There’s no attack, no movement, no ambush. Just silence. Too much silence.
The sulfur scent lingers, faint but unmistakable, fresh because they’d just been there, their traces left without presence.
“They were here,” Conan mutters when he shifts back to human form, stating the obvious.
Damian crouches in human form, pressing his palm to the ground. His jaw tightens. “Not anymore.” He turns to us, and I take back my human form, feeling a cold shiver travel down my spine.
It’s wrong. All of it is wrong. Demons don’t scout the area and retreat. They don’t test borders. They don’t probe. They invade, as they have been doing for the past three years. Which means this wasn’t a hunt. It was reconnaissance, and that’s worse.
“They came here for something, and they left,” I say, stroking my chin thoughtfully.
“Perhaps they found what they came for…” Damian laments, a wave of dread washing over all of us.
Especially me.
And when Damian meets my eyes, I know we share the same thought.
His mate, Sophie, was being tracked in the city by the demons, and he’d saved her when he found her. The demons seemed to know where to find her even before her magic was unleashed, as if they had a way to trace the descendants of the Ashclaw Pack.
“We need to consult with the council,” I say with a firm nod. “We’ll do it in Silver Stone.”
There’s a silent concession amongst the alphas, even Conan, who usually puts up some resistance. There’s a certain void in his eyes as he stares ahead blankly, barely there, even if he’s standing here in physical form. I can only hope that he’s finally decided to stop being resistant to the ritual to find his fated mate. But with the residue of the demons hanging like a dark cloud over the valley, now doesn’t seem like the right time for the ritual when the demons could strike at any given moment.
What’s most important is keeping ourselves safe—especially Annika, since she still doesn’t know the truth about me, or about her. If the demons came, perhaps they gathered intel on her.
And I need to protect her at all costs, especially until her dormant magic emerges and she’s able to use her own powers to protect herself. But even after that.
***
The council chamber is heavy with presence and history; stone walls, built many decades ago, carved runes, old pack sigils embedded in the architecture like scars that never healed.
Everyone is there.
My father, Elder Mortimer, stands at the head of the chamber, his posture as rigid and unyielding as the mountains themselves. My father doesn’t sit unless he has to, especially when we’re in Silver Stone territory, authority carved into his spine.
Beside him, Elder Joel—Damian’s uncle—leans on his staff, eyes sharp, calculating, ancient intelligence behind them despite being the youngest of the elders on the council. Elder Bernard, Conan’s grandfather, sits heavily in his chair, age etched into his face, but power still coiled beneath the surface.
And near the center, surrounded by scrolls, data tablets, maps, and sigil diagrams, stands Amos—the head of our research team—with the other researchers.
The room hums with tension, and Damian speaks first. “There was no direct engagement from the demons. Residual demon traces were the only thing left behind, and those were because the scouts sensed them first. No breach points were found. We sensed them, heard them, but they were gone when we charged forward.”
Amos exhales slowly. “Which confirms the pattern. They’ve sensed the arrival of the second witch.”
A shiver of dread runs down my spine, my hands curling into fists on the large oak table. Amos gestures to a large map laid across the central stone table—a detailed map of the valley, the borders, the fault lines of magic drawn across it.
He leans over the table and points to a spot on the map.
“The portal,” he begins, and the word lands heavily. “We think it might be here.”
The same one Sophie saw in her vision, the fracture between worlds from where the demons are entering our realm from the underworld.
Amos continues, “As we know from Luna Sophie’s vision, the demons aren’t entering randomly. They’re using a fixed gateway. It’s a stable breach point, and so far, we suspect that it’s here. If we find it, that means containment is possible. We can lock the demons out of our world for good.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence before Bernard speaks. “We need to start a search party for this portal. Go out and actively search for it before they attack again.”
Joel nods. ”With Heinrich’s mate in Silver Stone, we can’t risk them coming back to attack until Miss Singh is ready with her powers.”
My father’s voice cuts through the room. “Her safety is our number one priority,” he says.
