
Sienna touched the blackened mess beside the sigil. It crumbled under her fingers, falling like dark snow. “Not ashes,” she whispered. “Fur.”
“Fur?” Mira stiffened. “Ryder’s?”
“No. Theirs.” She pointed to claw marks etched deeply into the frozen soil. “He didn’t shift fully. But he used enough of the curse to rip through them.”
“How many?” Mira asked.
Sienna stood slowly, scanning the forest.
“Six. Maybe seven.”
“And how many bodies?”
Sienna’s mouth tightened. “None.”
Mira’s eyes widened. “He took them?”
“He doesn’t leave remains,” Sienna said, her voice sinking into something heavy. “He doesn’t want people to know how strong he’s become.”
“How strong is he now?” Mira asked.
Sienna shook her head once. “Stronger than any Alpha alive. Stronger than he wants to be.”
She stepped over the burned sigil, following a faint path of crushed ice that only she could sense. Not footprints, impressions of movement, vibrations in the ground, the ghost of a presence she knew better than her own breath.
Her heart raced. “He went this way.”
“Sienna,” Mira said gently, “you’re not obligated to chase him.”
“I’m not chasing him,” she murmured.
“Then what are you doing?”
Sienna lowered her voice. “Following the last piece of myself that hasn’t shattered yet.”
Mira didn’t argue.
They walked until the trees thinned, revealing the remains of an abandoned watchtower leaning against the slope of a hill. Its stones were cracked, the wooden beams splintered by age and battle. Smoke lingered near the top, thin wisps, barely visible.
“He lit a fire,” Sienna whispered. “He stayed the night.”
“Sienna, if he’s still here, ”
“He isn’t.” Her voice grew hushed. “He never stays long.”
She approached the tower slowly, heart pounding, senses sharpening as the wind shifted. The faint scent of him clung to the stones, pine, smoke, and something darker. Something that didn’t feel entirely mortal anymore.
Sienna stepped inside.
The tower’s interior was cold and dusty, but a small circle of warmth lingered where someone had sat. She knelt there, pressing her palm to the floor. It was still warm. Still alive.
“Ryder,” she breathed.
Mira stood at the entrance, looking out for danger, but she glanced back. “What do you see?”
“A message,” Sienna whispered.
In the dust beside the firepit, a single line was drawn.
Just one.
But it was enough to stop her breath.
Stay away.
“He wrote this,” Sienna murmured.
Mira swallowed. “Maybe he’s warning you.”
“No.” Sienna shook her head. “He’s warning himself.”
She stood, wiping a trembling hand across her face. “He’s trying to protect me by running. Again.”
“Maybe he thinks it’s the only way.”
“Then he’s wrong.”
She walked past Mira, stepping into the pale sunlight that filtered through broken tower slats. “I’m done letting him disappear.”
“Sienna, ”
“He saved my rebels. He killed Zane’s assassins. He’s circling the borders like a ghost because he thinks he’s nothing but a curse.”
Mira opened her mouth, then closed it.
Sienna pressed a hand against a tree trunk, grounding herself. “He’s alive. He’s fighting for me. And I refuse to let him believe that hiding is safer than standing beside me.”
“You want to find him,” Mira said.
Sienna inhaled shakily. “No. I need to.”
Before Mira could answer, the wind shifted again, harder this time, violent, carrying a faint metallic scent Sienna recognized instantly.
Blood.
Not human.
Not hers.
Not Mira’s.
Ryder’s.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. “We’re not alone.”
Mira drew her dagger quietly. “Where?”
Sienna’s gaze lifted toward the trees across the clearing. Something moved there, too fast to see, too soft to hear, but its presence rippled through her bones like static.
She whispered, “Ryder?”
The forest didn’t answer.
But something else did.
A branch snapped. A shadow flickered. The air pulsed with the faint hum of the curse.
Mira stepped closer, whispering urgently, “Sienna, don’t move.”
“He’s watching,” Sienna whispered back.
“Or something is pretending to be him,” Mira snapped softly.
Another snap echoed in the trees.
Closer.
Heavier.
Sienna’s breath hitched. “Ryder,” she said louder, “show yourself. Please.”
For a moment, the silence grew thick enough to choke on.
Then,
A shape shifted between the trees.
Not fully human.
Not fully wolf.
Walking the line between both.
He stepped into the clearing just barely, enough for the moonlight to catch the edge of his jaw, but not enough for his cursed eyes to show. His chest moved with shallow breaths. His shoulders rose and fell in quick, pained bursts.
Mira whispered, “Mother of, ”
“Ryder,” Sienna breathed, taking a step forward.
He disappeared.
Gone in a blink. A blur of shadow swallowed by deeper shadow.
Mira grabbed her arm. “Stop!”
“He’s bleeding,” Sienna snapped. “Let me go.”
“He doesn’t want you close.”
“He never does when he’s scared.”
“Sienna, ”
Sienna pulled free, her heart beating too fast, her lungs tight. “I felt him. I saw him. He’s hurt. He’s still protecting us while he’s bleeding.”
Mira swallowed hard. “Then what now?”
Sienna stared at the place where he vanished.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Now I follow the blood.”
The trees shivered. The ground trembled faintly. The wind sharpened with a strange, electric edge.
And Sienna stepped forward,
straight into the direction Ryder fled.