Chapter 4

The second explosion didn’t sound like thunder this time; it sounded like the sky tearing in half. Pressure crashed through me, heat blossoming outward, and then everything dissolved into silence. I wasn’t sure if I was still screaming or if sound had simply stopped existing. For a moment there was only white—white light, white pain, white nothing.

When the world stitched itself back together, I was lying on my side in a pit of ash and glassy soil. My ears rang. The air tasted of metal and rain. I pushed up on shaking elbows and blinked through the haze. What had been forest now looked like a burned painting: trees reduced to silhouettes, leaves drifting down like black snow.

“Auren!” My voice came out raw. Smoke swallowed it.

The memory of the flash still lived behind my eyes—his hand reaching for me, that single look of warning before we were ripped apart. I tried to move toward where he’d been, but the ground heaved beneath me, still shuddering with leftover energy. Blue veins of light ran through the cracks like lightning trapped in stone.

My power. My curse. Whatever it was, it had done this.

I stumbled to my feet, every step a fight against dizziness. Sparks flared from my skin whenever I touched something solid. The energy hummed under my ribs, confused and wild, asking to be released. The more I tried to suppress it, the more it whispered back.

Then came the sound—soft at first, then sharper. Footsteps. Three sets, spreading out, methodical.

Hunters.

I ducked behind a half-fallen trunk, heart hammering. Through the smoke I caught fragments of them: rifles, dark tactical gear, eyes gleaming faintly gold. Not from my pack. Not from any pack that should be here. Their scent was metallic, synthetic. Experiments, maybe—wolves forged in a lab instead of born under a moon.

My breath fogged the air. I pressed a hand against my wrist, where the faint spiral mark still pulsed beneath the skin. “Not now,” I whispered. “Please.” The mark glimmered, answering in light.

One of the hunters turned toward it.

Instinct screamed. I rolled away as a bullet sliced the air where my head had been. Bark exploded. Pain followed—sharp, hot, grazing my shoulder. I bit back the cry, forced my legs to move.

I ran.

The forest blurred around me, a tunnel of smoke and wind. Each step stirred sparks from the ground. My lungs burned; every heartbeat thudded louder than the gunfire. The power inside me kept flaring to life, pushing at the edges of control, as though it had chosen this moment to test whether I could survive it.

When I stumbled into the creek, cold water closed over my head. For a second I let it, welcoming the chill, the silence, the way it dimmed the glow beneath my skin. Then I surfaced, gasping.

Across the bank, the hunters were shadows moving through mist. I slid behind a cluster of reeds and waited. One paused, sniffing the air. Another motioned forward.

And then, suddenly, they were gone.

The silence that followed was almost worse.

A voice drifted from the trees. Low. Calm. “Aria.”

It wasn’t Kael. The sound was too soft, too measured, too careful not to startle me.

“Auren?”

He stepped through the mist, pale light sliding across the angles of his face. His coat was scorched at the edges; silver dust clung to his hair. He looked impossibly steady, like the chaos hadn’t touched him. But his eyes told a different story—haunted, calculating every breath I took.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

I laughed once, shaky. “That’s what happens when the universe keeps trying to kill you.”

He came closer. The world seemed to narrow around the quiet between us. I could feel heat radiating from him, the pulse of his power steady and grounded where mine burned erratic.

“You shouldn’t have stayed,” I whispered.

“And leave you to burn the world alone?”

Something in the way he said it—no judgment, only truth—unraveled the last of my composure. I let the exhaustion show, the fear, the guilt. The light flickered out along my hands as if responding to the confession I couldn’t make aloud.

He didn’t touch me, but he was close enough that I could sense the weight of his gaze. “We have to move,” he murmured. “They’ll circle back.”

I nodded, throat tight. “Then lead the way.”

We moved through the ruin like ghosts. The smoke thinned as we climbed the ridge, dawn bleeding pale across the shattered sky. Every sound felt exaggerated—the crackle of embers, the distant groan of trees still burning, the quiet rhythm of his footsteps beside mine.

When we finally reached higher ground, I turned and looked down. The forest lay broken, the blast radius stretching farther than I’d dared imagine. At its center, a crater pulsed faintly with residual light.

“That’s what they’ll find,” I said. “They’ll think I’m gone.”

Auren’s expression didn’t change. “Most will.”

I met his eyes. “But not him.”

He said nothing, only adjusted the strap of his pack and started down the far slope. His silence was answer enough.

By the time the sun cleared the treetops, we’d found a hollow beneath an ancient oak, wide enough to crawl into. The earth was cool and damp. I sank against the wall of roots, exhaustion washing over me in waves.

Auren crouched nearby, scanning the forest with that unnerving stillness. The light through the branches painted silver lines across his face.

“What happens now?” I asked.

He didn’t look at me. “Now we hide. You heal. And then we decide what you are.”

The words struck like a stone dropped into water—ripples spreading outward until they touched everything I’d been trying not to feel. I opened my mouth to argue, to say I was still me, still wolf, still Aria—but the truth caught somewhere behind my teeth.

I wasn’t sure anymore.

Sleep wouldn’t come. Every time my eyes closed, light flashed behind my lids—the memory of the blast, Auren’s hand reaching, Kael’s voice in my head telling me to control it. I pressed my palms to the dirt to ground myself, feeling the heartbeat of the forest beneath. Somewhere above, wind moved through the branches with a sound like breathing.

“You’re shaking,” Auren said quietly.

“I’m fine.” The lie fell apart between us.

He crouched near the entrance, eyes half-lidded, listening to something beyond my range. “They’re still out there. Two groups. One heading north, one looping back.”

“How can you tell?”

He tilted his head. “The forest tells me.”

I wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe anyone could still speak the language of the world after what we’d just done to it. I hugged my knees and watched the faint shimmer that sometimes bled from my fingertips. It was weaker now, but alive—a pulse that answered only to me.

“What if it doesn’t stop?” I whispered. “What if it keeps growing?”

Auren turned to face me fully. “Then we teach you to use it before it uses you.”

The conviction in his tone steadied something inside me. He didn’t see a weapon. He saw a person who had survived her own fire.

I leaned back against the roots and let my head fall against the bark. Outside, the dawn wind shifted, carrying the scent of ash and distant rain. For the first time since the blast, I felt a trace of calm. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe trust.

When I woke again, the sun was higher. Auren was gone.

Panic snapped through me, quick and bright. I crawled to the opening and scanned the forest. The clearing below glimmered with dew; no movement, no sound but birds returning to a world that had tried to end. I almost called his name before realizing he’d left a trail for me: three small stones stacked on a root, the smallest marked with a line of ash. Stay hidden.

I waited. Minutes stretched into an hour. The longer he was gone, the louder my thoughts became. Kael’s face flickered between them, always the same image—his eyes right before the blast, a mixture of fury and something worse: heartbreak.

He would come. I knew him well enough to know that. And when he did, nothing in this forest would be safe.

The realization should have terrified me. Instead, it made my chest ache with something dangerously close to longing.

Footsteps rustled beyond the hollow. I tensed, ready to strike. Auren emerged from the mist, carrying a canvas bag and smelling faintly of smoke. “They’re retreating,” he said. “For now.”

“What did you find?”

“Tracks,” he answered. “And one survivor.”

My stomach turned. “From the hunters?”

He nodded. “She’s gone now. But she said something before she died. ‘The Alpha will come himself.’”

The words fell heavy between us. Kael. Of course it would be him.

I didn’t realize I was shaking again until Auren reached out. His hand hovered over mine, not quite touching. “You don’t have to face him yet.”

I swallowed hard. “You don’t know him.”

“I don’t have to.” His gaze softened. “I know you.”

Something inside me flinched at that simple truth. I looked away, out through the tangle of roots toward the brightening day. “We should move before he finds us.”

Auren nodded once, and together we packed what little we had. The forest felt different now—quieter, watchful. Every step I took seemed to echo in the distance, a signal waiting for an answer.

We climbed until we reached a ridge overlooking the valley. Below, smoke still rose from the ruins of the old compound. The blast had left a mark even sunlight couldn’t erase: a spiraling scar glowing faintly beneath the earth.

Auren’s voice was almost reverent. “That’s you.”

“No,” I said. “That’s what’s left of me.”

He didn’t argue. Maybe he knew there was nothing to say.

Kael

The valley was still smoldering when Kael arrived.

Ash coated his boots. The others hung back, unwilling to step closer to the heart of the crater. He barely noticed them. His senses were fixed on the scent threaded through the air—smoke, iron, and something familiar beneath it all. Her.

He crouched, fingers brushing the scorched soil. The mark was unmistakable: a spiral etched into stone, faintly luminescent, matching the one he’d once kissed on Aria’s wrist.

“She did this,” one of his men muttered. “No one could survive—”

“Be quiet.” Kael’s voice cut through the air like a blade. The pack fell silent.

He straightened slowly, eyes scanning the distance. The forest whispered with the memory of her power. She was alive. The bond between them, the one he had thought severed by death, thrummed faintly now—like a thread pulled taut across miles.

Alive. Changed. Hiding.

A dangerous mixture of relief and fury churned inside him. He had mourned her. Burned half the forest looking for her. And now the earth itself told him she still walked it.

He turned toward the men. “Fan out. No tracks unsearched. If the hunters come back, you deal with them. I want her found before they do.”

They hesitated. One dared to speak. “Alpha, what if she doesn’t want—”

“She’s mine,” Kael said softly, and the quiet that followed was more frightening than a roar.

When they scattered, he stayed alone at the crater’s edge, watching the light pulse faintly beneath the soil. He could almost feel her heartbeat there, echoing his own. For a moment he let himself imagine finding her unhurt, hearing her laugh again, seeing her eyes soften. Then he remembered the look she’d given him before the blast—defiance wrapped in sorrow—and the image crumbled.

He looked to the horizon, where smoke met sky. “You can run,” he murmured, “but I will always find you.”

A breeze moved through the trees, carrying a sound so faint he almost missed it—a howl rising from far beyond the valley, raw and familiar. His pulse stuttered.

Aria.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the blue in his irises burned brighter. Power answered power, and the ground trembled faintly beneath his feet.

“She’s alive,” he said to the wind. “And she’s not alone.”

The forest swallowed the echo of his voice. Far away, hidden beneath the shade of the ridge, Aria felt the faint tremor ripple through the earth and knew that he had found her scent again.

The hunt had begun.