CHAPTER SIX — Eira

The moment the council chamber doors closed behind me, the noise hit. Not sound—the opposite of it. A ringing absence, as if the world had sucked all air from my lungs and left me hollow.

I kept my head down as I slipped into one of the side corridors, ignoring the guards posted near the hall. I didn’t need their questions, and I definitely didn’t need my mother’s sharp Luna eyes catching the tremor in my hands.

I only stopped walking when I reached the glass-walled balcony overlooking the valley. The beginning of cool night air rushed against my skin, clearing the leftover pressure from the council room. The sun had begun to set and the moon was rising. Normally, it calmed me. Tonight, it felt… alive.

Breathe, Eira.

Veyla’s voice slid through me—soft, ancient, threaded with something like warning.

“I am breathing,” I murmured, though each inhale felt tight. “Too much. Too fast.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She was listening. Searching.

I gripped the railing hard enough to make my knuckles ache. The Summit always rattled me, but this… this was different. It wasn’t the political tension. Not the secret I carried, or even the fact that every alpha in that room had assessed me like a future bargaining chip.

No—it was him.

Kalen Draven.

Newly ascended Alpha of Ironshade. Cold eyes. Sharp voice. A presence that filled the room like a storm front. I’d felt irritation, challenge, anger from strangers before. But I’d never felt that—that jolt in my ribs, that burn behind my sternum, that sensation like someone had struck flint and sparks had leapt straight into my bloodstream.

Even standing a dozen meters away from him, I’d felt as if some invisible force had reached out and gripped me by the spine.

And the worst part—the most terrifying part—

Veyla had reacted.

Not with danger.

Not with hostility.

But with recognition.

He is close to the fire, Veyla whispered now, voice echoing through memory and present at once. Closer than he should be.

“What does that even mean?” I whispered.

Again—silence. Frustrating, familiar silence.

I pressed my forehead to the cool glass and let my thoughts scatter like dust. I’d spent years training myself to control every flicker of power, every slip of ancient instinct, every tell that might give me away. But today everything had cracked.

A memory hit me with no warning.

Veyla’s energy blooming inside my young, terrified body at fourteen.

Her voice, not a whisper then but a roar—

A threat approaches. Stand.

My bones shifting when they shouldn’t have. My parents’ panic. My mother gripping my shoulders, whispering, “Eira, baby, look at me—don’t shift, not here, not now.”

The fear in her eyes.

The fear I put there.

It had been so long since a memory of that night ambushed me, but tonight everything inside me felt raw and exposed.

“Get it together,” I whispered to myself.

But I didn’t. I stayed on the balcony until my breathing steadied. Until my hands stopped shaking. Until the sun dipped behind the mountains and gave me the illusion of quiet.

Only then did I return to my room.

Later That Night

Sleep refused to come.

I lay on my back staring at the ceiling while the Summit grounds hummed faintly outside—voices, engines, footsteps, the shifting of wolves on patrol.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the council chamber.

The lights.

The tension.

And Kalen Draven’s gaze locking with mine like a magnetic pull neither of us had expected.

You felt it, Veyla finally murmured.

“I felt nothing.”

A lie, she said gently. You felt the spark. You fear what it means.

I turned onto my stomach, burying my face in the pillow. “I am not afraid.”

You are.

A pause.

And you should be.

A chill skated down my spine.

I sat up, shoving my hair back from my face, heart hammering. “Why? What do you know that I don’t?”

The ancient wolf inside me hesitated. That was new. Veyla never hesitated.

Then—

A shadow moves toward destiny, she murmured. And destiny moves toward you.

“That sounds like a prophecy.”

It is a warning.

A knock sounded faintly in the hall. Someone passing by. A reminder that the Summit continued without me—that Kalen Draven was still here, somewhere on these grounds, breathing the same night air, likely meeting with the other alphas, discussing politics, strategies, alliances—

And I had fled.

I dragged a hand down my face.

“What is wrong with me today?”

Veyla’s presence curled around my mind, warm and ancient.

The world is shifting. And we must shift with it.

I lay awake for hours, caught between fear and curiosity, between instinct and denial.

Between who I had always been…

and who I was becoming.