Chapter 4:Waking the Wolf

Get up,” Darius said, tossing me folded black clothes. “We’re going to the caves.”

It was dawn. I’d slept maybe two hours, tangled in his sheets that smelled like him, while he stood guard at the balcony like a gargoyle. Every time I woke, his silver eyes were on me. Not creepy. Safe.

“The caves?” I caught the clothes. Leather pants. Tactical top. Like his.

“My curse is tied to this land.” He was already dressed, knives strapped to his thighs, the white curse marks on his forearms stark against his skin. “If it’s really fading because of you, the Sacred Cave will confirm it. And—” his gaze darkened — “it might wake what’s sleeping in you.”

My stomach flipped. “My wolf?”

“If you have one.” His mouth curved, not quite a smile. “And I think you do, little weapon. I felt her last night when you told Kade off. She’s pissed.”

Thirty minutes later we were deep in the Forbidden Territory forest. The trees here were ancient, black-barked, humming with old magic. No birds. No wind. Just us and the weight of a thousand dead kings watching.

The cave entrance was a slash in the mountainside, guarded by two stone wolves bigger than cars. Their eyes were real gemstones. Moonstone.

“Sacred ground,” Darius murmured, taking my hand. His palm was calloused, warm, and the second we touched, his curse marks flickered. Dimmed. “The last Lycan Queen died here three centuries ago. White wolf. Like the stories.”

White wolf. Extinct. Myth.

“Why bring me here if—”

The howl cut me off. Then another. And another. Not Kade’s pack. Wilder. Wrong.

Rogues.

Darius went from relaxed to lethal in a heartbeat. He shoved me behind him, a blade suddenly in his hand. “Six,” he said, scenting the air. “No, eight. Kade sent a suicide squad.”

Blood drained from my face. “He wouldn’t—”

“He would,” Darius snarled. “He can’t win you back, so he’ll make sure no one has you.”

They burst from the trees. Eight males, half-shifted, eyes rabid. No pack scents. No sanity. Rogues who’d been promised freedom for one job: kill the wolf-less girl.

The first one lunged for me.

Darius was a blur. His blade took the rogue’s throat before I could blink. Black blood sprayed. “Run to the cave!” he roared at me. “Now, Elara!”

I ran. Then stopped.

Because a second rogue had flanked him. Claws out. Aimed at Darius’s unprotected back while hewhile he gutted the third.

No.

No one hurt him.

Not after he chose me. Not after he called Kade trash for me.

Something *snapped* inside my chest. Not pain. Power. Like a dam breaking after eighteen years.

Heat rolled through my veins, burning, changing. My bones popped. My vision went sharp, then sharper — I could see the individual hairs on the rogue’s arm, smell the decay in his teeth, hear Darius’s heartbeat spike as he realized he was about to get hit.

“ELARA, DOWN—”

I didn’t go down. I went *forward*.

The scream that tore out of me wasn’t human. It wasn’t even wolf.

It was *Lycan*.

White fur exploded across my skin. My body grew, reformed, bigger than any female wolf had a right to be. Bigger than Kade’s Beta form. When my paws hit the dirt, the ground shook.

The rogue aiming for Darius froze. Then whimpered. Then dropped to his belly, pissing himself.

Because he wasn’t looking at a wolf-less girl.

He was looking at a white Lycan. A myth. An Alpha of Alphas.

I moved without thinking. One swipe. The rogue’s head left his shoulders. The other six took one look at me, at the blood on my white muzzle, and fled into the trees screaming.

Silence.

I turned, panting, and saw Darius.

He was on one knee. Not from injury — though blood ran from a cut on his shoulder where hehadn’t moved fast enough. He was on one knee because he was staring at me like he’d seen the Moon Goddess herself.

The white curse marks on his arms weren’t just fading.

They were *gone*.

“Elara,” he breathed, voice wrecked.

I tried to speak. It came out as a whine. I didn’t know how to shift back. Didn’t know how to be *this*.

Darius stood slowly, like approaching a wild animal. But his eyes weren’t scared. They were reverent.

“You’re not wolf-less,” he said, reaching out. His hand, still bloody, sank into the fur at my neck. “You’re Lycan. White Lycan. The first in three hundred years.”

He dropped to both knees now, pressing his forehead to my fur. Submitting. The Lycan King, submitting to *me*.

“My curse,” he whispered, and I felt him shaking. “It’s gone. It died the second you shifted. Because you weren’t here to take from me.”

His arms went around my huge neck, holding tight. “You were here to save me.”

Something in me eased. The rage settled. The white fur receded, bones snapping back, until I was on my knees in the dirt, naked, gasping, human again.

Darius was there instantly, shrugging out of his shirt and wrapping it aroundme. It went to my thighs. It smelled like him.

He tilted my chin up. His silver eyes were blown wide, full of awe and fire and something that looked like worship.

“You’re not just my Queen, Elara.” His thumb brushed my cheek, his hand still shaking. He pressed his forehead to mine, breathing me in. “You’re my Goddess.”

A branch snapped behind us. We both turned, snarling.

Nothing. Just the forest. But the message was clear.

Kade knew now. Everyone would know soon.

His wolf-less rejected mate was a white Lycan.

And the Lycan King’s curse was broken.

Darius stood, lifting me into his arms like I weighed nothing. His cut had already stopped bleeding — Lycan healing, now that the curse wasn’t draining him.

“Hold on, little Goddess,” he murmured against my hair as he turned toward the castle. “We’re going home. And then—” his voice went dark, promising — “we’re going to war.”

Because Kade didn’t just reject a girl.

He rejected a Queen. And woke a Goddess.