The cabin walls were never meant to hold back monsters.
Mira gripped the note in her hand, the words WE'RE INSIDE ALREADY searing through her like acid. Her breath quickened, pulse racing. Grey and Liam were already checking doors, weapons drawn.
"Anything?" she hissed.
Liam shook his head. "No broken windows. No scent trail. Nothing."
Grey's nostrils flared. "That's the point. They were here… and they left nothing behind. That's a level of masking I've only seen in one place."
"Ghost Howlers," Mira whispered.
Grey nodded grimly. "And they're evolving."
Mira turned slowly, scanning the room. Every shadow looked like a threat now. Every creak in the wood sounded like a footstep.
"We can't stay," she said.
"We're not ready to move either," Liam argued. "Dad can barely walk, your control is shaky, and they know where we are. We move now, we expose ourselves."
"They already know everything," Mira snapped. "They knew I was trying to shift. They knew our perimeter. They slipped a note into my home. How much more do you think they're watching?"
Grey moved beside her. "Then we turn the trap."
Mira looked up. "What?"
He held her gaze, voice calm but cold. "They think they're hunting a rogue Luna trying to get control. But what if she's already in control? What if we bait them in?"
"You want to lure them here?" Liam asked. "To the cabin?"
"To the clearing," Grey corrected. "We mark it with a shift. Then we flank the perimeter. Trap the scouts. Take one alive."
Mira's chest tightened. "What if I can't control the shift again?"
"You can," Grey said.
Mira opened her mouth to protest but stopped.
Because her wolf wasn't panicking.
She was pacing.
Eager.
It scared her more than the hunters.
But fear didn't matter anymore.
"I'll do it," she said. "Tonight. Let's lay the trap."
They worked fast. Liam set runes from what remained of the seer's salts, hidden around the trees. Grey and Mira cleared a path leading directly to the clearing and dusted it with wolfsbane-laced powder, undetectable to humans, debilitating to wolves.
And then Mira stepped into the center of the circle alone.
She knelt.
Closed her eyes.
Let me rise, her wolf whispered inside.
This time, she didn't resist.
Her breath deepened. Her spine stretched. Bones cracked and reformed, smoother than before. Her shift was faster now, controlled but primal.
White fur shimmered beneath the moonlight.
She howled once.
Then dropped low into a crouch, ears flicking.
Minutes passed.
Then….
Snap.
A twig, to the north.
Another.
To the east.
They were coming.
Grey and Liam flanked from the shadows, weapons drawn.
The first figure entered the clearing, masked, crouched low, blades in hand. Then another. Three. Four.
All silent.
All marked with the crescent and daggers.
Mira crouched lower. She could smell their tension, the confidence. They thought this was an ambush.
They were right.
But not their ambush.
Ours, she thought.
Just as one raised his blade…
Boom!
A trap detonated at the eastern flank, knocking one flat.
Liam dropped from the trees, slicing down another with his silvered blade.
Grey launched from the opposite side, colliding with the third.
But the fourth, taller, faster, slipped past them and rushed Mira with an arc of metal aimed for her throat.
She twisted, dodging just enough to avoid a kill strike, but the blade caught her shoulder. She snarled, fury surging.
She tackled him midair, slamming him into the earth.
And then she saw it.
His mask had shifted during the scuffle, just enough.
His eyes.
One was gold.
The other... grey.
Familiar.
Painfully so.
Her blood ran cold.
"Wait," she gasped, claws frozen over his throat. "Liam, stop!"
But it was too late.
Liam stepped into the clearing, saw the face and dropped his sword.
"No," he breathed. "It can't be…"
Mira stared down, heart cracking.
The man beneath her…
The assassin….
Was her brother.
Not Liam.
Another one.
Grey's voice was a whisper behind her.
"Mira... he looks just like you."
End of Chapter Fourteen
...….
There was only ever one brother. Or so she thought. But blood doesn't lie and the past just split open. Who is the twin in the mask? And how long has he been hunting her from the inside?