MasukThe room spun. I had an aunt. An aunt who’d done something similar to what I’d done, but wrong. And now she thought I’d stolen from her. “The fragments,” I said, understanding clicking into place. “When I scattered myself, I didn’t just use my own essence. The ability to bond wolves, it’s genetic. It came from my mother’s bloodline. Morgana’s bloodline.” “Are you saying she has a claim to the bonds?” Veronica asked. “I’m saying she thinks she does. And she’s come to take them by force.” Kael’s hand found my shoulder. “Then we fight. We’ve beaten worse.” But through the bonds, I felt doubt. The bonded wolves were tired from the entity battle. Our resources were depleted. And Morgana had an army of wolves she’d been training for years. “There might be another way,” I said slowly. “If she wants the fragments, maybe I can negotiate. Trade something else for peace.” “You can’t trust her,” Maren warned. “Morgana is brilliant but cruel. She sees wolves as experiments, nothing
The victory celebration lasted three days. Bonded wolves from every territory gathered in Litha, sharing food and stories, their relief palpable. We’d destroyed the entity, saved the wolf world from annihilation. We should have been happy.I stood on the balcony of the main house, watching the festivities below, feeling hollow.“You’re not celebrating.” Damon’s voice came from behind me.“I’m tired,” I said, which was true but not the whole truth.He moved beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. “Talk to me, Lyra. What’s really wrong?”I turned to face him. In the moonlight, his features were sharp and beautiful. “When I channeled all that power, when I unmade the entity, I felt something change. The bonds aren’t just connections anymore. They’re becoming something else. Something permanent.”“Is that bad?”“I don’t know. But I can’t feel where I end and they begin anymore. Sometimes I wake up and can’t remember which memories are mine and which belong to Finn or Sera or Carrick.” I lo
The Door That Should Never Have OpenedSera’s scream tore through the chamber, sharp and raw. She collapsed to her knees, clutching her head as if something inside her skull was clawing to escape. Kael reached for her, but she pushed him away blindly, her eyes wide and unfocused.“It is here,” she whispered. “It is watching us. It knows.”The anchor pulsed in the center of the chamber, a shifting mass of shadow and living darkness. Tendrils of inky smoke curled upward like hands reaching for the ceiling. The air felt thick, weighing on our lungs with every breath. Even the ground beneath us vibrated faintly, as though something enormous was moving just under the stone.Maren steadied herself and took a step forward, her voice quiet but firm. “No one touch it. No one get close until we understand what it is doing.”Even from a distance, I could feel the entity’s attention brushing against my mind. Not fully focused on me, but aware. Curious. Testing. Like a predator circling prey it ha
We left before the sun fully rose, the sky still a dull gray curtain hanging over the horizon. The world felt quiet in that heavy way that comes right before something terrible unfolds. Our strike force was small. Myself, Kael, Damon, Elena, Garrett, Maren, and Sera. Seven wolves walking toward something that had already nearly destroyed us once. Seven wolves against an entity older than memory. The numbers were not encouraging, but numbers had never stopped us before. The journey to the Wastes would take four days on foot. We carried only what we needed, moving fast and light. Every hour we delayed gave the entity more time to strengthen its anchor. Time was the enemy as much as the entity itself. Sera took the lead, following something only she could sense through her fragment. She had been unusually quiet since volunteering. Her usual sharp confidence had dissolved into a grim stillness that worried me more than I cared to admit. On the second day, while the others walked ahead
Two weeks after Marcus's execution, the first wolf went mad.His name was Torren, a middle-aged male from the Eastern territories who'd carried one of my fragments. He'd been normal, functioning, grateful for his salvation. Then one morning, he woke screaming about voices in his head, clawing at his own skin, claiming something dark was growing inside him.By the time Maren and I reached him, he'd shifted into a form that was wrong. Not corrupted like Marcus's wolves had been, but fractured, like he couldn't decide which shape to hold. His wolf kept flickering between forms, human features bleeding into fur, claws extending and retracting randomly."Torren," I said carefully, approaching with my hands raised. "It's Lyra. Can you hear me?"His eyes, when they focused on me, were wild with terror and something else. Recognition that went too deep, like he was seeing not just me but every version of me that existed across all the bonded wolves."Too many," he gasped, his voice shifting b
The summons came at dawn, carried by neutral messengers from the High Council. Every Alpha within five territories was required to attend Marcus's trial. They wanted answers, justice, and most of all, they wanted to ensure that what had happened could never happen again.I stood in front of the mirror, barely recognizing myself. My silver hair had white streaks now, marks of the death and resurrection I'd experienced. My violet eyes held depths they hadn't before, like I could see through multiple perspectives simultaneously. Which, I supposed, I could. The thirty wolves who'd kept fragments of my essence were always there in the back of my mind, their thoughts and feelings a constant low hum."You don't have to do this," Kael said from the doorway. "You're still recovering. No one would blame you for staying behind.""I'm going," I said firmly. "Marcus tried to destroy everything. I need to see him face consequences."Damon appeared behind Kael, the two of them moving in sync these d







