High on the slope, sharp enough to slice the meeting clean in two.
Every wolf in the basin snapped to attention. Arthur’s head jerked up, heart slamming, wolf lunging for the surface.
Another shout. This time, he caught words.
“Incoming!”
The wind shifted.
He smelled it before he saw them.
Wrong.
Not just wolf, not just witch, not just rot. All of it and none of it. The same stomach-turning blend he’d scented on ripped corpses at Voskresen.
Hybrids.
Lots of them.
Chase swore beside him. Dominic’s head swung toward the tree line. Leonid’s grin flashed, bright and savage.
“Well,” the Volnoye Alpha said, voice almost cheerful, “looks like the enemy doesn’t care about your agenda.”
Shapes broke over the rise above them, dark against the snow, moving too fast, too smooth. A whole pack, pouring down the mountain.
Straight toward the meeting ground.
Chapter 19 - Dani
Dani saw the first hybrid hit the lower ridge, and everything exploded.
Wolves surged forward in a ragged wave, clothes ripping, bones cracking as they shifted mid-stride. The vampires moved in the opposite direction, not away butaround, slipping up the slope at an angle, fast as thought, fangs already bared. The air turned sharp with fear, fury, the metallic tang of gathering magic.
Spells crackled at the edge of her senses, Lavinia’s cool, precise sigils, Kiara’s sly, tangled weaves, the other witches’ earth-heavy wards. Snow shuddered under the weight of it.
Dani didn’t think. She stepped forward with her sisters.
Fire rose in her blood like it had been waiting.
Her hands were already lifting when Arthur grabbed her arm.
“No,” he said.
Just that. Short, hard, with the kind of authority that made half the damn basin flinch on instinct.
She jerked around to face him, ripping her arm free. “Excuse me?”
He was already halfway between man and wolf, pupils blown, teeth a fraction too long, his body held in that tight, vibrating line that meant it was taking everything he had not to shift.
“Fenred!” he barked over her shoulder. “Get those who aren’t battle-ready back to the compound. Now. Lock it down.”
“I ambattle-ready,” Dani snapped.
“You’ve never fought these things,” Arthur shot back.
“This is the whole reason we’re here,” she said.
Another hybrid crested the rise, mouth red, eyes flashing. A Nordan wolf hit it full-force, and they went down in a blur of fur and teeth.
