Chapter 11

~Annalyn POV~

I looked at Isabella for a long time, without looking at Ezra or the wolf bleeding on the ground. Just Isabella, her wet eyes, shaking hands, the way her whole face was already crumbling like she knew what was coming and couldn't stop it.

She lowered the rifle slowly. "Anna, I..."

"Don't." My voice came out flat, I didn't recognize it.

"He said he'd kill you." The sob broke out of her all at once, ugly and raw. "And he also told me the wolves were going to eat you. That they'd already turned you and you didn't even know it, and the only way to save you was to kill them."

"So you shot one of them because of that?"

"I was trying to protect you..."

"You were following his instructions, Isabella!" I looked at her, really looked, and felt something cold slide into the space where warmth used to live. "Those are two different things."

She pressed her hand over her mouth, tears pouring down her cheeks. She looked exactly the way she always looked when she wanted me to make her feel better. When she wanted me to say it's okay, I understand, I forgive you. I'd done it a hundred times, every time she borrowed money she never returned or anytime she told my secrets to people she shouldn't have trusted.

But I didn't say it this time, because my wolf was furious and I could feel it. The betrayal sitting in my chest like something corrosive, burning through every memory I had of Isabella calling me her sister when she had no sisters of her own.

Ezra stepped forward and reached for my arm, I slapped his hand away so hard the sound echoed off the trees.

He stopped, his smile didn't disappear, it widened slowly like I'd just done something that genuinely delighted him. "There she is," he said softly.

"Don't you dare touch me again." I spat.

He tilted his head, studying me with those flat, patient eyes. "You're standing barefoot in a forest, no clothes, blood that isn't yours on your skin, and you're the one setting terms?" He almost sounded impressed. "Sounds funny right? I really did underestimate you."

"Say what you came to say." I crossed my arms. "Because I'm done with whatever performance this is."

He opened his mouth, and then went still.

I felt them before I heard them. The shift in the air, the way my wolf lifted her head inside me and exhaled. Three scents hitting me at once, distinct and familiar in a way that ran deeper than memory.

Lucas crashed through the tree line first. He saw Ezra and his body reacted before his brain did, claws splitting from his fingers, eyes flooding gold, a snarl tearing out of him that physically shook the branches overhead. It wasn't a sound a human throat should be able to make.

Ezra didn't react, instead he looked at Lucas the way you'd look at a dog that got off its leash. Mildly inconvenient.

"Control your dog," he said, to me.

Lucas took one step forward and Calix caught his arm, not gently. His jaw was locked so tight that I could see the muscle jumping in his cheek. He didn't look at Ezra at all, he looked at me, scanning me head to toe in two seconds flat, and something in his expression shifted when he confirmed I wasn't hurt.

Matteo came to stand on my other side, but he didn't say anything. He just stood there, and that's when I noticed it. All three of them, without discussing it, or looking at each other had arranged themselves in a wall in front of me. Lucas to the left, Calix to the right, Matteo just slightly ahead. Like their bodies had decided on their own where to be.

Even they looked faintly startled by it.

Ezra noticed, his eyes moved across all four of us and something changed in his face, the amusement drained out and something sharper took its place, looking colder.

"Interesting," he said quietly, more to himself than to us.

"Speak," Lucas said, his voice was barely controlled. "Or I stop being polite."

Ezra straightened, and just like that, the easy smile, relaxed posture, the performance, all of it dropped. What was left underneath was something precise and serious in a way that made the air feel different.

"Fine." He looked at all of us. "Then let me be plain."

No one moved.

"The spirit inside Annalyn is not just some residual energy or a ghost, nor a dormant gene." He paused. "She is the original Moon Alpha. The first female wolf ever born with the power to dominate all male alphas, not just influence them, but dominate them. Command their wolves into submission without lifting a hand." His eyes moved to me. "You felt it tonight, didn't you? When the twelve knelt."

I said nothing, which was its own answer.

"She died three centuries ago during the First Pack War," he continued. "Her mates... yes, she had three... tried to contain her power when they realized they couldn't control it. They performed a binding ritual. It didn't kill the power, it just separated it from the body." He let that sit. "Her soul has been searching for a compatible host ever since, and one with the right bloodline, and the right marks." He glanced at my shoulder. "The right three."

Calix's jaw tightened, Lucas had gone dangerously still.

"Annalyn was not an accident," Ezra said. "Her birth was planned, and her bloodline was tracked for six generations. Someone made sure she existed." He looked at me with something that wasn't quite pity. "Your mother didn't sell you because of debt."

My stomach dropped instantly.

"She sold you because she was terrified of what you were already becoming." He said it simply, like it was just a fact. "She knew, she'd watched it growing in you for years, and when the Del Pieros came with an offer that put distance between her and what you were turning into, she took it. Not for money." He paused. "But for relief."

The clearing went completely silent and I didn't look at anyone. I stared at a fixed point somewhere past Ezra's shoulder and kept my face completely still because if I moved even one muscle I didn't trust what would come out.

Lucas had gone quiet in a way that was more alarming than his anger. Calix's eyes were on the ground, and Matteo hadn't moved, spoken, or looked at me once since Ezra started talking.

That's what made me turn, I looked at Matteo slowly. Really looked at him, the careful blankness on his face, the way his shoulders were set, not surprised, just braced. Like a man waiting for a door to open that he'd known was coming.

"You knew," I said. "Didn't you?" My voice was steady. "That's why you warned me about the ritual! Not to protect me." I took one step toward him. "But to slow it down."

Matteo's silence was its own answer, as he opened his mouth to speak and something warm hit my upper lip. I reached up and touched it.

My fingers came away red, I saw that my blood was deep red, running clean and bright down my chin, and from somewhere deep inside my chest, underneath my ribs, my wolf, and everything I recognized as mine, something ancient laughed inside of me with low, patient, and completely satisfied.