Kershov hadn’t been planning on volunteering his status as Alpha of a pack . . . but Milo had asked so innocently, and he honestly felt not even a shred of threat in her sweet presence. He lifted his ears in amusement at her childish antics, tail waving slightly. “Actually, I am. I rule—”

Uyaraut.

His tongue tangled itself, voice twisting into a knot in his throat. Kershov had been going to say “Bright Moon.” Yet at the last second, a voice deep within himself whispered a new name with stunning clarity, the emotion and rightness of it striking the alabaster gangster silent. “Uyaraut . . . I rule Uyaraut.”

Snowy hackles lifted as if with static. Kershov assumed it was from the bizarre revelation that reached inside of him and pulled that glimmering name from the ether. In reality—his body was preemptively preparing for what happened next.

A ripple of something coursed through the sky, the land, and everything quivered in place for a single moment of violent chaos—the world itself giving a convulsive shudder as its very bones shattered and reset into a new shape. Kershov felt his living processes pause: heart squeezing to a sudden stop, its chambers emptied; lungs frozen at full sail, the air within congealed to dark drowning fluid; even the electricity powering his body seemed to pause, lightning halted in its arc across his thoughts. He managed to bark out a single thunderstruck “What?!” before another ferocious shockwave shredded across the field. It sounded as if a bomb had been detonated. Blossoms bent nearly flat on their stems, petals bursting into the air like feathers from a startled flock of birds. Long grass whipped at the air. The clouds shimmered with awesome energy—the light of fireworks bursting and crackling across the horizon—and as Kershov blinked, his jaw unhinged in astonishment. The horizon changed. Right as he was looking at it.

The mountains he had always known were no longer standing. An entirely different chain cut the atmosphere with its jagged teeth, and the wind that poured down from its peaks carried scents that had Kershov’s mind reeling.

No . . . this cannot be . . . I’m dreaming . . . The white warrior sliced his incredulous onyx gaze toward Milo, to see if the little she-wolf were just as shocked as he—and that’s when the ground erupted.

The birth of the massive mountains hammered an earthquake into the rest of the land. All at once the ground under Kershov’s paws was bucking and heaving, dirt cracking or collapsing with dangerous unpredictability. Without thinking the gigantic monster lashed out and grabbed Milo’s scruff in his fangs, lifting her up like a pup. The female was so petite her paws would hardly brush the tips of the flowers that managed to stay rooted; as horrified as he was, Kershov’s ivories were clamped tightly enough that escape would be nigh impossible unless Milo wanted to lose a handsome slice of flesh. Then he broke into a full-out gallop—strides soaring over the terra. He planned to sprint back to Bright Moon—to Uyaraut—but impossibly, instinctively, his course altered in a totally divergent direction. It is not there anymore—it is THERE.

He needed to get back to his pack as fast as possible. He had to know that his pack members were all right.