LOGIN“Stop! Don’t do this!” They can’t hear me, can’t feel my desperate attempts to stop this. I’m trapped inside the worst moment of my life with no way to change it. The world fractures around me, and for the briefest second, my mother’s fingertips brush mine. “Live, Poppy.” Then darkness explodes
** Poppy’s POV ** I blink against the darkness surrounding me. The cabin is gone. The smell of dinner. The warmth of the fire. The laughter in the kitchen. All of it has vanished. Instead, cold asphalt presses against my bare feet. I know this place. Not because I’ve seen it before, but because I’
“It seems our timing,” Leo says, looking between us, “is perfect.”“No, it’s terrible,” Alaric corrects flatly.“That depends on who you ask,” Jake shrugs.Alaric ignores him, turning back to the stove to flip the chicken with far too much focus.“So, what were you saying about defence lessons?” Leo
** Poppy’s POV **I thought Alaric would have been pissed at learning his brother had my number all along and had been messaging me, but he’s amused, and maybe even a little proud. He shakes his head again and laughs; it’s so contagious that I can’t even be mad.“Come on,” he says, standing from the
** Poppy’s POV **Bastian has been gone too long for a simple perimeter check of the cabin. I don’t know why that bothers me, but it does. I catch myself rubbing my thumb over the rim of my coffee mug again. It’s gone lukewarm, but I haven’t taken a sip in several minutes. Instead, I keep glancing
“I only detected five scents in the pack centre,” Bastian says. “The sixth entered here.”He points to a patch of flattened fern that none of us had even looked at.“They were already travelling together.”“That’s what we thought,” Leo says.Bastian doesn’t answer. He simply keeps moving, following
** Remy’s POV **My chest goes tight. “No,” I whisper.Nina’s standing in the centre of them like she belongs there, her once-pristine doctor’s coat shredded and smeared with dirt, her expression is as blank as the rest.Leo exhales. “Is that…”“Yeah,” I nod. “That’s Nina.”For a long second, no one
Jake nods from where he kneels beside her. “Her vitals are strong. Whatever she did burned through her reserves. Her body’s catching up. I don’t think it will be long before she wakes. She’ll still need to rest though.”Remy grunts and tosses two more bundles from the pile. One at Callen, one at me.
** Callen’s POV **The woods look different today, quieter, too still.The air is heavy with the memory of last night’s chaos. We move in a staggered formation, Phoenix wolves up front, Midnight marksmen on the ridgeline to our right, keeping pace from a distance. Ryder leads, Remy just behind him,
** Paige’s POV **The world narrows to a single point of pressure in my chest.I don’t mean in a painful way. It’s more like… a pull. A thread tethered to something outside of this room, outside of me. A distant storm I can feel but not see. Every time I try to blink, my eyes don’t want to close all







