Cold seeped into Serena's bones as the night clamped down on the forest. Hours had passed since the flames had disappeared, leaving only embers in their wake, smoke-less tendrils curling in the air. Nature, for its part, appeared to be holding its breath. There was something to shatter the silence about her.
Serena hung back at the edge of the clearing, arms wrapped around the heat of herself, her own heat. Kaelen's prophecy still pressed on her chest like a stone, heavy and insistent. She felt it — a pressure that pulsed through her skin, through her bones. The Onyx wolf inside her awoke; a dark whisper raking at her soul. It had always been within her, but now it was layered on top, something else, something with an edge, something pressed.
