The burn didn't stop.
It spread through me like wildfire, racing down my spine, into my legs, through my arms. The wolfsbane fought it—acid against flame—but the fire was winning. I could feel it winning. My back arched off the cold stone floor. My fingers dug into the ground so hard I felt stone crack under my nails.
Something in my chest was tearing open.
Not breaking. Opening. Like a door I'd spent my entire life standing in front of without knowing it was there.
"Ember," I gasped.
The warmth answered.
It flooded through me so fast I couldn't breathe past it. My bones cracked. Not breaking—reshaping. My spine curved and twisted and lengthened in ways that should have killed me but didn't. My muscles tore and knit back together, thicker, stronger, wrong and right at the same time. My skull felt like it was splitting.
I screamed.
The sound that came out wasn't human.
My hands flattened against the floor. Fingers curling. Nails lengthening into claws that scraped stone. My vision blurred, then sharpened—colors I'd never seen before bleeding into the dim underground light. I could smell everything. The silver. The wolfsbane in my blood. The sweat on the guards outside the door. The storm three floors above us.
The silver restraints around my wrists shrieked.
Metal grinding against metal. A sound like a scream. The restraints I'd worn for seven days—thick silver bands that had burned my skin every time I moved—cracked. Then snapped. The pieces clattered to the floor.
I looked down.
White fur covered my arms. Massive paws where my hands had been. Claws that gleamed in the low light.
The cell walls cracked.
Thin fracture lines spread across the silver panels, spiderwebbing out from where I crouched. The hum I'd felt in my teeth became a roar. The walls weren't just cracked—they were failing. The silver that was supposed to hold me was breaking apart.
I stood.
Not on two legs. On four.
I was taller than I should be. Bigger. The ceiling that had felt oppressive for seven days now felt close enough to touch. I turned my head and caught my reflection in the cracked silver panel.
A white wolf stared back.
Massive. Twice the size of any she-wolf I'd ever seen. Fur so white it caught the dim underground light and amplified it, made me look like I was glowing. Eyes burning gold.
Ember.
She wasn't just awake. She was here. Fully here. And she was furious.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor.
The cell door wrenched open. Two guards stumbled in—the same ones who'd stood outside my cell for seven days without once asking if I was all right. They froze.
One of them made a sound. Not a word. Just a choked gasp.
I looked at them.
Ember's instincts moved through me like a second consciousness—precise, devastating, absolutely clear. She knew what to do. She'd always known. She'd been compressed inside me my entire life, waiting for this exact moment.
I moved.
Faster than they could react. Low to the ground, shoulders rolling, claws finding purchase on stone. The first guard reached for the wolfsbane syringe at his belt. I was past him before his hand closed around it. The second guard backed toward the door. Too slow.
I didn't hurt them.
Ember could have. I felt the impulse in her—the rage, the years of suppression, the wolfsbane burns—but my human mind was still there, still working alongside her instincts, and I pulled her back. We needed to move. We needed the logs. We needed to run.
The guards hit the floor. Conscious. Terrified. Watching.
I turned and ran.
The corridor blurred past me. Ember's legs ate up distance in strides that felt impossible. I could smell Alonzo's station before I saw it—the scent of paper and ink and red wax. The clipboard hung on its hook exactly where I'd memorized it. The wolfsbane dosage logs. Every injection timestamped. Every entry stamped with Dillon's seal. Alonzo's routing notations in his own square, efficient handwriting.
I seized the logs in my jaw.
The paper tasted like evidence.
Behind me, alarms started screaming.
I ran harder.
Up the corridor. Through the pack house's lower levels. Past cells I'd never seen, storage rooms, the old archives. The storm hit me the moment I burst through the lower exit—cold rain, wind that smelled like pine and wet earth and freedom. I didn't stop.
The northern pines opened up ahead of me.
The same trees where Dillon and I had run as newly-mated wolves. Where he'd caught my scent for the first time and told me it smelled like home. Where I'd believed the bond was real, believed the Moon Goddess had given me something worth protecting.
I ran through them without looking back.
Ember's legs were faster than any wolf I'd ever seen. The boundary markers blurred past. The edge of Ironridge territory. The place where pack land ended and the rest of the world began.
I crossed the border line.
Packless. Titleless. Carrying nothing but stolen logs and a case built from memory.
I stopped at the ridge.
The storm howled around me. Rain soaked through my white fur. I could see three territories from here—the dark forests to the east, the mountain range to the north, the river valleys that led to the Summit grounds.
Ember threw back her head.
The howl that came out was nothing like the sound I'd made in the cell. It was clear. Strong. A sound that carried through the storm and echoed off the mountains. The perimeter guards would hear it. Dillon would hear it. Every wolf in Ironridge would hear it and know exactly what it meant.
The wolf you buried is alive.
I pressed my paw against the wet ground. Felt my pulse through the pads. Still here. Still here. Still here.
Then I turned toward the Summit and ran.
