~THIRD PERSON’S POV~

The message came in just after dark.

Two separate sources, both independent, both reporting the same thing, silver wolf in the eastern woods again. Ryland read the second report, set it on the table next to the first, and called the hunting party together before the ink was dry.

He kept the instructions short. "Contain, don’t engage unless forced. If you get a position on it, hold and send word back. I want it alive."

The men nodded and moved to gear up.

Ryland was pulling on his jacket when Eren appeared in the doorway of the main hall, coming from the direction of the gate with the purposeful stride of someone who had somewhere urgent to be. He stopped when he saw the assembled group.

"What’s going on?"

"Silver wolf," Ryland said, not breaking stride.

"Two sightings, eastern woods. We’re heading out now."

Eren’s eyes sharpened in a way that was almost imperceptible. Almost.

"Where’s Lyra?"

"Her chambers, last I checked." Ryland was already at the door, running the route in his head.

"We’ll be back before midnight."

—

Eren didn’t follow them out.

He stood in the doorway of the main hall for exactly three seconds after the hunting party cleared the courtyard. Then he turned around and walked, fast, faster than normal, the kind of pace that wasn’t quite running but covered ground like it was, toward Lyra’s wing.

The corridor was quiet. A single wall torch burning low. No guards on her door tonight, which he noted without comment because there was nothing useful to say about it right now.

He knocked once. Twice. Listened.

Nothing.

He opened the door.

The room was exactly as she’d left it at some point during the evening, bed sheets undisturbed, lamp burned low, the small table by the chair with a cup still on it. Everything in place. Everything normal.

Except the window on the far wall was open.

The curtain lifted slightly and fell again in the night air, slow and rhythmic, like the room was breathing.

Eren stood in the doorway and looked at the window for a long moment.

"Damn it."

—

He went out through her room rather than the main gate, faster, less visible, less chance of crossing the tail end of Ryland’s party and having to explain himself in real time. He dropped from the outer wall at the east side and landed in the soft ground at the tree line’s edge, straightening up and going still.

He didn’t shift. He tracked by instinct and something else, that pull that existed between bonded pairs that had nothing to do with logic or timing or whether either party had agreed to it yet. It was simply there, like a thread that knew which direction to pull, and he followed it into the dark.

The forest at night was its own kind of quiet.

Not silent, wind through the upper canopy, something small moving in the undergrowth to his left, the distant sound of water, but quiet in the specific way that meant nothing was alarmed. Whatever was moving out here wasn’t being chased. Not yet.

He found her before the hunting party did.

He didn’t announce himself. He didn’t make any sudden movement that would register as threat. He just came close enough that the bond pulled both ways and waited, still and patient, until the thing that was moving through the trees with silver-bright instinct and no memory of going to sleep slowed, turned, and looked at him.

He didn’t say anything. He just held the eye contact for a long moment.

Then he started walking back toward the packhouse at an unhurried pace. Not commanding, not chasing, just moving, with the calm certainty of someone who expected to be followed.

And he was.

—

He got her back through the window the same way she’d left. He didn’t ask her anything. He didn’t explain. She was somewhere between states, not quite herself, and he understood enough about what was happening to know that talking wasn’t what this moment needed.

He waited in the corridor outside her door until he heard the quiet sounds of someone settling back into sleep. Then he sat down against the wall, back to the stone, arms resting on his knees, and stayed there.

He thought through what he knew.

The gaps had started four days ago. The silver wolf sightings had started at the same time, eastern tree line, deliberate pattern of kills, all of them targeted and none of them random. Ryland had described a wolf that moved with judgment. The girl had described something that chose to protect instead of harm.

He leaned his head back against the stone and looked at the ceiling of the corridor.

The hunting party would come back empty-handed. He already knew that. Ryland’s trackers were good but they weren’t tracking an ordinary wolf, and ordinary methods were going to hit a wall every single time. They’d find no tracks because she moved the way her wolf moved, light, deliberate, returning before anyone could catch the path. They’d find no scent because the bond didn’t leave traces that other wolves could read.

He needed to tell Ryland. That was the part he kept arriving at and then pulling back from.

Not because he was protecting Lyra from Ryland, Ryland would never use this against her, that wasn’t the question. The question was whether telling Ryland before Lyra understood what was happening to her was the right sequence.

—

The hunting party came back at twenty past midnight.

Ryland stood in the courtyard and listened to his trackers give their report with the patience of a man who was very good at not showing what was moving behind his face.

Nothing. Not a track. Not a broken branch.

Not a displaced stone or a scent thread they could follow more than a few metres before it simply stopped. Two separate sightings from two reliable sources, a wolf that had been moving through his territory for four days, and not a single piece of physical evidence that would let them find it again.

"You’re certain?" he said.

"Yes, Alpha." The lead tracker, a man who had never once returned from a job with an apology in his voice, looked uncomfortable.

"Whatever it is, it doesn’t move the way a wolf moves. We know how to track wolves."

Ryland nodded once and dismissed them.

He stood in the empty courtyard after they filed out, the torches burning low around him, and looked at the eastern tree line above the wall.

Two reliable sightings. No evidence. A pattern of kills that showed judgment and restraint. A girl who said it hadn’t touched her.

Something cold settled in his gut. Not fear exactly, more like the specific discomfort of a man who was beginning to understand that the thing he was looking for wasn’t going to be found by looking harder in the same direction.

Something didn’t add up.