Chapter 8 - Whispers of the Frozen North
The ink on the council’s decree of exile for Rothschild and his inner circle was barely dry when the first true test of Alora’s new reign arrived.
It came in the form of a shivering scout wrapped in frost-crusted pelts, who collapsed at the base of the Sacred Luna Throne just as the morning light was hitting the high stained-glass windows. His wolf was half-starved, his scent screaming of panic and long-distance exhaustion.
"The northern border..." the scout gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips before he slipped into unconsciousness. "The wards... they’ve shattered. Something is moving through the permafrost."
Alora descended the dais in a blur of midnight silk, her boots clicking sharply against the marble. She didn't hesitate. Kneeling beside the fallen scout, she pressed her fingertips to his forehead, channeling a thin, soothing stream of the silver-blue moonlight that now hummed permanently beneath her skin. The scout’s frantic breathing steadied.
Alpha Kieran stepped up beside her, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. "That border hasn't been breached in three centuries. Not since the Great Purge wiped out the northern strongholds."
"It's not a coincidence," Alora said, her voice carrying a cold, steely resonance that commanded immediate attention from the assembled guards. "Rothschild may be in a cell, but his network extended far beyond Silvercrest. Someone wanted those wards down, and they want the secrets buried in my mother’s old territory."
Kieran looked down at her, a mixture of deep pride and fierce protectiveness flashing in his storm-gray eyes. "You don't have to go, Alora. Send a war party."
"No," she replied, standing up and rolling her shoulders back, feeling the raw, ancient power of her direwolf shifting restlessly beneath her skin. "I am Luna of Silvercrest, and my blood is tied to the northern snows. If an enemy is waking up in my ancestral home, I will meet them face-to-face."
Within the hour, a heavily armed vanguard of Silvercrest’s elite warriors, led jointly by Kieran and Alora, rode out toward the frozen northern frontier. The landscape grew increasingly desolate as they traveled, towering pines choked in blue ice, the air biting so sharply it felt like glass in their lungs.
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By nightfall, they reached the ragged edge of the pack’s territory—the very spot where, twenty-three years ago, an infant Alora had been found wrapped in a bloody blanket.
The ancient border stones, carved with the forgotten runes of the Northern Wildlands, were glowing with a sick, sickly green light instead of their traditional protective silver. And standing right in the center of the breached perimeter was a figure shrouded in a heavy, shadow-woven cloak, waiting for them.
