Mooncrest Estate – Pre-Dawn Hours
The leather satchel sat open on the bed. Luca had packed quickly, with military precision—maps, encrypted documents, cash, two antique weapons only someone from the old bloodlines would own. Adunni watched him, arms folded, biting her bottom lip.
"I still think we should bring Selene and Matteo," she said.
Luca paused by the window, moonlight threading through his unbuttoned shirt. "We can't. Selene's covering the northern border. Matteo's not cleared for travel after the last ambush."
A twinge of guilt prickled her spine. "They wouldn't have been hurt if it weren't for me."
Luca turned sharply. "Stop. You didn't ask for this destiny. You were born into it. They knew the risks." He softened. "We all did."
She nodded, but her mind churned. Something was shifting. The estate felt off, quieter than usual. She'd caught Anya watching her twice. Selene had started to question even Luca's decisions in whispers. A fracture was forming inside the pack, and someone—maybe more than one—was feeding it.
Still, they had no time. Camilla's message was clear. The third relic might be calling. If they didn't answer…
She slipped on her travel jacket and reached for her satchel, when a sudden pulse of pressure hit her temple.
A pull.
Like wind curling around a wolf's howl. Like someone calling her through the veil.
---
Dream Sequence: The Grandmother's Visitation
The world cracked.
Adunni blinked and found herself standing in a vast savannah beneath a violet sky. The wind smelled of smoke and jasmine, of warm earth and the bloodline of beasts. Giant baobab trees stood like sentinels, and the stars above blinked in patterns she somehow remembered.
A fire crackled ahead.
And sitting before it… was her grandmother.
Draped in glowing white, her head wrapped in patterned cloth, skin lined with stories, eyes burning brighter than the stars.
"You've come," she said, voice echoing in every direction.
"I didn't know I could."
"You always could. You just didn't remember." She smiled, and the sky wept gold behind her. "Our blood sings because it was made from moon and soil. You carry both."
Adunni took a step closer. "I saw your journal. I know you were part of something before… before Rome."
"I was," Grandma said. "But we were not the first."
She raised her hand, and the fire flared. In it danced seven pillars, each one carved differently—African, Celtic, Navajo, Chinese, Norse, Andean, Polynesian.
"One bloodline. Seven guardians. Seven keys. Only one who sings them whole."
Her eyes glowed.
"You are the keystone, Adunni. And Darius is not just hunting power. He wants to rewrite the Song so it bends to him. If he gathers even three of the relics, he could sever your hybrid soul from your human self. Forever."
Adunni's voice broke. "What happens if I lose myself?"
"Then the Song becomes a scream. And the world unravels."
She stood. Her robe rippled like smoke.
"Follow the fire. Trust the wolf inside you and the storm. Not all who love you will stay. Not all who follow you are yours."
She reached out and pressed something warm and bright to Adunni's chest.
Adunni gasped—and woke up.
She woke up to find herself in Luca's bed, breath ragged, sweat dotting her skin. Her fingers curled around something warm beneath her collar.
She pulled it free.
It was a fragment of carved ivory, strung with thin leather. Shaped like a crescent fang.
Not a dream. A gift. A key.
Luca appeared at the door, worry etched across his face. "You okay?"
She stood, holding up the ivory fang.
"My grandmother gave me this. She said we have to follow the fire."
He blinked.
Then nodded once. "Then let's go find the third pillar."
_ _ _ _
Matteo's POV
With the Alpha's Away Selene & Matteo were holding the Fort.
The Mooncrest estate wasn't the same without Luca and Adunni.
And Matteo hated how fast it had started to feel... fragile.
He stood just outside the perimeter warding, the silver threads glimmering faintly in the twilight. A breeze stirred the olive trees, rustling dry leaves and whispering the tension no one was voicing aloud: someone was lying to them.
Selene had left at first light, scouting one of the southeastern border clusters that had gone silent overnight. Adunni's absence had stirred strange feelings in the pack—restlessness, even unease.
Matteo's jaw tensed. The hybrid held them together, whether she realized it or not.
And now they were vulnerable.
Behind him, footsteps approached—soft, deliberate, and unmistakably Selene.
"You look like you're expecting war," she said, voice smooth as always.
Matteo didn't turn. "Aren't we?"
She stepped beside him, her white tunic rippling in the wind. "You don't trust them."
"I trust Luca." He glanced at her. "The rest? Not so sure anymore. Something's not right. Anya's been slipping off pack ground at night. There's movement in the eastern crypts no one can explain."
Selene tilted her head. "What are you saying?"
"That the traitor's not just close to Adunni." His voice was grim. "They're embedded in the heart of the estate."
Selene's gaze flicked to the tree line. "And what are we supposed to do?"
Matteo unslung his blade from his back. "Keep the fire lit. Keep the traitors scared."
---
Later That Night – Matteo's Quarters
He wasn't expecting her.
But when Selene slipped into his quarters, cheeks flushed and energy coiled tight, Matteo didn't ask why. He didn't need to.
"You know this isn't smart," he murmured, catching her wrist as she moved past him.
"Neither is staying alive with a snake in your bed," she replied, low and dangerous.
Something cracked open between them—tension, yes, but also familiarity. The years they'd spent fighting together. Watching each other. Craving without admitting it.
Selene touched the fresh bandage on his ribs, tracing the edge with a care that belied her usual aloofness.
"I don't like seeing you bleeding," she said quietly.
Matteo's breath hitched.
And then, because there were no more reasons to pretend, he kissed her—hard, rough, like the war they were both holding off was already inside them.
---
Southwest Utah — Edge of Navajo Territory
The desert didn't whisper—it hummed.
Camilla knelt beside the monolithic sandstone structure, the artifact pulsing with quiet, rhythmic thuds beneath her fingertips. She'd followed the clues from Rome to New York, and now, here in the red dust of Utah's ancient ridges, she'd found it: a resonance matching the Roman relic.
The markings weren't Latin.
They were older. Pre-contact Navajo script fused with something... alien.
"Another convergence," she whispered. "But why here?"
Behind her, her field assistant snapped a photo. "That symbol again. Same one etched on the Vatican stone."
Camilla stood slowly, heart pounding. "These weren't just left. They were planted. Aligned across the planet like tuning forks for the supernatural. Seven tones. Seven locks."
She didn't say the rest out loud: Adunni might be the only one who can unlock them without breaking.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Luca.
"We're en route to Arizona. Prepare for convergence."
But Camilla was already ahead of him. She turned back to the monolith and whispered a prayer in Yoruba, something she'd learned from Adunni's grandmother during a summer visit to Nigeria, long before either of them knew what it meant.
"Egba gbeje, Egba Irawo, Egba gbeje."
"Egba gbeje, Egba Irawo, Egba moru moru."
The relic pulsed once.
And opened a seam in the stone.
Inside: a second fang-shaped relic.
Not ivory this time.
Obsidian. And humming like a heart.
Camilla swallowed hard. "There's more out there," she murmured. "And something's waking them all up."