9. Chapter

Corin

With every breath, my lungs burned as if I had swallowed embers. My mother’s weight dragged on my arm like lead, and our steps had degraded into unsteady stumbling through the dark. The howls of the Silver Stone pack rang ever closer, and the baying of the hounds was almost at our heels.

“Just… a little more…” I gasped, forcing my focus into the distance despite the black spots swimming before my eyes.

There. The boundary stones. A low, moss-covered stone wall marked the edge of the pack’s territory—beyond it lay no man’s land, and after that, the wilderness of the Brown Stone pack. Just fifty meters. Just thirty.

I could already feel the colder, wilder air flowing from the other side of the border when the darkness shifted behind me. A massive gray shape burst from the undergrowth. There was no time to turn.

The wolf slammed into my back with brutal force. Its claws ripped through the already inflamed wounds on my back—but the worst came next. As I hit the ground, the beast lunged for my right arm. I heard bone crack as its teeth sank deep into my flesh.

“AAAAAAHH!” The scream tore out of me in pure agony.

The pain was so blinding that everything went white for a heartbeat. I felt the wolf tearing at my arm, as if it meant to rip it clean from my body. My mother screamed and reached for me, but I shoved her away with my free hand.

“Go! Run!” I roared—though only a raw, broken rasp came from my throat.

And then something happened. Something that did not come from my eighteen-year-old wolf, but from deeper still. An unknown, scorching, ancient force exploded from my chest. My eyes flashed with golden light, and my body suddenly became heavy and unyielding as stone.

With a single, inhuman motion, I grabbed the wolf by the throat with my left hand and hurled it into a nearby pine tree with such force that it collapsed to the ground howling, its ribs shattered by the impact. I didn’t look to see who it was—perhaps one of the guards, perhaps one of Lumi’s allies. It didn’t matter.

I forced myself upright. My right arm hung lifeless at my side, blood pouring down over my silk dress, but that unknown power still drove me forward.

“Mother!” I grabbed Elena’s shoulder with my left hand.

The final ten meters we didn’t run—we fell. With one last, desperate shove, I threw my mother over the stone wall, then hurled myself after her. When my body slammed into the mud on the far side, the Silver Stone pack’s howls changed abruptly. They stopped at the wall. They snarled and raked at the earth in fury, but they did not cross. The border was sacred—crossing it uninvited meant war.

We were free.

I didn’t know where we were. The forest here was denser, the shadows more threatening. I didn’t know whether this was the territory of the Brown Stone pack or still no man’s land, nor what the wolves here might do to a half-blood intruder. I didn’t care.

My mother lay on the ground, her eyes closed. Her face looked peaceful in the moonlight, as if she were merely sleeping, though I knew it was exhaustion and faintness that had stolen her strength. I dragged myself beside her and wrapped my left arm around her waist.

I leaned back against the trunk of a massive, ancient oak, pulling my mother’s head into my lap.

Everything throbbed. My back burned with poison, my right arm was torn apart, and my soul bled from Glacier’s rejection. Yet as I sat there on the cold forest floor, a strange calm settled over me. I heard my own ragged breathing and the distant sounds of the woods.

No more scrubbing.

No more whips.

No more shouting “mongrel.”

My vision slowly blurred. My head tipped back against the rough bark. I felt life seeping out of me through my wounds, but the corner of my mouth curved into a faint, bloody smile.

We’re free, Mother… I thought as the darkness crept in. Finally free. Even if we die here in the cold… at least we die as people, not as animals.

Just before my consciousness finally slipped away, I heard a heavy footstep nearby. Then that familiar scent reached me—the clean, wild smell of rain-soaked earth and pine. A massive shadow fell over me, blotting out the moon, but I no longer had the strength to be afraid.

I simply let the darkness take me.