I am 15 chapters ahead on my patreón, check it out if you are interested.
Patréon.com/emperordragon
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The forest lay in a heavy stillness as Lucas approached the wall, each step muffled by the damp earth beneath his boots. The air was cool, laced with the faint chill of early morning, and the sunlight had only just begun to pierce the canopy. Pale beams of light broke unevenly through the trees, scattered by mist that clung low to the ground like a ghost unsure of its place. Shadows stretched long and thin between the trunks, distorted and uncertain.
He paused at the boundary — the stone wall half-swallowed by moss and creeping vines. Without hesitation, Lucas jumped over it. And the moment he did, the atmosphere changed.
His senses flared.
It wasn't the silence itself that alarmed him — forests had their quiet moments — but the quality of it. It was too precise. As if the entire woods were holding its breath. No rustling of leaves, no chittering of insects, no distant calls of birds. Just that heavy, unnatural hush.
The figure had passed through here.
He felt it in the shift of the air, in the faint, almost imperceptible tremble of the ground beneath his feet. The scent in the air had changed too: the earthy tang of overturned soil, the faintest impression of movement, and underneath it all, a sharp, acrid note. Chemical. Wrong. It slithered just beneath the clean scent of pine, barely noticeable unless you knew what to look for.
Lucas dropped into a crouch, one hand brushing over the forest floor. His fingers moved slowly, methodically. There — a shallow indentation in the soil. Not a full footprint, not even a proper track. More like the memory of weight. A suggestion. A whisper.
He narrowed his eyes.
That was strange.
Up until now, the figure had left no traces. None. It had moved like a ghost through these woods, never disturbing so much as a leaf. And now… a trail? Not carelessness. Intentional. Deliberate.
A message.
He exhaled, quiet and slow. "You want me to follow," he murmured under his breath. His voice was little more than a breath of sound. "Fine."
And with that, he moved.
The path was subtle but unmistakable to someone who knew how to read it — a broken blade of grass here, a tuft of moss disturbed there, the barest imprint of passing. It led him away from the estate's boundary and into the deeper forest, where the trees grew denser, their branches knitting together overhead to block out the sky. Light dimmed. The temperature dropped.
Here, the forest felt older — primal, untouched.
The birds did not sing here.
Even the wind seemed reluctant to pass through.
Lucas moved with a predator's grace — silent, focused, every footfall placed with care. His body remembered this kind of pursuit. He had trained for it, lived it. But more than that, he knew what this was.
A lure.
A provocation.
A trap.
And yet, he didn't stop. He followed the trail not because he was careless, but because he understood something deeper: sometimes, the only way to catch the spider is to walk willingly into the web.
The trail curved gently through a narrow pass between oak and pine, leading into a clearing that opened with unsettling abruptness — as if the trees themselves had been pushed back. He stepped into the open, and the silence thickened. The world held still.
Lucas's gaze slowly flicked upward. He had already sensed the trap beforehand.
He saw it a fraction of a second before it dropped — a glint of dull metal falling from the treetops above. Something cylindrical.
The device burst in midair with a hiss like an angry serpent, expelling a thick, yellow gas that flooded the clearing in an instant. It curled low around his boots, then rose like smoke in a windless room, obscuring everything.
The stench hit him first — pungent, metallic, laced with something bitter that made the back of his throat tighten.
Wolfsbane.
Not just the wild variety that grew in the hills — this was a rarer, more potent strain. Alchemical. Enhanced. The toxin bit into the air with an edge meant to cripple, meant to kill.
Lucas coughed once — deliberately — and let his knees fold beneath him. He dropped to the ground beside a tree trunk, slumping against it as if overcome. His breathing turned shallow, ragged — just enough to sell the lie.
Inside, his body was still. Calm. Unaffected.
The poison didn't work on him anymore.
Not since the Change. Not since he had embraced what he truly was — a true Alpha, in mind, body, and soul.
So this was the plan. A cheap trick, dressed up with theatrics.
Let's see how close you're willing to get, he thought.
And then the silhouette appeared.
It emerged slowly from the edge of the haze, a dark figure moving with deliberate ease. Cloaked in black, tall, their face hidden beneath the shadow of a hood. The mist curled around them like smoke, already dissipating as the figure walked closer.
Lucas didn't move.
He kept his body slack, his eyes half-lidded, breath still coming in shallow pulls. Playing the part.
The figure stopped just a few paces away.
Watching.
Studying.
Measuring.
Lucas felt it — the presence, the attention, the weight of intent behind that stare.
They were testing him.
He waited.
Perfectly still. Heartbeat slowed to a near-stop. A wolf playing dead. Biding its time.
The trap had sprung.
But not the one the figure thought.
The hunter had stepped into reach.
And now, Lucas thought, as the last tendrils of mist disappeared from the clearing, let's see who you really are.