The wolfsbane hit my lungs like molten silver.
I had been working alone in the vault—measuring compounds for the final antidote batch—when the ventilation system hissed and the air turned thick. Sweet at first. Then burning.
I dropped the vial. It shattered on the stone floor, glass scattering in every direction. My throat closed. My vision blurred.
I tried to reach the door. My legs buckled.
The smell was everywhere now. Concentrated. Deliberate. Someone had poured it directly into the duct system.
I hit the floor hard. My cheek pressed against cold stone. Blood pooled beneath my palms where the broken glass had cut through skin.
My wolf surged forward—not the muted presence from before, but something enormous and furious. *Get up,* she snarled. *Get UP.*
I couldn't. My lungs were on fire. My skin blistered where the wolfsbane smoke touched it.
Above me, I heard footsteps. Voices.
Then Damien's voice, sharp and commanding. "What happened?"
"Training accident, Alpha." Allie's voice. Breathless. Frightened. "I—I cut myself on the equipment. It's deep."
A pause.
"Maren," Damien said. His Alpha tone rolled through the building like thunder. "Treat her. Now."
I tried to call out. My voice came out as a rasp that went nowhere.
My wolf clawed at my ribs from the inside. *They're not coming,* she said. Her voice was different now. Deeper. Older. *They never were.*
The burns spread across my arms. Black lines crawling up my skin like roots. The wolfsbane was concentrated enough to kill.
I thought about my father lying in Silverpine's medical wing. I thought about the signed confession on Damien's desk. I thought about Allie's signature on a fraud accusation and the sprig of wolfsbane someone had left on my doorstep this morning.
A warning I hadn't understood until now.
My spine arched. Not from the poison. From something else.
Something that had been waiting.
*Let me out,* my wolf said. Not a request. A command.
My bones cracked. The sound echoed off the vault walls—sharp, wet, wrong. My skin split. Not tearing. Reshaping.
I tried to scream. What came out was a howl.
It started low in my chest and built like a wave, rising and rising until it filled the entire vault. The glass vials on the shelves rattled. The stone floor vibrated beneath me.
My body convulsed. My hands—no, not hands anymore—claws, silver-furred and massive, scraped against the floor. My vision sharpened. The burns on my skin knitted closed as fur erupted across my arms, my back, my legs.
I was shifting. But not into the wolf I'd known for years.
This was something else.
My wolf—no, *our* wolf—rose to her feet. The ceiling felt too low. The vault felt too small. I looked down at my paws and they were twice the size they should have been. My fur blazed silver in the dim light, luminous and ancient.
*We are done,* the wolf said inside my mind, *being quiet.*
She threw her head back and howled again.
This time, the sound didn't stay in the vault. It traveled. Through stone walls. Through pack territory. Across borders I had never crossed.
It was a howl that said: I am here. I am alive. I am not yours to erase.
Above me, in the infirmary, I heard something crash. Voices shouting. Footsteps running.
But I didn't care.
My wolf's ears swiveled toward the ventilation duct. She could smell it now—the wolfsbane, yes, but also the hand that had poured it. A scent I knew. One I had tried not to recognize.
Allie.
My wolf's lips pulled back from her teeth. The growl that rumbled through her chest was nothing like the muted warnings from before. It was a promise.
Somewhere far away—across territory lines I couldn't see—a black wolf stopped mid-stride. His head snapped up. His nostrils flared.
He caught a scent on the wind. Winter jasmine and moon-silver.
And he ran.
In the vault, my wolf stood over the shattered vials and the broken glass. The wolfsbane smoke still hung in the air, but it didn't touch her anymore. It couldn't.
She was Lycan-born. Ancient. Sovereign.
And she had just woken up.
Above, Damien's voice cut through the chaos. "What the hell was that sound?"
No one answered.
My wolf's ears flicked toward the vault door. She could hear them now—pack members gathering in the corridor outside, their voices low and uncertain.
She took one step forward. Then another.
The door was locked from the outside. It didn't matter.
She lowered her head, bunched her haunches, and slammed her full weight against the iron.
The hinges shrieked.
The lock held.
She hit it again.
This time, the door buckled.
One more strike and it would give.
My wolf pulled back, muscles coiled, silver fur blazing in the vault's dim light.
And in the corridor outside, someone whispered: "Moon Goddess. What is that?"
