Chapter 161

CHAPTER 5... ANDRES The air tasted of endings. Even the morning light seemed hesitant to touch the valley, as though it too feared what waited beneath the mist. Our convoy cut through the silence— ten riders from the Circle of Dawn, two carriages, and a single purpose. I rode at the front, reins firm in my hand, scanning the tree line as the fog shifted like ghosts around us. Behind me, Valentina sat in the carriage, cradling our son. The road was ancient and off limits to cars and modern vehicles, thrusting us to the old times. Not new to me, but for my wife and son, it is. Valentina looked really uncomfortable… I should have felt relief knowing they were safe, at least for now. But peace had always been a deceitful thing. I had learned long ago it wasn’t the absence of war — only the breath before it remembered your name. And that breath was back… The Lycan within me stirred restlessly, claws scraping against the walls of my control. ‘You feel it too’, he murmured. ‘The pull in her b