Chapter 4 Edges of Everything

Chapter 4: The Edge of Everything

POV: Lina Hale

The railing was a rusted piece of crap. That was all I could think about as the flakes of orange metal dug into my palms. I didn't look down. If I looked down, I would think about the thirty-foot drop and the way the river sounded like a freight train hitting a wall.

"Step down, Lina."

The guy with the lead pipe was close. I could hear the wet squelch of his boots on the planks. He sounded bored, which was almost worse than him being angry.

"Don't make this a thing," he said. "Hand over the bag, come with us, and maybe you only walk away with a couple of cracked ribs."

"I have heard that one before," I snapped. My voice came out way higher than I wanted it to be.

I was doing the math, even though the math sucked. There were three of them. Two stood by the car, and one was practically breathing on me. There were no stairs and no gaps in the fence. The only exit was the one that involved gravity.

"Nowhere to go, kid." The guy by the sedan flicked a cigarette. The orange spark arched through the rain, lazy and indifferent. "You can’t run from a debt forever."

"Watch me."

It sounds like a line from a bad movie, I know. But when you’re cornered, your brain stops thinking in sentences and starts thinking in survival. My instinct was screaming at me to jump, and I had learned a long time ago not to argue with it.

I found the lower rail with my boot, felt the slick metal give slightly, and hauled myself up. For one heartbeat, I was balanced on the top edge. The wind tried to shove me back, the rain was stinging my eyes, and the river was a roar that swallowed everything else.

The guy with the pipe lunged. I felt his fingers clamp around my ankle, heavy and cold.

I didn't wait around. I kicked off and let go.

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POV:Kael Draven

The howl didn’t just break the silence, it shredded it.

I was moving before I had even processed the sound. It wasn't a moon call or a greeting. It was the sharp, jagged frequency of a discovery, and a bad one at that. I didn't wait for my guards to assemble. I cleared the terrace railing, my boots hitting the grass with a heavy thud, and sprinted straight toward the treeline.

The night air was a mess of scents. There was cedar, wet pine, and the metallic tang of the sacred river. But underneath the natural stuff, there was Selene’s perfume, that floral, cloying scent she always wore. Only now, it smelled wrong. It smelled like it was rotting.

I ran harder.

Three of my warriors had already formed a circle by the time I broke into the clearing. They sensed me coming, their shoulders dropping in that automatic reflex of submission. The air always felt heavier when I was pissed.

"Report."

"Alpha." Silas stepped back, pointing toward the rocks. "She washed up near the bend. She isn't moving."

I walked over, my eyes scanning the scene. Wet silk, greasy moss, and the mineral stink of the river. And then, there was something else. It was a scent like ozone and burnt sugar. It didn't belong here, and it didn't belong to any pack I knew. I pushed the thought aside because the river did weird things during a full moon.

I looked down at her.

Selene was a mess. The silver robe was plastered to her skin, and her hair was a tangled web across her face. Her lips were blue. She looked dead.

I checked my pulse. Personally, I felt nothing. I just felt the cold calculation of a man with a deadline. No Luna meant no coronation in four days, and no coronation meant the pack would start eating itself. That was the exact extent of my grief.

I knelt down and pressed two fingers to the side of her neck.

Her skin wasn't cold. It was hot, almost burning. The sacred river should have left her like a block of ice, but there was a feverish heat radiating from her pulse. It was too strong and too aggressive.

"She's alive."

The warriors let out a collective breath. The tension dropped an inch, but I stayed sharp.

"Silas. Take the north perimeter," I barked. "I want to know how she ended up in that water. No one touches this bank until the moon is full. If there’s a breach, find it."

"Yes, Alpha." They vanished into the trees without another word.

I stayed on one knee, watching her chest. Her breathing was slow and heavy.

I reached out and brushed the wet hair away from her face. Selene had always been quiet. She was a shadow. She had spent years looking for a scrap of affection in every look I gave her, which was a weakness I had never understood. A Luna with a soft heart is just a liability you haven't paid for yet.

I wondered if the river had finally broken that heart.

The ozone smell was back, scratching at the back of my throat. I was still trying to place it when she suddenly gasped, a raw, violent sound, and the smell of the water drowned out everything else.

I stood up and crossed my arms. I didn't help her up, and I didn't touch her. I just waited.

In four days, our souls would be tied together by a ritual written before we were born. It was a business arrangement.

Her hand moved. She didn't reach out for me. Instead, she dug her nails into the mud, dragging her fingers through the silt with a force that made me blink. It wasn't the Selene I knew. She was always soft and yielding.

Looking at her now, she looked like something that had crawled out of a hole and had no intention of going back.

"Wake up, Selene," I said, keeping my voice flat. "We have work to do."

Her eyes snapped open. I expected the usual routine, tears, reaching for my hand, or some desperate need for comfort. I had already decided I was going to be cold to her.

She didn't cry. She didn't even look at me first. She looked down at her own hands, which were caked in mud. Then she finally looked up at me.

Her eyes were clear and completely still. Every bit of that pathetic softness was gone, washed away by the current. She didn't say my name. She just sat there with that weird heat still coming off her skin, watching me with an expression I didn't have a category for.

My wolf went silent. It wasn't the silence of a predator, it was the silence of a witness.

Something was completely different. I make it my business to name everything in this kingdom, but I couldn't find a single word for the look in her eyes.

I didn't like that. I didn't like it one bit.