[Ray’s POV]
I watched Gale as he chanically ate another slice of at, his movents sharp, his jaw working with more force than necessary. I could still sll the sharp, bitter scent of his frustration clinging to him like woodsmoke, mingling with the savory aromas of our al. I understood the point he was trying to make. In his long, exiled life, he had likely seen kingdoms rot from the inside. Trust was a luxury he couldn’t afford. But I was a general of Silverhowl. My duty was to the structure that maintained order, and accusing our allies without ironclad proof wasn’t just reckless; it was an act of war in itself. We both had our points, entrenched in our vastly different experiences. A debate here, now, would only fracture our already strained unity.
I broke the silence, my voice asured, pulling us back to the concrete facts in that stinking alley. "My final question to the black market contact," I began, drawing their attention away from the simring disagreent. "was whether the masked n are part of the werewolf hunter organization." I paused, using my chopsticks to retrieve so of the noodles Gale had just added to the pot, the long strands dripping with the rich, cheesy broth. "He said he could not answer that directly. But he offered this: the masked n who co to his shop... their numbers include both humans and werewolves."
I placed the noodles in my bowl, the information settling like a stone.
"Werewolf hunter cells are exclusively human," Ace said imdiately, his analytical mind seizing the implication. He ate the last bite of his pudding, but his attention was wholly on the puzzle. "It’s a point of pride and purity for them. The fact that he couldn’t simply say ’no’... it ans their affiliation, or at least their personnel, overlaps. The masked n are connected to the hunter organization in so way."
"If the masked group is a mix of humans and werewolves working together," Ann theorized, sipping her broth, "then the werewolves among them are likely strays. Outcasts with a grudge, easy to recruit for coin or the promise of chaos."
"And what if those werewolves are not strays?" Gale countered, his voice dripping with cynical challenge. He ate a piece of at along with a mushroom, not looking up. "What if they wear a different uniform by day?"
"Then there is a high possibility you are right," I conceded, eting his gaze across the table. I took a bite of the noodles; they were perfectly cooked, but I barely tasted them. "That there are traitors within the power structures of the four kingdoms. And if that is the case... we are in significantly more trouble than we imagined." Admitting it aloud sent a chill through my own veins.
[Ovelia’s POV]
I listened, trying to piece together the history they were referencing. The term ’werewolf hunter’ sent a familiar, icy spike of pain through my heart—a pain wrapped in the fog of a lost childhood and the recurring nightmare of fire and screams.
"Did the werewolf hunter organization exist centuries ago?" I asked, my voice quieter than I intended. I could feel it—the old sadness, and a newer, sharper anger bubbling beneath. These were the people who had taken everything from .
I looked at Ray, waiting for his answer, and found him already looking directly at , his orange eyes serious and assessing.
"No, not centuries," Ray answered gently. "Do you rember the story we told you before? About when humans first learned of our existence, and the war that began?"
"Yes," I nodded, the mory clear. "When I asked if peace truly existed between humans and werewolves." It felt like a lifeti ago, when we—the four of us, Ann, Ace, Ray, and —sat under the large tree eating our lunch, so new to this world of secrets and power.
"We did not want to burden you with the full history before," Ace said, his voice joining Ray’s. He wasn’t looking at ; he was staring out the darkened window again, his profile sharp and somber, as if seeing the ghosts of that history reflected in the glass. "But it was not just humans and werewolves. Witches and elves were drawn into the conflict as well. That is what we now call the Great Species War." His tone suggested personal wounds tied to that history.
Is that the reason why Ace’s mother is not in the palace? The thought surfaced, a piece of a puzzle I still couldn’t fully see.
"That war ended seventy years ago," Ray continued, pulling the narrative forward. "Ace and I were not yet born. It was during that war that the organization called the Werewolf Hunters was ford. They were comprised solely of humans—they never recruited witches or elves, as humans with no magic were deeply suspicious of those who wielded it." He took a sip of water, the facts delivered with a historian’s detachnt that couldn’t mask their grim reality. "When King Alfred V of the Athyst Kingdom finally brokered a peace, part of the accord was that the Athyst Kingdom would handle the dismantling of the hunter cells. We werewolves agreed to their jurisdiction, to their rules, to help where we could. And it worked. The organization was officially disbanded twenty-three years ago."
Disbanded twenty-three years ago?
The number hit like a physical blow. My breath caught. But my parents were killed twenty years ago. The tiline was wrong. A cold, confusing dread pooled in my stomach. If the hunters were gone... then who...?
"This year," Ray’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts, "the werewolf hunters have re-ford. Resurfaced. And the masked individuals we are encountering now... they are a new variable. A shadow we haven’t faced before."
"Lady Firera?" I reached out desperately into the silence of my own mind. "Is the dream I have, the one of the people who killed my parents... is it true? Was it them?"
She didn’t answer. The connection felt muffled, distant.
"Have you heard of the organization ’Flesh Hunters’?" Gale’s question, sudden and sharp, snapped my attention back to the room.
"Flesh Hunters?" I repeated, the term strange and ugly on my tongue.
And then, it happened.
A searing pain, white-hot and precise, lanced through the center of my skull. I gasped, my hands flying to my temples.
"My instinct tells that the Flesh Hunters are approaching. We need to hide her!"
My father’s voice. Oliver’s voice. Not a dream-mory, but a crisp, terrifying echo from a hidden vault in my mind. And in that echo, I heard it clearly this ti—the word wasn’t ’werewolf hunters.’ It was ’Flesh Hunters.’
"Ovelia, are you okay?" Ace’s voice was urgent, close. His hand shot out, his fingers wrapping firmly around my wrist, turning to face him. His silver eyes were wide with alarm.
The headache worsened, compressing into a single, blinding point behind my eyes. A new image, not a dream but a stark, silent vision, flashed across my mind’s eye:
A person in ordinary clothes, their face uncovered, suddenly transford into a figure clad in dark, nondescript clothing and a smooth, featureless mask. They held not a sword or a knife, but a compact, tallic object—a gun. The masked figure raised it. The scene was silent, yet I saw the muzzle flash. I saw my mother fall. I saw my father collapse over her.
The image vanished as suddenly as it appeared, leaving behind a psychic aftershock that made the real world seem to swim. My head felt full of thick, dizzying fog. I looked down at my hands in my lap. They were shaking, a fine, uncontrollable tremor.
"Hey! Why are you so scared?!" Gale’s voice was sharp, edged with a concern he rarely showed. His hand ca down on my shoulder, not a pat, but a firm, grounding grip, giving a slight, steadying shake. "Breathe."
The fear wasn’t just mine. It was a mory so deep it had beco part of my soul. I clutched at the clarity of the new vision, the terrifying detail it provided.
"Lady Firera," I begged inwardly, the plea a scream in the quiet of my own skull. "Was the image I just saw... the truth? The real mory? Were the ones who killed my parents... Flesh Hunters, the n wearing those masks?"
A long, heavy silence stretched in my mind, vast and awful. Then, her voice ca. Not a whisper from a distance, but a clear, resonant pronouncent from within the very core of my being. It was layered with a sadness as deep and cold as a starless ocean, and beneath it, a fury as hot and boundless as the heart of a sun.
"Yes..."
The single word was the turn of a final, long-rusted key. It opened a door I had been leaning against my whole life, revealing a past more terrible, more specific, and more real than I had ever dared to imagine. The hunters had a na. And they wore masks.
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