The archive was hidden beneath an abandoned observatory above the midnight forest, protected by a lock that required two blood samples and a spoken family name. Wren Hale expected the door to reject her. It opened before Alpha Silas Night finished the warning.
Inside were recordings, legal files, and a wall of photographs tracking her life from childhood to the previous night. Someone had planned every betrayal with patient precision. At the center of the wall, a red thread connected Wren Hale to Alpha Silas Night, then continued toward a sealed photograph neither of them had seen.
He reached it first. The image showed their parents standing together years before either family claimed to have met. On the back, one sentence changed the meaning of every promise between them: every photograph Wren takes predicts the next death in Silas's pack.
Footsteps filled the corridor. Alpha Silas Night reached for his weapon, but Wren Hale stopped him. Running had brought her here. This time she would make the person hunting them speak.
The archive door opened. The intruder removed a hood, and Wren Hale's breath caught. The face belonged to someone whose funeral she had attended.
“You finally found the truth,” the stranger said. “Now choose which one of you gets to survive it.”