The key gleamed dully in the moonlight, but Keth's eyes were drawn upward—to the window. The howl still echoed in their bones, vibrating through the stone beneath their palms like a second heartbeat.
*"The window,"* something whispered—not in the dungeon, but inside Keth's skull. A voice that wasn't theirs.
They stood, muscles protesting. The cell was smaller than they'd realized, barely five paces across. The window was high, but not impossible. Keth dragged the rotting wooden bench beneath it, the legs screeching against stone.
**The Mark on their chest pulsed once, hot as a brand.**
Keth froze.
*"Not that way,"* the voice murmured. *"He wants you to run."*
They looked back at the key.
---
**The dungeon corridors twisted like a serpent's gullet.**
Keth moved silently, the key cold in their grip. Valtheris's words coiled in their mind—*three ways out*—but the vampire hadn't said which led to freedom and which to damnation.
The torchlight bled shadows across the walls, morphing into shapes that almost looked like faces. Keth's breath hitched as the Mark flared again, sending a wave of heat through their ribs.
*"Left,"* the voice urged.
Keth turned—and nearly collided with a figure cloaked in gray.
A girl, no older than sixteen, with a scar slicing across her throat. She bared teeth that were too sharp to be human.
"Wolf-blood," Keth breathed.
The girl's nostrils flared. "You smell of *him*." Her gaze dropped to Keth's chest. "And *that*."
A howl echoed from somewhere above. Closer this time.
The girl lunged.
**Keth's back hit the wall, the wolf-girl's forearm pressed against their throat.**
"Rhis," a voice rumbled from the dark. "Release them."
The pressure eased. A man emerged from the shadows—taller than Valtheris, his bronze skin marked with ink that moved like living smoke. The alpha.
Keth's Mark *burned*.
"You're the one who appeared in the Bloodkeep," the alpha said. He circled Keth like a storm. "Valtheris thinks to hide you. But the moon always finds what's hers."
Another howl, this time joined by a dozen others. The dungeon trembled.
The alpha smiled. "The hunt begins."