Chapter 1
Ashely
The sound of claws striking dirt echoed through the clearing.
“Again,” Jason ordered.
I exhaled slowly and shifted my stance.
The training ground sat just beyond the heart of our camp, a circle worn into the earth from years of practice. The air smelled like pine sap and smoke drifting from the clan fire behind us.
My four brothers stood around me like walls.
Jason, the oldest — broad-shouldered, serious, already carrying himself like a future war general.
Alex — sharp eyes, quick smirk, the one who noticed everything.
Matt — impatient, restless, always the first to lunge and the last to think.
Kyle — the closest to me in age, quieter than the others but still stronger than I’d ever be.
“You’re thinking too much again,” Matt said, rolling his shoulders.
“That’s because she actually has a brain,” Alex replied dryly.
Matt shot him a look. “Leaders don’t survive by sketching trees.”
My grip tightened at that.
Jason stepped forward. “Focus, Ashley.”
I did.
I lunged toward him, aiming low like he’d taught me. He moved faster, sweeping my legs out from under me before I could adjust. I hit the ground hard, dust rising around me.
Matt laughed.
Kyle didn’t.
I pushed myself up before anyone could offer a hand.
“Again,” I said quietly.
Jason studied me for a moment, then nodded.
We circled each other.
I tried to predict his movement this time. Tried not to hesitate.
But the second I shifted left instead of right, he caught my wrist and twisted just enough to force me still.
“You second-guess yourself,” he said calmly. “Out there, that gets you killed.”
“I’m not going out there,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
The clearing went silent.
All four of them stared at me.
Jason’s grip loosened.
“Of course you are,” he said carefully.
“I don’t want to lead,” I admitted, the words slipping out like something I’d been holding too long.
Matt scoffed. “You don’t get to not want it.”
“That’s not how this works,” Alex added, though his voice wasn’t cruel — just matter-of-fact.
Kyle stepped closer to me. “She didn’t say she wouldn’t. She said she doesn’t want to.”
Jason’s jaw tightened. “It doesn’t matter what she wants.”
I looked at each of them.
They were built for this life. Built for fire and command and standing tall in front of a clan.
I wasn’t.
“I don’t feel like you,” I said quietly.
Matt crossed his arms. “Good. We don’t need another Matt.”
Alex smirked at that.
Jason ignored it. “You don’t need to feel like us. You need to be stronger than us.”
I swallowed.
“That’s the problem,” I whispered. “I’m not.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Kyle reached down and picked up my sketchbook from where I’d dropped it earlier.
“You left this near the tree line again,” he said.
Matt groaned. “Unbelievable.”
Jason looked at it like it was something fragile and foreign.
“You spend more time drawing the forest than preparing to protect it,” he said.
Kyle flipped it open before I could stop him.
Page after page of trees. Leaves. Shadows.
And then—
The symbol.
It filled three pages in different sizes.
All four of them leaned closer.
“What is that?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
Matt frowned. “Looks like claws.”
“Or fangs,” Jason muttered.
Kyle studied it longer than the others. “You’ve drawn it a lot.”
“I don’t mean to,” I said. “It just… happens.”
Jason closed the sketchbook and handed it back to me.
“Stop drawing it,” he said firmly.
The words felt wrong the second he said them.
The air shifted.
Not dramatically. Not loudly.
Just enough for all five of us to notice.
The wind moved through the trees in a low whisper. The firelight from camp flickered though no one had touched it.
Matt glanced toward the darker stretch of forest near the border.
“Did you feel that?”
Alex nodded slowly.
Kyle stepped a little closer to me without realizing it.
Jason’s eyes scanned the tree line, alert now. Protective.
“It’s nothing,” he said — but his voice had changed.
I looked down at the sketchbook in my hands.
At the edge of the page, where I hadn’t meant to draw at all—
My pencil had moved again.
One small curved line.
Like the beginning of the symbol.
And somewhere beyond the trees, something felt awake.
