The girl was falling again.
Kaelen shot upright in bed, chest heaving, hands gripping the sheets like they were the only solid thing left in the world. His heart slammed against his ribs. Sweat soaked through his shirt. The nightmare clung to him — not the kind with monsters or blood or battle. Those he could handle.
No. This one was worse.
A girl in a white dress. Soft brown eyes. A face he had destroyed with seven words.
You are nothing.
He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw stars. Five years. Five years and she still showed up in his sleep like she owned the space behind his eyelids. Like she was waiting for him there because he'd left her nowhere else to go.
He swung his legs off the bed and stood. The room was cold. The fire had burned down to ash while he slept. Outside the narrow window, the Bloodmoon Pack's training grounds were dark and quiet. The moon sat low and heavy in the sky.
Three hours until dawn.
He'd been getting exactly that much sleep every night for five years.
A sharp knock at the door broke the silence.
"Come in."
Roran pushed the door open. His Beta — his oldest friend — looked like he hadn't slept at all. That was never good. Roran only skipped sleep when things were bad enough that sleep felt like a luxury they couldn't afford.
"Tell me," Kaelen said.
Roran closed the door behind him. "The eastern patrol. All three wolves."
Kaelen went still. "Gone?"
"Gone." Roran's jaw was tight. "No bodies. No signs of a fight. Just — gone. Like the ground swallowed them."
Kaelen moved to the window. In the courtyard below, two of his guards were already moving in tight, nervous circles. They felt it too — that cold, prickling wrongness that settled over a pack when something was deeply off.
"Shadowfang," Kaelen said. It wasn't a question.
"Almost certain." Roran crossed his arms. "This is the third patrol in two months, Kaelen. First the northern route, then the river post, now the eastern ridge. They're not attacking. They're collecting. Testing our edges. Learning our patterns."
Kaelen's wolf stirred low in his chest — a dark, restless rumble. He pressed it down.
"They're preparing for something bigger," he said.
"Yes." Roran hesitated. That hesitation was unusual enough that Kaelen turned to look at him directly.
"What else?"
"I've been thinking about this for weeks. About who might know enough about the Shadowfang to give us an edge before they make their real move." Roran met his eyes. "There's someone. An information broker operating out of Silverdeep. They call themselves The Whisper. No real name, no face — just a reputation. Best intelligence source in the region, maybe beyond it."
Kaelen had heard of Silverdeep. A dungeon city three days' ride east — dark, loud, and built on secrets. The kind of place that ate soft people alive.
"What do they want for information?"
"Gold, mostly. And a personal meeting." Roran's expression shifted. Something uncomfortable moved across his face. "I can look into other options, if you'd rather—"
"No. Silverdeep." Kaelen turned back to the window. "We leave at dawn."
"Just the two of us?"
"Small group. We don't know who's watching our movements." He was already thinking tactically, already calculating. This was what he was good at. Strategy. Control. Decisions made without hesitation or feeling.
It was the only version of himself he trusted anymore.
"I'll prepare the horses," Roran said. He moved toward the door, then stopped. Turned back. There was something careful in his face now — the look of a man choosing his next words like each one was fragile. "Kaelen. The nightmares again tonight?"
Kaelen didn't answer.
Roran nodded slowly, like that was an answer too. "You know, one day you're going to have to stop running from it."
"I'm not running." He kept his voice flat. "I'm working."
"They're the same thing."
Kaelen said nothing. After a moment, Roran left.
The room felt very empty after the door clicked shut.
Kaelen stood at the window for a long time, watching the courtyard below fill slowly with the gray light of early morning. He thought about the nightmare. The white dress. The exact moment her expression had collapsed — like a building hit from the inside, everything caving at once.
He'd told himself, back then, that it was necessary.
His father's voice: A weak mate makes a weak Alpha. Choose power, or choose a worthless omega.
He'd chosen power. He'd built an iron pack and an iron reputation and a life that ran like a machine — efficient, strong, empty.
His wolf whined suddenly. A low, miserable sound from somewhere deep inside him.
Quiet, he told it.
It didn't listen. It never listened anymore. It just kept searching — pacing restlessly inside his chest, hunting a scent that didn't exist, aching for something he'd thrown away with both hands five years ago.
He pulled on his shirt and coat and began to pack for Silverdeep.
They rode out at first light, just Kaelen and Roran with two trusted guards at their backs. The Bloodmoon territory fell away behind them as the sun rose orange and thin over the hills.
They didn't speak much. Kaelen preferred it that way. He watched the tree line as they rode, alert for movement, alert for signs that the Shadowfang's reach extended this far east.
Nothing. Just bare trees and cold air and the sound of hooves on frozen ground.
Around midday, Roran pulled up beside him.
"There's something I should probably mention," he said, carefully. Very carefully. Like he'd been deciding whether to say this for the last six hours.
Kaelen looked at him. "What?"
"The Whisper." A pause. "Nobody knows who they really are. That's the whole point. They operate behind a business front in Silverdeep. The story is they've been there about five years. Built up from nothing." Another pause. "Showed up out of nowhere. No record before Silverdeep. Nothing."
Kaelen frowned. "That's not unusual for an intelligence broker. They protect their identity."
"Right." Roran stared at the road ahead. His voice dropped to just above a whisper. "It's probably nothing."
But he didn't sound like it was nothing. He sounded like a man who suspected something that scared him.
Kaelen opened his mouth to push further—
"We'll reach Silverdeep by nightfall," Roran said, and urged his horse forward before Kaelen could ask anything else.
Kaelen stared at the back of his Beta's head.
His wolf, silent all morning, suddenly went rigid inside his chest.
And for reasons Kaelen could not explain — reasons that had nothing to do with the Shadowfang or the missing patrols or the cold, tactical necessity of this journey — something twisted sharply beneath his ribs.
Like a warning.
Like a memory trying to surface.
Like a name his soul already knew.