**Chase’s POV**
The northern border smelled wrong before we even reached it—copper and rot, thick enough to coat the tongue. I led the patrol myself: four betas, all shifted to half-form, moving silent through the pines. No full shift yet; we needed speed and stealth, not howls that would echo back to the house.
Dmitri’s scent hit first—sharp, metallic, like old blood on iron. Then the carcass.
A buck, or what was left of it. Gutted clean, antlers snapped off and driven into the ground like stakes. The body had been arranged deliberately: legs splayed, throat torn wide, entrails pulled out and draped across the border line like a grotesque ribbon. Fresh. Still steaming in the cold night air.
One of the betas—Rafe—growled low. “Bastard’s marking territory.”
I crouched beside the kill.
