The wards fail without drama.
No cracking sound. No warning tremor. One moment the boundary hums, taut and luminous, the familiar pressure of protection wrapped around the pack lands. The next, it is simply not there. The air goes thin, like a breath sucked out of the world, and something vast steps into the space where safety used to exist.
Wolves feel it instantly.
Shifts ripple outward in a wave of panic. Bodies blur. Bones snap and reform. Fur tears through skin as instinct overrides command. Howls tear into the night, not rallying cries but alarm calls, sharp and fractured. I smell fear layered over adrenaline, copper and ozone tangling in my lungs until breathing hurts.
“Get them inside,” someone shouts. “Civilians first.”
Too late.
The predator is already here.
It does not ar
