Chapter 23
The frost thickened with every mile north.
Hadley rode beside Thorne on horseback, the dense pine trees giving way to bare, icy cliffs. Each breath turned to mist. Each step forward felt like shedding the last remnants of who she had once been.
“You’re quiet,” Thorne said, not unkindly.
“I’m thinking,” she replied, adjusting her cloak. “Trying to understand why my mother never told me what we were.”
Thorne looked ahead. “Sometimes, survival demands silence. She was hunted. You were her only hope.”
That word — hunted — lingered in her chest. Hadley had always sensed something chasing her in her dreams. Now, she wondered if it had never stopped.
After two days of travel, they reached the edge of the ancient Umbrafrost territory. Towering black stones marked the border, each etched with glyphs that shimmered faintly under the moonlight. Beyond them lay a series of half-buried temples and snow-choked paths that seemed untouched by time.
“This is sacred ground,” Thorne said. “Only those of Moon-Bound blood may pass the arch.”
He gestured to a stone gateway flanked by two weathered wolves, their eyes hollowed by years.
Hadley approached — cautious, unsure.
As she stepped beneath the arch, a pulse ran through her. Cold, electric, and familiar. The runes lit up in response, casting silver light across the snow.
Thorne bowed his head. “You are of her line. The temple will show you what she left behind.”
Inside the chamber, she found carvings — stories chiseled in stone. Her mother’s name appeared again and again beside symbols of warning: a cracked moon, a wolf with twin shadows, a woman cloaked in fire.
Then, a prophecy etched deeper than the rest:
“One will rise with blood of the moon, touched by flame, hunted by void. Her fall or rise shall mark the fate of the packs.”
Hadley stared.
Touched by flame… the nightclub.
Hunted by void… the shadows in her dreams.
She was the prophecy.
But before she could speak, the flames of the temple flickered — not from wind, but from a shift in the air. A cold presence filled the room. Thorne’s eyes narrowed.
“We’re not alone.”
A sound echoed behind them — something dragging across stone. Then a low, breathless whisper:
“She wakes… too soon…”
From the shadows emerged a figure — cloaked in ash-gray robes, eyes hollow and black as oil.
Not human. Not wolf.
Something older.
Hadley stepped back, every nerve screaming.
“That,” Thorne growled, stepping in front of her, “is a Warden of the Hollow. They serve what sleeps beneath the ice.”
The wraith-like creature raised a skeletal hand. “Return the girl… or all shall fall to silence.”
Hadley felt the weight of the prophecy pressing down on her shoulders. But her voice was steady when she spoke:
“Tell your master—”
She reached for the silver crescent around her neck.
“—he should’ve finished the job the first time.”