Chapter 1

Aria's POV

The full moon hung impossibly large in the sky, so close it seemed Aria could reach up and touch its silver surface if she simply stretched far enough. She stood at her bedroom window, unable to sleep despite the late hour, watching shadows dance across the yard below as clouds drifted past that luminous face. Something felt wrong tonight, a pressure in the air like the moment before lightning strikes, when every hair stands on end and the world holds its breath.

Aria Held her palm against the cool glass, trying to ground herself in something solid and real. She had felt strange all day, restless in a way that went deeper than simple anxiety or anticipation. Her skin felt too tight, her senses too sharp, as though someone had turned up the volume on reality itself and everything now registered with uncomfortable intensity. Colors seemed brighter, sounds carried further, and even the faint scent of autumn leaves drifting through her partially open window was almost overwhelming in its complexity.

The first howl split the night like a blade through silk.

Aria jerked away from the window, her heart suddenly racing. She knew the sound of wolves, her family's property bordered the vast forests of the northern territories where packs still roamed wild and free. But this was different. The howl carried undertones she had never heard before, harmonics that seemed to resonate not just in her ears but in her bones, in her blood, in places she had no names for.

A second howl answered the first, then a third, then more until the night was filled with a chorus that should have been beautiful but instead felt like a warning or perhaps a summons. Aria found herself moving toward the window again despite her fear, drawn by something she could not articulate or resist. When she looked out across the moonlit landscape, she saw them.

Wolves, dozens of them, emerging from the forest edge to gather in the meadow beyond her family's garden. They sat in a rough circle, all facing the same direction, all utterly still except for the rise and fall of their breathing. And they were all looking at her house. At her window. At her.

"This is impossible," Aria whispered, but even as she spoke, she felt something stir within her chest. A warmth that had nothing to do with temperature, a pulse that synchronized with her heartbeat but felt separate from it, as though something else shared space in her ribcage and had just awakened from long sleep.

The air around her began to shimmer with faint light, barely visible threads of silver-blue energy that seemed to drift like smoke or perhaps like living things with purpose and awareness. Aria watched in frozen fascination as the threads wound around her arms, her shoulders, her throat, not touching but hovering just above her skin. They pulsed in rhythm with that strange warmth in her chest, growing brighter with each passing second.

She should have been terrified. Should have screamed for her parents, should have run from the room, should have done anything except stand there watching as reality bent around her in ways that should not have been possible. But fear felt distant, muted, as though the part of her brain responsible for self-preservation had been temporarily overridden by something older and far more powerful.

The wolves howled again, all together this time, and the sound crashed over Aria like a physical wave. The threads of light flared brilliantly and blinding, and through her closed eyelids she saw visions that could not be memories because she had never experienced them. She saw forests ancient beyond measure, saw wolves that walked on two legs and spoke with human voices, saw moons, multiple moons, hanging in skies that were not quite the right color. She saw a woman who looked like her but was not her, standing in a circle of light while shadows pressed close from every direction, her face set with grim determination as she made a choice that would echo across centuries.

And she Then saw him...