<h4>Chapter 398: Chapter 398 THE DREAM</h4>
DANIEL’S POV
The dream began gently.
I stood in the Nightfang courtyard, stone warm under my bare feet, banners shiftingzily in the breeze.
Everything looked normal—too normal. It felt staged, as if the world were holding its breath, waiting for something to go wrong.
But nothing looked wrong.
Warriors moved along the walls. Patrols rotated. The scent of food drifted from the kitchens. The moon was bright. The sky was clear—no clouds, no storm, no warning.
Then the gates shattered.
The sound cracked through the courtyard like thunder as wolves surged through in a wild, chaotic rush.
“Defensive formation!” someone shouted, but themand fractured before it could fully take hold.
Because the attackers were already on us.
I tried to move, to run, to do something, but my body felt heavy, as if I were pushing through something thick that dragged at my limbs and dulled everything around me.
“Daniel!”
I turned sharply, hope hitting so fast it hurt—but there was no one there.
My mom wasn’t running toward me to gather me in her arms. My dad’s steady presence wasn’t there to anchor the chaos unfolding.
The realization settled into me with a cold, sinking weight that felt heavier and scarier than the battle itself.
Suddenly, above us, the sky began to dim.
The moonlight vanished, as if the moon had been smothered behind an invisible veil.
I felt the effect pressing on my skin, seeping into my chest, weakening something deep inside I couldn’t yet name.
The pack felt it too.
I saw it in our warriors’ movements—sluggish, coordination slipping where it shouldn’t.
The attackers seemed unaffected. They surged forward with a precision that made my stomach twist. They moved as if they understood exactly where our weaknessesy, exactly how to exploit the confusion spreading through our ranks.
The sounds around me blurred together—shouts, snarls, the sickening impact of bodies hitting stone.
And then there was the growing certainty settling deep in my bones.
We were losing.
Just as that thought formed, the world shifted.
For a moment, there was only smoke and ash and broken ground, the aftermath of something we hadn’t survived. Bodiesy scattered all over the courtyard, and the silence that followed felt heavier than the fight.
But the dream didn’t stay there.
It dragged me forward again.
Now Nightfang wasn’t alone. Frostbane was there too, in a clearing I didn’t recognize.
Both packs fought together—but it didn’t matter.
The enemy didn’t slow down. If anything, they grew stronger, while our side struggled and faltered at every turn.
Every time it looked like we might push back, the moment slipped away.
The fight kept turning against us.
The scenes shifted too quickly for me to understand. One moment, we were holding the line; the next, we were barely standing.
It blurred together until all that remained was one clear, terrible certainty.
We were going to fall—in a way we would never rise from.
And then everything...stopped.
The silence that followed was absolute, like the world itself had been paused.
Then—
‘Look.’
The voice didn’te from outside. It was inside my head, quiet but clear, and even though I had never heard it before, I knew it immediately.
My wolf.
Not fully there yet, not awake, but real in a way that made my pulse skip.
‘Look,’ it repeated, more firmly.
’At what?’ I asked.
The next instant, I was inside a strange room.
It wasn’t Nightfang. It wasn’t Frostbane. There was nothing familiar about it.
The space was cold and stripped of anything that felt alive.
And in the center of it—
Aunt Celeste.
She was restrained, her body t on a narrow bed. Her head was turned slightly, her hair spread messily beneath her, but it was her face that made my breath catch.
Her eyes were open.
But empty.
There was no focus in them, no anger, no resistance.
Shapes moved around her, indistinct and blurred, like shadows I couldn’t fully see. But one figure stood apart, more solid than the rest.
A woman.
I couldn’t make out her face, but I felt the cold emanating from her.
Everything in the room seemed to orbit around her, like she was the center of it.
She stepped forward and lifted her hand over Aunt Celeste.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then I sensed it.
Not something I could see, but something moving—like something was being pulled from where it belonged.
Aunt Celeste’s body reacted instantly, arching against the restraints, her mouth opening in a silent cry.
“Stop,” I whispered.
It didn’t stop.
If anything, it grew stronger and more intense.
And then the woman changed.
The air around her thickened, distorting slightly—then more.
Power gathered around her. It pressed outward in heavy waves, thick and suffocating, filling the room until it felt almost impossible to breathe.
Aunt Celeste’s body jerked again, weaker this time, her face losing what little tension it had left as that emptiness deepened into something closer to nothing.
I wanted to look away.
I couldn’t.
The dream held me there, forcing me to watch as my mom’s sister faded, bit by bit, while the woman grew stronger, her presence more overwhelming.
I had to do something. So what if Aunt Celeste had been mean to me? Family was family, and I had to—
The room shattered, the image fracturing apart—and I woke up gasping.
Air rushed into my lungs too fast, too sharp, like I had been holding my breath for far too long.
The ceiling above me spun for a second before settling into something familiar, and it took me longer than it should have to realize where I was.
My room in Nightfang.
My sheets were tangled around my legs, damp and clinging, and my heart was still racing hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.
Sweat cooled on my skin as I pushed myself upright, dragging in a breath that wasn’t enough.
For a moment, everything blurred together.
The courtyard.
The clearing.
The room.
Aunt Celeste—
“Daniel!”
The door burst open hard enough to strike the wall, and two guards rushed in, their expressions sharpening as they took in my state.
"We heard you cry out," one said. "Are you hurt?"
For a second, I couldn’t answer. The dream clung to me too tightly, the images still too clear, too real, like I hadn’t fully left them behind.
My chest rose and fell unevenly as I struggled to breathe, struggled to separate what I had seen from where I actually was.
“I need to see Grandfather,” I said, my voice rough and urgent.
Minutester, I was in his office, exining everything as clearly as I could. He listened without interrupting; he didn’t dismiss it.
After that, everything moved quickly.
Before I could fully process it, I was being escorted away from the main building toward a safe house deeper within the territory.
Grandmother wasing with me, but she would move with her own separate detail, and be situated in a different room.
We hadn’t gone far when it all came back.
Not the battlefield.
Not the courtyard.
The room.
Aunt Celeste.
I stopped abruptly.
“She’s going to take her.”
Both guards halted too and turned to me.
“What?” one asked.
“Aunt Celeste,” I said. “She’s not safe in Frostbane.”
They hesitated.
“Frostbane is heavily guarded,” one of them said carefully. “Alpha Ethan—”
“She’s going to be taken,” I repeated.
I could still see it—the room, the way she had been lying there, not fighting, not even aware.
The woman standing over her. The way something had been pulled from her. Stolen from her.
“We need to move her,” I said, the urgency rising. “Now.”
“Daniel—”
“No!”
Something shifted. Both guards went still, their expressions changing in a way I didn’t fully understand.
The pressure in my chest steadied, settling into something firm.
“Contact Frostbane,” I said, calmer now. It might have been my imagination, but my voice sounded deeper to my ears. “Tell them to move her. Immediately. I want her in the safe house with me.”
Themand hung in the air for one tense moment, and I held my breath, waiting for them to dismiss me as an impertinent heir.
Instead, they bowed.
“Yes, Alpha.”