The Rage

KAIA VELEN POV

The journey back took five days.

Five days of walking through the forest with Damien beside me, watching the landscape change from wild rogue territory to the edges of pack lands. Five days of knowing that with every step, I was getting closer to the place that had rejected me. To the people who'd voted for my exile. To the man who'd murdered my best friend and blamed me for it.

By day four, I couldn't stop shaking.

"Talk to me," Damien said as we made camp, but I couldn't. Because talking about it meant acknowledging all the guilt that had been sitting on my chest like a stone. It meant admitting that I'd spent months “months”blaming myself for something that wasn't my fault.

Lyra was dead because Rafe killed her. Not because I rejected him. Not because I was careless or cruel or reckless. Because he was a monster who murdered the people I loved and blamed me for it.

The realization should have felt like freedom.

Instead, it felt like rage.

On the morning of day five, I woke up and I couldn't breathe.

Not panic attack breathing. Rage breathing. The kind where your lungs can't expand fast enough to hold all the fury that's building inside you.

"Kaia?" Damien was already alert. Already reaching for me.

"I need to run," I said.

"Okay, we can—"

"No." I was already pulling off my clothes. "I need to RUN”

I shifted before he could stop me, and I bolted into the forest.

I didn't transform carefully. I didn't ease into wolf form. I just became all instinct and rage and silver fire, and my wolf was massive. Bigger than she'd ever been. Strong in a way that felt like she could tear mountains apart.

The forest blurred past me, and I ran like I was trying to escape something. But what I was running from was inside me. It was the months of guilt. The nights I'd spent awake thinking I was a murderer. The moment I'd watched the pack turn their backs on me like I was nothing.

It was the lie that had been fed to me and that I'd believed.

Damien caught up in his wolf form, his massive black body matching my stride. He didn't try to stop me. Just ran beside me like he understood that I needed to burn this off.

We ended up in a clearing I didn't recognize, and I stopped so abruptly that Damien nearly crashed into me.

I shifted back to human form, and I screamed.

Not words. Just sound. Pure, unadulterated rage that came from somewhere primal. The scream of someone who'd been carrying a weight that was never hers to carry, and who'd finally realized it.

"Rafe killed her," I screamed into the forest. "Rafe did that. Not me. Not my fault. *Not mine*."

I felt the Moonfire rise, and this time I didn't try to control it. I let it explode outward in a wave of silver light that burned through the clearing, that set the grass on fire, that made the trees bow from the force of it.

Damien shifted back to human form, and I thought he'd try to stop me. To calm me down. To tell me it was going to be okay.

Instead, he grabbed me.

His hands wrapped around my upper arms, and he pulled me against him, and for a moment, I thought we were going to fight. Thought the bond between us might snap from the force of everything I was feeling.

But then his forehead pressed against mine, and his voice was rough with his own rage.

"That's right," he said. "You're not guilty. You never were. Rafe did this. Rafe killed her. Rafe poisoned my father. Rafe built this hell. And we're going to destroy him for it."

"He took everything from me," I whispered.

"Then we take it back."

He kissed me like it was a promise. Like every second of his mouth on mine was a vow that we were going to make Rafe pay for what he'd done. My hands came up and gripped his shoulders, and the Moonfire danced between us without burning him.

This wasn't gentle. This wasn't love. This was war.

The kiss broke when we heard the sound.

A voice. Coming from the trees. A voice made of starlight and ancient things.

"There you are," the Moon Goddess said, stepping into the clearing like she'd been waiting for us to arrive. "I've been waiting for you to understand."

"Understand what?" Damien demanded, still holding me close.

"That guilt is a choice," the Goddess said, looking at me. "And she chose it because she believed she deserved it. But you're not guilty, little warrior. You're a weapon. And it's time to become the thing everyone feared you were."

She turned to Damien. "And you. The Alpha heir who chose love over duty. Are you ready to face what that choice costs?"

"Yes," Damien said without hesitation.

"Even if it costs you everything?"

"She's everything," he said. "So yes."

The Moon Goddess smiled, and it was terrible and beautiful.

"Then come," she said. "The darkness is gathering. And you need to understand exactly what you're walking into."

She raised her hand, and suddenly I could see things. Visions. Glimpses of the future that weren't quite solid but felt terrifyingly real.

I saw the Blackmoon compound. Saw the facility beneath it. Saw dozens of females with silver eyes chained in darkness, their Moonfire flickering weakly as Rafe drained them of their power. They were connected to him somehow—I could see threads of dark energy running from their bodies into his.

I saw Rafe standing at an altar made of bone and silver, and he was performing a ritual that I didn't understand. Something ancient. Something that tasted like wrong. The females' power was flowing into him, and his form was shifting. Growing. Becoming something that wasn't quite human and wasn't quite wolf.

I saw the full moon rising over the pack lands, and I saw Damien and Rafe facing off in the training circle with the entire pack watching. But Rafe was different now. Bigger. Darker. Made of stolen power.

And I saw myself standing beside Damien with my hands blazing silver fire, and I was no longer afraid of what I was.

The visions faded, and the Moon Goddess was gone.

Damien and I stood in the clearing with our clothes torn and our skin still glowing with residual Moonfire, and I understood something that I'd been too afraid to admit before.

"He's going to use their power," I said. "The captured females. He's draining them to make himself stronger."

"Yes," Damien said quietly.

"And when the full moon rises—"

"He'll be more powerful than any Alpha that's ever lived," Damien finished. "Which is why we have to stop him before that happens."

"We're going to lose people," I said.

"Yes," Damien agreed.

"People we care about might die."

"Probably."

"And we're going back anyway."

"We're going back anyway," he confirmed.

I looked at him, this man who'd rejected me publicly to protect the pack, and who'd burned his entire life down to be with me. This man who carried the weight of leadership and duty and the impossible knowledge that the only way to save anyone was to go to war.

"Okay," I said. "Then let's go burn the world down."

He pulled me close, and we shifted together. His massive black wolf beside my silver one, and we ran toward the Blackmoon compound like we were running toward destiny.

The rage in my chest had transformed into something else. Not anger anymore. Purpose. Clear, crystalline purpose.

Rafe had tried to break me by taking away the person I loved most. But he'd failed. Because he'd left me with nothing to lose. And a woman with nothing to lose was the most dangerous weapon he could have created.

By the time we reached the compound gates three hours later, the sun was setting. The guards at the perimeter didn't recognize us at first. Why would they? The disgraced warrior and the exiled Alpha heir were supposed to be dead.

Then Damien shifted back to human form, and his voice carried across the compound like thunder.

"I'm Damien Blackwood, rightful heir of the Blackmoon Pack. And I'm here to challenge for the Alpha title."

The guards froze.

"Word spreads fast," one of them said, already reaching for his weapon.

"Let him through," a voice called from inside the compound. Rafe's voice. Amused. Confident. "Let them both through. I've been waiting for them."

Damien looked at me, and I nodded. We shifted back to human form, and we walked through the gates together.

The compound that had rejected me was about to burn.

And I was finally ready to light the fire.