The door closed softly behind the messenger, leaving the room steeped in tense silence. Wren turned away from it and faced Roan with a heavy expression, his sharp eyes shadowed with something that looked too close to dread for the King's comfort.
Roan watched him for a moment. "Tell me what you're really thinking."
Wren hesitated, his hand brushing the pommel of the dagger at his waist—a nervous habit he rarely displayed.
"I think it's a curse."
The words dropped like a stone into a still pond, quiet but impossible to ignore.
Roan's brow furrowed. "A curse?"
Wren nodded. "This isn't a disease, Roan. It came too suddenly. It spreads too violently. Rabid one moment, convulsing the next—like something twisting them from the inside out. Natural illness doesn't do that to werewolves. Not to our kind."
Roan scoffed under his breath. "You're saying magic did this?"
"Yes."
"The witches?"
Wren didn't answer right away. Instead, he walked to the tall windows that overlooked the city. The sun was low in the sky now, casting the rooftops in amber light. But the beauty of the view didn't seem to touch him.
"The signs are all there," he said. "The sudden onset, the madness, the deaths… Roan, I've seen something like this before. A long time ago."
Roan pushed away from the desk, pacing. "That was never proven. The witches were suspected, not charged. We don't even know if it was a curse."
"And yet they were never cleared, either," Wren said pointedly. "The whole council was terrified to provoke them, and so nothing was done."
Roan ran a hand through his hair. "You're suggesting they waited all these decades to strike again?"
"I don't think they waited," Wren said. "I think they were waiting for the right time. The kingdom is fragile right now. You know it. The unrest, the rumors, the resentment toward your mate. If you wanted to weaken the monarchy, to provoke panic, now would be the time."
Roan's jaw tightened at the mention of Arin, but he didn't take the bait. "Why would they want to do that now? They've been left alone. We've never crossed them."
Wren stepped closer, lowering his voice. "It has been said that they want to rule, and keep the werewolves as their slaves."
Roan stilled.
Wren exhaled slowly. "That may be exactly why they want to strike now. The kingdom is already questioning your strength. This—this illness—it doesn't just kill. It turns your people against each other. It breeds fear. And fear spreads faster than fire."
Roan looked away.
There was truth in Wren's words, and it made the weight on his shoulders heavier than before. He had enemies, yes—but not like this. Not shadows in the dark, wielding curses instead of steel.
Still, skepticism pulled at him. "And what if you're wrong? What if this is just an infection? A rogue strain of something we don't yet understand?"
Wren gave him a tight, grim smile. "Then I'll be the first to admit I was wrong. But if I'm right, and we do nothing… this won't stop outside the city walls. It will consume us."
Roan walked to the window now, his reflection caught in the glass—tall, proud, and yet, in this moment, undeniably human. Fallible.
"Do you think Seren could be involved?" he asked without turning. "The southern region are known for being cunning and masters of underhanded tactics."
"No," Wren shook his head adamantly. "Seren wants to be queen, it would make little sense to destroy the kingdom she wants to rule."
Roan's hands curled into fists.
"I want you to look into it," Roan said finally, his voice low. "Quietly. Discreetly. I want names. Locations. Coven activity, rumors—whatever we can find. If there's a threat building, we need to know before it reaches our gates."
Wren bowed his head slightly. "I'll start tonight."
Roan glanced back at the desk, where the reports of the illness still sat, a grim reminder that their kingdom was not as secure as it seemed.
"We're running out of time, Wren," he said.
Wren gave a sharp nod. "Then we better make every second count."
*
The settlement was chaos when Roan along with Corvus arrived hours later.
They transformed to their human forms as soon as they reached the outskirts of the village, and as they approached the hastily cordoned-off boundary of the outer ring, dozens of the soldiers who had been dispatched to keep the peace warded people away. Some trying to catch a glimpse of the king, others simply standing in terrified silence.
Roan clothed himself and walked past the guards who bowed to him as he approached. His eyes scanned the area—he didn't need Wren to tell him this was no ordinary sickness. The scent alone was wrong. Acrid. Tainted with something ancient and dark.
Inside a makeshift tent, one of the village elders lay writhing on a cot, black veins snaking up his neck. His hands were clawed, but he was still in human form—barely. A woman knelt beside him, sobbing as she tried to keep him calm.
"He killed his mate," a healer whispered to Roan, her hands red with blood. "Didn't even recognize her. Then he fell like this. Shaking. It's the same with the others."
Roan's stood staunchly while Corvus turned his face away from the disturbing sight. "How many are infected now?"
"Thirty-three," she said. "Maybe more. We have isolated those who were bitten—but if an infected one is out there and it spreads…"
Roan nodded curtly. "Get me the names of the infected and anyone missing. Keep them restrained, but don't harm them. We don't know if everyone turns."
The healer nodded and turned to return to the tent.
Roan stepped back outside, his eyes moving to the low hills beyond the settlement—where the royal city's walls rose in the distance like stone guardians. If this plague reached those walls… it wouldn't be thirty-three infected. It would be hundreds.