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CALLUM

T he city’s got that hum tonight. The kind that crawls up your spine and tells you to keep your damn head down.

I pace along the treeline just outside the industrial zone, boots sinking into damp earth, Elias trailing a few steps behind me. The sky’s clear, the moon swollen and bright—Hunter’s Moon. Real pretty if you’re into omens and death.

“You feel that?” I mutter, low enough that a squirrel wouldn’t hear it.

Elias grunts. “You mean the part where the air tastes like metal and rage? Yeah. Been chewing on that flavor all night.”

He’s got his hands in his pockets, casual as hell, but I know better. He’s coiled up tight, same as me. It’s not just the moon. There’s something moving under the skin of the world. Change. We can smell it.

“Three triggers so far tonight,” he says after a beat. “All suppressed types. One barely outta high school.”

“Did PEACE pick ‘em up?”

“Two. The kid in Inwood’s still loose. Last seen running full sprint through a Walgreens parking lot with no pants.”

I snort. “Classic.”

“But no casualties,” he adds. “Yet.”

I nod. The “yet” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. First full moon since the solstice—usually thins the Veil even more. Brings out the deep-buried instincts. The ugly ones.

I roll my shoulders. My beast stirs just under the surface, sniffing at the cold wind like it knows something’s out there.

“Still think this is just normal trigger fallout?” Elias asks.

“I think something woke up tonight,” I say. “And it ain’t just a bunch of half-baked shifters who missed their orientation.”

He nods, jaw tight.

We cut across an old service road, passing boarded-up buildings and busted-out streetlights. The city’s outer rim is all bones and echoes—where the world ends and the woods begin. That’s where the lost ones go. Where they run when their bodies betray them and the instincts take over.

And it’s where the wolves tend to show up.

I slow, sniffing the air.

There. Faint. Musky. Pine and something… sharper.

Elias lifts his head too. “That’s not one of ours.”

“Werewolf?”

He nods. “Has that wet-dog bravado to it.”

I sigh. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

Werewolves.

Noisy. Pack-obsessed. Always walking around like they’re the final evolution of shifters. Never mind that they wouldn’t know subtlety if it bit them in the ass.

“They’ve got a compound east of here, don’t they?” Elias says. “Could be a scout.”

“Or a lone wolf out for blood.”

“We engaging?”

“Only if they engage first,” I mutter. “I don’t want a goddamn diplomatic incident.”

We move slower now, deliberate. I crouch near a cluster of thornbushes, motioning for Elias to circle wide. He vanishes like smoke, silent and deadly.

I close my eyes and focus, pulling in the smells, the sounds.

There. A heartbeat. Heavy footfalls. Breathing—fast, ragged.

Then a growl, low and guttural.

My eyes snap open.

A shape moves through the trees—big, fast, moving on all fours. Amber eyes flash in the moonlight.

Shit.

I back up a step, hand on the knife at my belt. Not silver—it’s not like that. Just steel and purpose.

The werewolf skids to a stop maybe twenty feet from me. It’s a female—tall, lean, fur the color of dirty snow, breathing hard. She’s halfway through a shift, still caught between human and beast. That means she’s either real new or real reckless.

Her lip curls, fangs flashing. “You smell like city rot.”

“Better than smelling like a kennel,” I shoot back.

She snarls and takes a step forward. Her claws dig into the dirt.

“I’m not here to start anything,” I say, holding up both hands. “Just patrolling. Same as you, I bet.”

“You’re too close to our territory.”

I shrug. “Territory lines don’t mean much when a kid’s running through Walgreens half-shifted and screaming. You seen her?”

“No.”

“Right,” I mutter. “Helpful.”

She moves again—faster this time. I tense, ready to dodge, but she stops short. Real short. Close enough that I smell the blood on her breath.

“You should go,” she says, voice low and dangerous. “Tonight’s not safe for your kind.”

“And whose kind would that be, exactly?”

She leans in. “The kind who think hiding makes them better.”

I bristle. “The Veil dropped ten years ago. You think every shifter wants to pose for TikTok and get cuffed by PEACE every time they sneeze wrong?”

Her eyes narrow. “Then stay out of our way.”

Before I can say anything else, a rustle behind me draws both our attention.

Elias steps out of the shadows, arms crossed. “We good here?”

The werewolf glances between us, nostrils flaring.

She turns and bolts, vanishing into the dark like she was never there.

I let out a long breath.

“That could’ve gone worse,” Elias says.

“Could’ve gone better too.”

We start walking again, but I can’t shake the tension in my chest.

“She wasn’t just pissed,” I say. “She was spooked.”

Elias nods slowly. “Yeah. Like something’s hunting all of us.”

I glance up at the moon again. Bright. Full. Watching.

“You still think this is just another trigger spike?” I ask.

“Nope,” Elias says. “Something’s shifting. Something deep.”

“Guess we wait and see what crawls out of the dark.”

We might not be ready when it does.