Chapter 5
"Axel—"
"Get out!" he roared, the sudden bellow rattling the void-ore bars, though it lacked the deep, resonant timbre of his wolf. It was purely human—raw, strained, and desperate. "Do your duty and leave me to rot!"
Genevieve stared at his hunched silhouette in the darkness. Every instinct she possessed screamed that she was missing a piece of the puzzle—a critical, monstrous piece that had been hidden in plain sight.
"I will be back next week," she said softly.
"Don't flatter yourself," he murmured into the shadows, turning his back to her once more. "I won't be waiting."
***
The sun was high above Ridgefall when Genevieve returned to the surface, but the brilliant autumn daylight brought her no warmth.
The High Warden’s carriage did not take her back to the central fortress. Instead, she ordered the driver to take the winding western trail toward the Moonlit Groves.
The grove was cordoned off with black ribbons and silver wards. Two junior enforcers stood guard at the perimeter path, bowing deeply as Genevieve approached on foot.
"High Warden," the first sentry said. "Elder Thorne issued orders that no one is to disturb the site until the purification rites at the Solstice."
"Elder Thorne is an advisor," Genevieve said coldly, sweeping past them without breaking stride. "I am the High Warden. If he has an objection to my investigation, tell him to file a formal writ in the central court."
The sentries lowered their eyes and stepped aside.
The grove smelled of rot.
Normally, the ancestral weeping pines of Ridgefall carried a crisp, clean scent—like crushed mint and winter snow. But as Genevieve stepped into the clearing where the slaughter had taken place, the stench of sour fermentation and curdled sap caught in her throat.
Fourteen ancient trees lay fallen, their massive trunks sheared through as if felled by an enraged titan. Axel’s claws had done this. The cuts were rough, jagged, driven by immense, desperate force.
Genevieve knelt by the nearest fallen trunk—the oldest weeping pine in the cluster, supposedly planted four centuries ago by the second Alpha of Ridgefall.
She pulled a short, silver-tipped skinning knife from her belt and began scraping away the dried sap covering the exposed heartwood.
Her father had taught her tracking, forensic deduction, and the old wilderness lore before he ever taught her pack law. *The dead do not lie, Genevieve,* he had told her. *Wood and bone remember the violence done to them long after the blood dries.*
She carved into the thick bark, following the direction of Axel’s claw marks.
Something didn't make sense.
Axel was a master tactician. When he fought, every blow was lethal, minimal, and precise. But looking at the fallen trees, the damage seemed chaotic—frenzied strikes delivered at odd, seemingly random angles across the trunk, rather than clean cuts at the base.
Why hack away at the middle of a trunk when you want to fell a tree?
Her blade struck something hard beneath the wood.
*Clink.*
It wasn't the dense grain of petrified pine. It was metal.
Genevieve narrowed her eyes. She worked quickly, carving away chunks of the pale heartwood, peeling back the fibrous layers until the foreign object was exposed to the daylight.
Her breath hitched.
Embedded deep within the core of the tree—placed there years, perhaps decades ago, so that the wood had grown completely around it—was an iron spike.
It was roughly nine inches long, forged from blackened iron and inscribed with microscopic, spiraling runes that made the air around them feel greasy and cold. The tip was capped with a sliver of bleached bone—shifter bone, carved from the skull of an unmated wolf.
"A necrotic anchor," Genevieve whispered to herself, the blood draining from her cheeks.
She recognized the foul magic. It was forbidden by every pack treaty signed since the Great Scourge. Necrotic anchors were parasitic siphons, used by dark shamans to covertly harvest the natural lunar energy stored in sacred groves, funneling the pack's ancestral vitality away while leaving the surface trees looking healthy and green.
She scrambled to the second fallen tree.
Her knife worked feverishly, chipping through bark and sap.
There. Another spike, driven into the northern face of the trunk.
She moved to the third. A third spike, its bone tip cracked by a direct claw strike.
She stood in the center of the devastated grove, turning slowly in a complete circle, looking at the pattern of the fallen timber with fresh, horrified eyes.
Axel hadn't been hacking blindly in a fit of arrogant madness.
He had been hunting.
Every single tree he had brought down contained a hidden siphon spike. The trees he had left untouched—the six weeping pines still standing on the eastern ridge—were entirely clean, free of the black iron poison.
He hadn't desecrated the sacred grove.
He had excised a cancer.
"High Warden."
Genevieve snapped her head around, her hand immediately dropping to the hilt of her blade.
Elder Thorne stood at the edge of the clearing, leaning heavily on his gnarled oak cane. His pale eyes flicked from Genevieve to the gouged wood at her feet, his thin lips pressed into a tight, bloodless line.
Behind him stood three senior council guards, their hands resting conspicuously on the pommels of their silver broadswords.
"Elder Thorne," Genevieve said, rising to her full height, her expression instantly resetting into an impenetrable mask. "You are outside your quarters. The council session ended two hours ago."
"I was informed you had breached the quarantine," Thorne replied, his voice smooth as oil over water. "The sacrilege committed in this place has destabilized the lunar wards, Genevieve. It is not safe for anyone—not even the High Warden—to linger among these ruined relics."
"These aren't relics," Genevieve said evenly, tapping the exposed iron spike with the tip of her boot. "These are necrotic anchors. Black iron, inscribed with soul-siphon runes, capped with desecrated wolf bone. Someone turned our ancestral grove into a parasitic battery."
Thorne didn't blink. Not a single muscle in his withered face betrayed surprise.
"Ah," he murmured, taking a slow, hobbling step forward. "The old defensive wards. Placed during your grandfather’s time, Genevieve, to protect the grove from southern border raiders. A crude measure, perhaps, but necessary in darker times. We intended to decommission them during the Solstice purification."
"Defensive wards do not siphon the lunar font," she countered, her hazel eyes narrowing with dangerous heat. "Defensive wards do not rot the marrow of the weeping pines from the inside out. This is high treason, Thorne. Who authorized the placement of these anchors?"
"That is a matter for the High Council to review," Thorne said, his tone chilling, dropping the veneer of grandfatherly deference. "Not for an enforcer whose judgment is compromised by an illicit, traitorous mate bond."
Genevieve’s aura flared, sudden and violent, flattening the tall grass around her boots.
The three guards behind Thorne instinctively stepped back, their hands trembling against their weapons. Thorne himself swayed under the raw pressure of her Alpha lineage, but he dug his cane into the dirt, refusing to yield.
"Watch your tongue, Elder," Genevieve growled, the vibration rumbling deep in her chest. "You sit on the council because my father allowed it. You speak in my court because the laws grant you a voice. But you do not question my duty. If I find that you, or any member of your faction, planted this filth in Ridgefall's soil, the Abyssal Vault will have a new tenant before nightfall."
