The scent of smoke, wolfsbane, and blood hit them before they cleared the final turn. It wasn't the crisp, contained odor of the Ohio attack. This was a raw, open wound in the heart of Los Angeles.
The Avalon district wasn't a remote forest. It was a mixed neighborhood of old Craftsman homes and low-rise apartments, home to one of the city's oldest and most integrated werewolf communities. Humans and wolves lived side-by-side here for generations. There were no private forests for runs, just a shared community center with a reinforced basement for moon nights.
That community center was now a smoldering crater.
Scarlett and Alexander arrived in an unmarked vehicle, Marcus's frantic, garbled transmission—"They're everywhere, it's a trap, get the kids—"—cutting off mid-sentence twenty minutes ago. They didn't wait for official clearance. They came as pack.
