Landon and Susanna

Landon does not speak of what he did—because in the Dark Blood pack, silence is a form of currency, and some truths are too heavy even for monsters. The pack is a refuge for the unforgivable, a graveyard for names and past lives, where questions are buried deeper than bodies. And Landon arrived already carrying both. Murderer. Traitor. Kinslayer, some might whisper if they dared. His previous pack leader had been strong, revered, untouchable—or so everyone believed. But power rots differently behind closed doors. Landon had seen it in the way his sister, Susanna, stopped meeting anyone’s eyes. In the way her laughter disappeared. In the bruise she tried to hide. That bruise was the end of everything. Landon didn’t hesitate. He didn’t plan. He simply acted. By nightfall, the pack leader was gone—left broken and unrecognizable in a stretch of wilderness so vast and merciless that even scavengers would struggle to find what remained. No funeral. No justice. Just silence. The crime was unforgivable. Not because of the murder—but because of who the victim had been. Banishment came swiftly. It was meant to be a sentence. Instead, it felt like release. Susanna followed him. That was the part Landon never accounted for. She should have stayed. She was innocent—untouched by the darkness that clung to him like dried blood. But she chose exile anyway, choosing him over everything she had ever known. And that… that is the only thing that unsettles him. Because Landon does not regret what he did. Not for a second. He would tear the world apart a thousand times over if it meant protecting her. The wilderness, the isolation, the pack of monsters he now calls his own—none of it compares to the quiet certainty that he ended something that deserved to end. Still, in rare moments when the night is too still and Susanna sleeps nearby, Landon wonders if the darkness that saved her is the same darkness that will one day consume them both.