LOGINCiara’s POVFor several seconds after Ayla said she might have answers, nobody moved.She remained near the door with one hand still resting lightly on the handle, looking far too composed for someone who had just walked into a room where two supposedly human women were discussing glowing eyes, voices inside their heads and spontaneous transformation into giant beasts. Inara had gone very still beside me, and I did not need to look at her to know she was already suspicious. I could practically feel it radiating from her. My own reaction was stranger. The warning that had tightened beneath my skin when Ayla entered had not disappeared, but neither had it become stronger. It simply remained there, quiet and watchful, like some hidden part of me had opened its eyes and was waiting to see what she would do.Ayla finally stepped farther into the room and placed a thick leather case on the table. “Before either of you starts accusing me of spying, experimenting without permission or gener
Ciara’s POVFor several seconds, I forgot how to breathe.Whatever stood in front of me was Inara, and somehow, at the same time, it was not the Inara I had known all these years. The creature filled more space than something born from a human body should have been capable of filling, its shoulders almost level with my chest even on all fours, its presence pressing into the room so heavily that everything suddenly felt smaller around it. At first glance, it resembled a wolf, but the longer I stared, the less that explanation made sense. Wolves did not have bodies built like ancient war beasts. Her fur was thick and impossibly smooth, dark beneath the afternoon light, but beautiful streaks of burning orange ran along her sides, curling over her shoulders and down her legs in patterns too perfect to be natural. They almost looked painted into her skin by fire itself, brightening faintly every time she breathed.And her eyes...Goddess.Those eyes were nothing like anything I had ever s
Ciara’s POVI stared at myself in the mirror, unable to breathe properly.Purple.My eyes were still blazing purple, bright enough that they almost seemed to cast their own faint glow against my reflection, and the woman staring back at me suddenly felt both completely familiar and horribly wrong.Those eyes belonged to the woman from my dream, the woman who had laughed while people died around her, the woman who had moved through blood and battle like violence was something she had been born understanding.Worse was the voice still echoing inside my skull.They killed us, Ciara. This time, I’ll kill them first.“No,” I whispered, stumbling backwards until my hand struck glass and it hit the floor and shattered loudly, fragments scattering across the tiles, but I barely registered it. My eyes remained fixed on the mirror as though looking away might give whatever was inside me enough time to crawl out. “No, no, no… what the fuck is happening to me?”The bathroom door flew open.“Ciar
Ciara’s POVThe first thing I remembered was blood.Not where it came from or whose body had spilled it or even where I was standing. There was simply blood everywhere, dark beneath a sky that did not look like any sky I had ever seen, soaking through black soil and running between broken stones in thin streams. Smoke burned somewhere nearby, thick enough to sting my eyes, while screams came from every direction at once. Some sounded human and others did not. I tried to move, but the strange thing was that I already was moving. My body knew exactly what it was doing even though my mind did not. My hands rose, fingers spread, and something violet exploded from them with enough force to tear through three shadowy figures rushing towards me.I should have been terrified.Instead, I laughed.The sound coming from my throat made fear crawl over my skin because it was my voice, yet it carried something I did not recognise in myself. It was colder and almost delighted by the violence sur
Ayla’s POVThe underground laboratory was silent except for the low hum of machinery and the occasional sharp click of glass meeting metal.I preferred it that way.There was no Dax staring at me like I was supposed to give him an answer that would somehow make everything better or Asher breaking doors and attacking people because his emotions had apparently eaten the last functional part of his brain.I had no guards asking questions they did not need answers to and no pregnant human wandering too close to things she absolutely should not understand yet.Just me, the samples, and seventy years of history spread across three tables.I stood over the main examination platform with my sleeves rolled above my elbows, watching a thin strand of purple current move through a crystal tube containing one of Ciara’s blood samples. It looked harmless at first and almost beautiful, actually. The current curled lazily through the liquid, disappeared beneath the human markers, then resurfaced sev
Jasper’s POVFor a long moment after Ciara disappeared around the corner, I remained exactly where she had left me, surrounded by flowers that suddenly looked ridiculous scattered across the polished floor. One stem had broken beneath my shoe, another had rolled almost to the wall, and petals lay everywhere like the remains of an apology nobody wanted. I looked down at them and almost laughed, although there was nothing funny about any of this. I had genuinely thought bringing her favourite flowers might help, not fix everything, because I was no longer arrogant enough to believe years of damage could be repaired with something bought and arranged, but perhaps remind her that I still knew her. That I still remembered the small things. Instead, she had looked at me like remembering those things no longer gave me any right to use them.That hurt more than I wanted to admit. Her words kept replaying in my head, especially the part about not bringing my unfinished shit to her doorstep a







