Tangled Fates

Chapter 26

The wolf woke before I did.

A low snarl rippled beneath my skin, muscles coiling like steel wire under strain. A growl built in my chest before my mind caught up, low, animalistic, the sound of a beast recognizing a threat. My eyes snapped open to darkness that felt wrong, air thick with the metallic tang of magic and something else, something that made my teeth ache and my spine crawl with dread. The wrongness pressed against my senses like a physical weight, every instinct I possessed screaming that the world had shifted while I slept.

I bolted upright, scanning the dim interior of the hut. Moss-light flickered against weathered walls, casting everything in sickly green hues that made the shadows writhe like living things. The scent of pine and summer fire should have filled the space, should have wrapped around me like a familiar embrace.

But it didn't.

The cold hit me first, not the chill of dawn air seeping through gaps in the wood, but the hollow emptiness where warmth should have been. Where she should have been.

"Nadia?" Her name scraped raw from my throat as I lunged toward the pile of furs where she should have been sleeping. My hands met only cold fabric, her lingering scent already fading like smoke caught on the wind.

Gone.

My wolf clawed against my ribs, demanding release, demanding action. Every instinct screamed that something was wrong, that she was in danger, that I had failed. The rational part of my mind tried to argue, maybe she'd stepped outside, maybe she was gathering herbs, maybe...

Something inside me knew different.

I tore through the hut like a man possessed, overturning furs, searching corners that couldn't possibly hide a person. Her cloak was gone. Her boots. The small knife she had taken when she thought I wasn't looking. Everything that mattered, everything that was distinctly hers, had vanished as if she'd never existed at all.

"Nadia... Nadia... Nadia..."Her name spilled from my lips over and over, like a prayer hurled at deaf gods.

Silence enveloped me until I noticed her, a figure standing in the doorway like a wraith summoned by grief. Morgana stood there, but not the predatory creature who'd circled us with venom yesterday. This version looked hollowed out, carved empty by something that had stripped away all her cruel beauty and left only bones and sorrow behind.

Her black hair hung limp around a face gone pale as winter moonlight. Those once fiery golden-ringed eyes now dulled to ash stared back at me, gone was the venom, just emptiness carved deep within their depths. She leaned against the doorframe as if standing required more strength than she possessed. Her posture had changed, shoulders curved inward as if she were protecting something fragile in her chest.

"Where is she?" My words emerged raw, my voice barely human as my wolf pressed closer to the surface.

Morgana's lips parted, but no sound emerged. She tried again, her voice barely a whisper when it finally came. "She's gone."

The words didn't land. They hovered, useless, in the air between us. I didn't breathe. Didn't blink. My heart hadn't caught up yet. The world tilted sideways as I said, "Gone where?"

"To the Shattering." Each word fell like a knife slicing through fibers of a string tethering me to her. "Grandmother has already summoned The Revenant."

Time fractured into jagged shards.

Everything I thought I knew about control, about restraint, about the careful distance I'd maintained, all of it crumbled like ash in the wind. My body moved without thought, crossing the space between us in two strides. My hands found Morgana's throat, slamming her back against the wall with enough force to rattle the bone chimes hanging in the entrance.