Chapter 2: Clawry Already

Stacy POV

The moments from barely an hour ago kept slamming into me, over and over, like waves that refused to stop.

I still couldn't believe it. My own father, disowning me. In front of everyone who mattered.

Because of that witch and her little minion. I clenched my jaw. I mustn't care. I mustn't.

I was a lone wolf now. That much was certain. And a lone wolf needed shelter before anything else.

I collapsed beneath a tree deep in the woods and howled, not out of strength, but out of a pain too large for my body to hold quietly. My black fur, the fur I still hadn't made sense of, began to loosen its grip on me as I lay there, and strangely, it was the memory of my mother that settled me. Not fear. Not grief. Just her.

That was when his name hit me like a lifeline.

Bose.

I forced myself up and ran, faster than I thought I had left in me. If anyone would take me in, it would be him.

"Stacy?" His voice cracked with worry the second the door swung open, his eyes sweeping over me like he was checking for wounds he already suspected were there. "What in the world were you doing out there, girl, at this hour?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. He stepped aside, locking the door behind me with a click that felt like the first safe sound I'd heard all night.

"Right." His voice gentled. "Your room's upstairs. Go."

Five minutes later I came back down dressed, normal, the black wolf tucked somewhere beneath my skin again — not the silver girl he'd always known. Not entirely. Not anymore.

"What's wrong, honey?" That question broke something in me. Before I could stop myself, everything spilled out — Pearl, Giselle, my father's hands crushing my wrists, the wall, the blood, the words 'I have no other daughter' — all of it, in a flood I couldn't control.

"He doesn't believe me." My voice cracked on the last word. "He thinks I'm still — still traumatized. From Mom."

"You still are, honey." Bose's voice stayed quiet, but something underneath it had gone very still. "But I know exactly where that black fur came from."

I froze. "What do you mean?"

He sat across from me, hands folded, choosing his next words with a care that made my stomach twist. "When your mother was your age, she got so angry with me — because I wouldn't let her chase her passion. To be a warrior."

"Why didn't you want that for her?" The question came out sharper than I meant it to.

"No woman of Adrastea Moon Pack was meant to be a warrior, Stacy. We raised our girls to be gentle. Submissive to their mates. Nothing more." He met my eyes, and I watched something like guilt settle into the lines of his face. "Your mother changed that. And I nearly stopped her before she got the chance."

I leaned forward, every nerve in my body suddenly awake. "What happened?"

"Unlike you, Sophie shifted late — for the first time, in the middle of that very argument. She was so angry, so consumed, that her white fur turned black. Right in front of me. Within a single blink."

My breath caught in my throat. "Wait. Just like me."

"Just like you." His voice dropped lower. "I apologized on the spot — I knew, even then, that we needed help fast. We went straight to an old friend of mine. That was the night her warrior spirit fully woke."

"Pop-up." My voice shook. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

He didn't let the silence stretch. "Yes, honey. The warrior spirit doesn't simply disappear when someone dies. It moves — to whoever carries the same fire. And that fire is in you."

Part of me wanted to weep with relief — my mother, still with me, somehow, in my blood, in my bones. But another part of me went cold with something closer to fear. What did it mean, carrying a fire like that? What would it cost me to keep it lit?

The stories she and Dad used to tell me, years ago, before everything fell apart — those stories were the reason I'd wanted to be a warrior in the first place. But since she died, I hadn't been anything except a liar in my father's eyes and a servant in my own home — scrubbing dishes, washing clothes until my hands cracked, polishing every tile in a pack house that used to be mine.

"I had no excuse not to help her get there," Bose said, reaching over to tap my hand gently, pulling me out of the spiral I'd sunk into. "And I won't make that mistake twice."

"Please, Pop-up." Desperation cracked my voice wide open. "I need your help. I have to be like her. I have to be a warrior."

"You should have told your father, Stacy."

"I did." The word came out like a blade. "Every single year, that invitation waited on some list somewhere and never once made it to our door — and the one year it finally did, I told him again and again what it meant to me, and he ignored me every time. I was a ghost in that house to everyone except Pearl and Giselle — and they only noticed me long enough to torment me. They wouldn't even let me finish a sentence about the Academy. Pearl told him a girl had no place in war, and he believed her over his own daughter."

The tears I thought I'd finally mastered came flooding back, hot and furious.

"It's alright, dear." His jaw tightened as his eyes swept over the bruises already blooming along my wrists, and for a moment something dangerous moved behind his expression — something that looked almost like the warrior he'd once refused to let his daughter become. "After what he did to you tonight, I'm taking responsibility for you. I'm sending you to an academy. For your passion."

Something ignited in my chest — pure, blinding joy, the kind I hadn't let myself feel in years. "Really, Pop-up?"

"I won't repeat the mistake I made with your mother." His eyes were steady, resolute, and I believed him completely for the first time all night. "I'll send you to the Academy."

"An academy," I breathed.

"Not just any academy, dear." He paused, and something about the pause made the hair on my arms rise. "Shawls Academy. The very one your mother attended." A beat, longer this time, heavy enough that I felt it settle over the room like a held breath. "But there's one condition. And you need to hear it before you agree to anything."

My stomach dropped.

"What condition, Pop-up?"

His eyes didn't waver from mine. "You won't go as Stacy, daughter of the Alpha of Adrastea Moon Pack."

The room seemed to hold its breath along with me.

"Then who," I whispered, "would I go as?"