Chapter 1

That world had shattered on a night just like this one.

Xander closed his eyes, the image burning behind his lids. He had been twelve, Kylie nine. They had been playing hide-and-seek near the Whispering Falls, the roar of water masking all other sounds. She had been so good at hiding, always finding the smallest crevice or the thickest cluster of glow-berries. He had searched for what felt like hours, calling her name until his throat was raw. When the elders finally found him, their faces grim and their scents sharp with worry, he knew something terrible had happened. Kylie was gone. Not lost in the forest—taken. The footprints in the mud were not of their pack. The lingering scent was foreign, metallic, and cold.

Ten years. Ten cycles of the twin moons, and still the ache had not dulled. Xander opened his eyes and exhaled slowly. He was the alpha now, a position he had taken at nineteen after his father’s heart gave out from grief. The pack looked to him for strength, for guidance, but in the quiet moments, he was still the boy who had lost his best friend.

A twig snapped behind him. He did not turn.

“Alpha, the hunt is ready.” It was Lena, his second-in-command, her voice low and respectful.

“I know,” he said, his gaze fixed on the distant silhouette of the Whispering Falls. “Tell them to proceed. I will join in a moment.”

“Xander,” she said softly, stepping closer. He felt her warmth at his side, then the gentle brush of her shoulder against his. “You cannot keep doing this. It has been a decade. We have searched every corner of this moon, every settlement, every spaceport. Perhaps it is time to—”

“To what?” He turned to face her, his amber eyes glinting in the moonlight. “To forget her? To move on as if she never existed?”

“No,” Lena said, her gaze steady. “But to heal. To let yourself live.”

He shook his head. “I cannot. Not until I know what happened to her. Whoever took her destroyed my family. They stole her smile, her laughter, the way she used to scrunch her nose when she was thinking. They owe me a debt, Lena. And I will collect it.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, then sighed. “The hunt awaits. There is a herd of silver-horned elk in the eastern valley. The pack is hungry.”

He nodded and shifted, his bones cracking and reforming as his wolf form emerged, powerful and dark as shadow. He let out a low growl that served as a command, and the pack answered from the trees—a symphony of howls that shook the leaves. They ran.

The hunt was a release, a way to silence the noise in his mind. His paws pounded against the earth, his muscles burning with the effort. The scent of elk filled his nostrils, and he led the charge, his pack streaming behind him like a river of fur and fangs. They cornered the herd near a gorge, and Xander took down the lead stag with a clean bite to the throat. The pack fed, and for a few hours, he allowed himself to feel nothing but the primal satisfaction of survival.

It was only after the feast, when the pack settled to rest in a wide cave lit by bioluminescent fungi, that the silence returned. The pack slept, their breathing deep and even. Xander lay at the mouth of the cave, staring up at the star-speckled sky, and let his mind wander back to Kylie.

He remembered her love for the stars. She would lie on her back in the meadow, pointing out constellations and making up stories about the heroes who lived among them. “When I grow up,” she had said once, her eyes bright, “I’m going to fly to every one of those stars and bring back stories for you, Xandy.” He had laughed and ruffled her hair. She had been so full of dreams.

And then someone had extinguished them.

His claws unsheathed unconsciously, scratching grooves into the stone floor. He had spent the last ten years gathering information, learning about the trafficking rings that operated in the fringe systems. He had heard whispers of a black-market trade in rare genetic material—shifters with unique abilities, like Kylie’s gift for empathy and animal rapport. The official record said she was lost in the forest, presumed dead. But Xander knew better. He had found tracks, a dropped comm-unit with unknown encrypted signals, and a single silver thread that did not belong to their world. The trail had gone cold, but he never stopped searching.

A sound roused him—a faint, rhythmic beep from the portable scanner he kept in his pack. He scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding. That tone meant a match. He pulled the device out, his hands trembling, and read the data. A faint energy signature, one that matched the traces left behind at Kylie’s disappearance, had been detected on a moon in the next system over—a moon known for its lawless settlements and hidden spaces.

“Lena,” he called, his voice sharp. “Wake the others. We have a lead.”

She stirred, blinking. “What kind of lead?”

“The kind I have been waiting for ten years,” he said, his wolf stirring inside him. “I am going to find whoever took my sister. And I am going to make them pay.”

The pack began to stir, sensing the shift in his mood. Lena stood and looked at him, her expression a mix of hope and sorrow. “You really think she’s alive?”

Xander thought of Kylie’s smile, her laughter, the way she always believed in him. “I have to believe it,” he said. “Because if she is not, then there is nothing left for me but revenge.”

He looked out the cave entrance, toward the stars where the signal had come from. Somewhere out there, a fragment of his past waited. And he would tear through the galaxy to find it.