Anastasia does not wake up at midnight.

For the first time in three months, the suffocating blackness of her dreams does not fracture into Kaelen's cold face or the phantom roar of the Black Hollow execution torches. The night passes in a rare, seamless expanse of true oblivion, her body sinking deep into the mattress while the heavy, stabilizing warmth of the moonroot lamp filters through the room.

When she finally opens her eyes, the watery gray morning light is already painting the wooden floorboards.

She sits up slowly, waiting for the familiar, vulturous ache beneath her ribs to clamp down on her lungs. It doesn't come. The broken bond channels inside her chest remain quiet, pacified by the ancient herbal tonic she had consumed the day before.

Anastasia looks down at her hands. The deep trembling is gone. She drags a breath into her lungs—clean, unobstructed, and deep.

She is healing.

After dressing in the oversized dark wool sweater, Anastasia opens the heavy bedroom door and steps into the west wing corridor.

She braces herself automatically. For the past two days, this hallway has been a gauntlet of heavy, grinding iron and the suffocating, hyper-vigilant presence of Draven's elite royal guards. The sheer mass of their heavy armor and their rhythmic, thunderous boots against the wood had kept her instincts wound tight enough to snap.

But as she steps out, the hallway feels entirely different.

The air is light, almost serene. The fierce, overbearing aura that usually saturated the corridor has vanished. Standing at the junction of the stairs are four new guards. They are younger wolves, dressed in lightweight leather scouts' gear rather than matte-black plate armor. Their stances are relaxed but perfectly alert, and when they move to adjust their perimeters, their footsteps make absolutely no sound against the floorboards.

They glide through the wing like shadows. Gentle. Silent.

Anastasia walks down the corridor, her brow furrowing in deep suspicion. Why would a royal fortress suddenly downgrade its security from iron-clad executioners to nimble scouts?

Near the archway of the main landing, Rowan stands with his arms crossed over his chest, supervising the morning rotation. His face is its usual stern, unreadable mask as his eyes track the light-footed scouts.

Anastasia stops beside him. "You changed the line-up."

Rowan glances at her, his eyes dropping briefly to the healthy sliver of color on her cheeks before returning to the hallway. "A standard rotation, miss."

"Commander," Anastasia says, her silver-blue eyes narrowing. "Yesterday, this wing smelled like a frontline garrison and sounded like a blacksmith's forge. Today, I can't even hear your men breathe. Why did you pull the heavy armor?"

Rowan silent-stares down the hallway for a long moment, the discipline of a western general fighting against his natural directness.

Rowan says finally, his voice low. "Greta noted that the residual noise from the heavy armor patrols was causing the guest to suffer from fragmented sleep."

Anastasia's pulse skips a beat. "Greta reported my sleep schedule?"

"Everything that happens inside these walls is reported, miss," Rowan replies, his tone entirely clinical. 

A strange, heavy doubt twists inside Anastasia's chest.

It feels dangerous. Sweeter than protection, and far more addictive than safety.

----

Miles away, beneath the heavy stone arches of the Black Hollow mansion, Kaelen Varros jolts upright in his bed with a violent, ragged gasp.

Sweat drips down his pale face, his hands clutching the silk sheets so tightly the fabric tears. He looks around the dark, suffocating bedroom, his breathing wet and uneven as his beastly instincts howl beneath his skin.

He had been dreaming of her.

Through the lingering, jagged remnants of their violently severed mate contract, a faint, phantom echo had traveled across the borderlands. For a split second, Kaelen's ruined instincts had caught the distinct scent of mountain mint and wintermint—the unmistakable aura of a healed, stabilized wolf spirit.

Kaelen presses his hand against his sternum, where the black, necrotic veins of his broken bond pulse with an agonizing heat.

"She isn't dead," he whispers into the dark, his voice cracking with a sudden, wild suspicion.

To a tracker, the signs are terrifyingly clear. If Anastasia had frozen to death in the dead zones, the bond remnants inside him would have gone completely cold, turning into a hollow, empty void.

Instead, the place where she had once existed inside his soul feels… anchored. Grounded by a massive, foreign power that Kaelen cannot identify.

"Where are you?" Kaelen growls, his pale face twisting into a mask of pure, possessive panic as he stares toward the window.

----

Back in the northern safehouse, the morning rotation draws to a close.

Anastasia stands at the top of the stairs, watching Rowan as he steps into the center of the hallway to address the newly instated scout guards. She stays hidden in the shadows of the archway, her heart beating in a slow, confused rhythm.

Rowan walks down the line of young wolves, his sharp eyes evaluating every seam of their leather gear. He stops before a young scout whose scabbard clinks faintly against his belt.

The commander's face darkens instantly. He reaches out, adjusting the leather strap with a firm, unforgiving jerk until the metal is perfectly silenced.

Rowan lowers his voice, the stern authority of the Western King vibrating through his words: "Keep your footsteps light. His Majesty does not wish for anyone to disturb the tranquility of the West Wing."