Chapter 77: Seventy Seven: Journey Begins

Mara's POV

The road to the Council stretched endless beneath a dying sky.

Mist clung to the treetops like breath that refused to fade, and every step felt heavier than the last. I could sense eyes on us, too many, too still.

Rival packs moved in the shadows, following without a sound. Wolves of no allegiance. Wolves who watched and waited.

I’d spent enough nights hunted to know when I was prey.

The Bloodfang warriors rode close, shields up, blades drawn. Their loyalty was to Ronald, not to me. Some didn’t bother hiding the resentment in their eyes when I passed.

To them, I was a curse wrapped in a woman’s skin, a Silverfang shadow brought to rot their pack from the inside.

Ronald rode ahead, his back straight, the Alpha’s authority rolling off him in waves.

He hadn’t spoken much since the raven came, but the set of his jaw told me enough. He was planning something.

Lucas trailed beside him, the only one who dared question him openly. Their low voices drifted through the cold air. I caught fragments..“Council timing,” “ambush routes,” “no second chances.”

I couldn’t help thinking: they were preparing for war, not a trial.

As the day bled into dusk, the wind carried the faint smell of rain and something else. Smoke. Old, faint, but enough to make my wolf stir uneasily beneath my skin.

We are being watched.

I didn’t need her whisper to know it. The hairs on my arms stood, my heartbeat aligning with the rhythm of the forest.

For every branch that cracked, I counted two steps in the dark that didn’t belong to us.

By the time we made camp, the air was too thick with tension to breathe.

Ronald ordered the warriors to form a perimeter, double watches, no fire until the second shift. The men obeyed. They always did when his voice carried that steel edge.

But when the others settled, he broke his own rule.

He lit a small flame between us, barely a flicker, but enough to chase away the cold. The light painted his face in bronze and shadow, and for once, he didn’t look like an Alpha or a soldier. He looked… tired.

“Why light a fire,” I murmured, “when you told them not to?”

His lips twitched faintly. “So you can see I’m not a ghost.”

I huffed. “You’d be quieter if you were.”

He gave a low chuckle, the sound rough, unguarded. “You sound just like her.”

My brows lifted. “Who?”

He stared into the flame for a long moment before answering. “My mother. She was the only one who dared mock my father to his face.”

The air shifted. I hadn’t expected him to speak of his father. Ronald never mentioned him, not even when I accused him of being just like the man.

“She defied him once,” he continued quietly. “Tried to stop him from sending warriors to Silverfang. He called her soft. Said mercy was poison to leadership.”

I froze. The Silverfang massacre.

His voice dropped, almost a whisper. “He struck her in front of the pack. I was thirteen. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Just stood there… watching.”

The fire crackled softly between us, the only sound filling the heavy silence.

For the first time, I saw not the Alpha but the boy behind the scars. The boy who had learned too early that silence was survival.

My wolf shifted, uneasy. She hated pity. But something else stirred beneath the anger, understanding.

“You’re not him,” I said quietly.

He looked up, eyes burning like embers. “No. But I carry his blood. And the Council never lets a son forget his father’s sins.”

Neither did fate.

For a while, we said nothing. The night hummed around us, wind, leaves, heartbeats. My fingers brushed the blade sheathed beside me, the Silverfang relic that pulsed faintly under the moonlight.

I could feel it waiting, like a living thing.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I said finally. “This trial, it isn’t yours to fight.”

Ronald’s eyes didn’t waver. “Everything about you is mine to fight.”

The bond between us pulsed then, fierce and terrifying. My wolf responded instantly, a growl of longing and defiance tangled together.

“Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t make this harder.”

“Too late for that,” he murmured, gaze soft but unyielding. “You made it harder the moment you walked into my hall and looked at me like you already knew my soul.”

I turned away, cursing the heat rising in my throat. “You’re still the enemy, Ronald.”

“Then let me be the kind that stands in front of you, not against you.”

Before I could answer, the wind changed.

The fire flickered, guttered. My wolf went still.

Something’s wrong.

A second later, a whistle sliced through the air, too sharp, too quick. Ronald moved first, shoving me down just as an arrow thudded into the log behind where I’d been sitting.

“Up!” he barked. “They’ve found us!”

All around, shadows rose from the dark. Dozens of them, masked, silent, their movements too precise for rogues.

Bloodfang warriors scrambled, blades drawn. Lucas’s voice cut through the chaos, rallying them into formation. But they were surrounded, completely.

The masked warriors didn’t speak. They simply closed in, step by measured step, their blades gleaming cold under the moon.

I reached for my dagger, my wolf already pushing forward, teeth bared inside me.

Ronald’s growl joined mine, low and lethal.

“Stay close,” he ordered.

And as the firelight died, the world shrank to breath and heartbeat and steel.

The silence before the storm.

Then…

The first blade struck.