Chapter 7 - The Glam Pack Remnants

The dawn broke over terrain I didn't recognize, painting the sky in shades of amber and blood red. I'd been walking all night, following the tunnel until it spilled out onto a rocky outcropping that overlooked what had once been the Glom territories. Even now, years later, I could see the scars of destruction. Blackened earth where homes had burned. Scattered stones that might have been a village or a gathering place. The land itself seemed to mourn what had happened here.

I sat on a flat stone, my bare feet bleeding, my body exhausted beyond measure. The hunger gnawed at my stomach, and thirst clawed at my throat, but worse than the physical pain was the emotional vertigo of everything Damon had revealed. Marcus hadn't just imprisoned me for a crime I didn't commit. He'd murdered my parents to hide his own crimes. He'd built his entire rule on a foundation of blood and lies.

And Kael. My mate. My bond. Was he complicit in this? Did he know the truth about his father? Or was he as much a victim of Marcus's manipulation as I was?

A sound made me lift my head. Not the snap of a branch or the rustle of an animal moving through undergrowth. Something more deliberate. A footfall on stone.

I tensed, ready to run, but a voice stopped me cold.

"Well, hell. If it isn't the ghost from the dungeon."

I turned slowly. A woman stood maybe twenty feet away, her wolf form shifted just enough that I could see the gold in her eyes. She was tall, muscular, with dark brown hair streaked with silver. Her face was lined with age and hardship, but her eyes held a sharp intelligence that immediately put me on guard.

"Who are you?" I asked, not moving, not submitting.

"Name's Kira," she said, taking a step closer. "And before you decide whether you need to fight me or run, you should know that I was there the night Marcus's men came. I saw what they did to your pack."

My breath caught. "You were at the Glom territories?"

"I was," Kira confirmed. She came to stand beside me, looking out over the scarred landscape. "I was one of your mother's friends, actually. We'd met at a gathering years before, and we'd kept in touch quietly. Your mother was wise. She knew something was wrong with the Litha Pack structure, and she was investigating Marcus."

I felt something crack open inside my chest. "You knew her?"

"I knew her well enough to grieve when she died," Kira said quietly. "And I knew her well enough to promise her that if anything ever happened to you, I'd find you and tell you the truth."

"Damon already told me," I said, the bitterness sharp in my voice. "He told me he murdered them on Marcus's orders."

Kira turned to look at me, her expression unreadable. "Then you know the what, but do you know the why? Do you know what your mother actually discovered?"

"No," I admitted.

Kira sat down beside me on the stone, moving with a weariness that suggested she carried her own heavy burdens. "Your mother wasn't just investigating Marcus. She was investigating the original curse. The one that bound your bloodline."

"What curse?" I asked. "My blood heals. That's not a curse."

"It's not to you because you've never seen what it can really do," Kira said. "But your mother understood. The healing gift your family carries comes with a price. It reveals truth. It strips away all the false bonds and false claims that other wolves build their power on. Your mother's blood could have shown everyone that Marcus murdered his father. It could have exposed every lie he'd ever told."

I thought of Damon becoming lucid when my blood touched him. How the madness receded, how clarity took its place. "So Marcus had them killed to protect his rule."

"Yes," Kira confirmed. "But there's more. The original curse, the one that created your bloodline's gift, came from something ancient. Something that existed before the packs took their current form. Your family was born from it, bred from it. And Marcus knows that if your blood ever fully manifested its power, it could do more than just reveal truth. It could break any curse, undo any false magic, remake the very structure of pack hierarchy."

"That's insane," I said, but even as I said it, I was thinking of Damon, thinking of how my blood quieted the madness that Marcus's curse had created.

"Is it?" Kira asked. "Think about it, Lyra. You're alive because of an accident, because Kael's mate bond protected you from Marcus's executioners. You have two mates, which shouldn't be possible. Your blood heals, which shouldn't be possible for someone your age. You survived seven years in a dungeon that broke other wolves. None of this is accidental. None of this is coincidence."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, though I suspected I already knew the answer.

"Because there are wolves who remember your mother," Kira said. "Wolves who remember the Glom Pack before Marcus destroyed it. We've scattered across the territories, broken up and absorbed into other packs or living as rogues on the edges. But we've never forgotten. And we've been waiting for you to emerge."

"Waiting for what?" I demanded.

"To help us take back what was stolen," Kira said simply. "To help us expose Marcus and rebuild the old territories. To become what your mother couldn't because she died before she could fully understand her own power."

I looked at her, seeing the hope in her eyes, the expectation, the weight of years of waiting. It was too much. Everything was too much.

"I just escaped," I said, my voice shaking. "I don't even know who I am right now. You're asking me to be a leader, to take on Marcus's entire pack, to—"

"I'm not asking you to do anything," Kira interrupted gently. "I'm just telling you that you have options. That you're not as alone as you think. That there are people who believe in you already."

"Kael doesn't believe in me," I said bitterly. "He'll hunt me. They'll all hunt me."

"Some will," Kira agreed. "But not all. There are doubts spreading through the Litha Pack. Questions about why Marcus imprisoned you, why he's so eager to kill you now. Elena, the Shadowmere Alpha, has been asking uncomfortable questions. Whispers are already traveling between the packs."

"Elena?" I said, remembering the woman who'd stood silent during my release, the one who'd questioned Marcus publicly.

"She's many things, but she's not stupid," Kira said. "She knows something's wrong with Marcus's narrative. And she's willing to listen if someone provides her with evidence."

A sound in the distance made us both go still. Wolves. Multiple sets, moving fast. The hunting party.

"We need to move," Kira said, standing. "They've picked up your scent. There's a settlement about two hours east, other survivors from your pack. We can regroup there, gather supplies, plan the next move."

"What if I don't want to plan the next move?" I asked, even as I was standing, even as my body was already responding to the urgency of the situation.

"Then you'll die," Kira said bluntly. "Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. Marcus won't stop hunting you. The only way to survive is to stop him first."

We ran. Not as humans with human limitations, but as wolves, our bodies transforming as we moved, our fur bursting free. My wolf sang with the joy of running, of being unleashed after so many years of confinement. The chains, both literal and metaphorical, fell away, and for the first time since I'd emerged from the dungeon, I felt like myself.

But even as my wolf ran, my human mind was processing everything Kira had told me. The implications, the possibilities, the weight of expectation. I didn't want to be special. I didn't want to be the key to overthrowing an entire pack structure. I just wanted to survive, to understand my own power, to make sense of the fractured feelings I had for two mates who represented two different versions of my future.

The settlement emerged from the forest like something out of memory. Rough structures built from wood and stone, arranged in a way that felt both temporary and determined. The people who emerged to greet us were a mixed group, all bearing the marks of hardship, all carrying the distinctive silver hair and violet eyes that marked them as Glom Pack descendants.

A woman stepped forward, older than Kira, her face scarred and weathered. "Kira. You found her."

"I found her," Kira confirmed. "Lyra, this is Mara. She was your mother's second, her most trusted advisor."

Mara looked at me with an expression that was almost too much to bear, something that mixed grief and hope and desperate belief all into one. "Your mother would be so proud of what you've become," she said.

"She'd be horrified," I corrected, but I let her pull me into an embrace anyway, my body moving on instinct, accepting comfort I wasn't sure I deserved.

The next hours passed in a blur of information. Mara explained how they'd survived in the aftermath of the massacre, how they'd carefully cultivated ties with other packs, how they'd been gathering evidence against Marcus for years. There was a network of wolves, both within and outside the Litha Pack, who questioned Marcus's authority, who doubted his version of events.

But the evidence was circumstantial. What they needed was proof. What they needed was the truth, laid bare and irrefutable.

"Your blood," Mara said when we finally sat down in the darkness of a small tent, the sounds of the settlement settling around us. "Damon told you about it, didn't he?"

"He told me it heals, that it reveals truth," I said cautiously.

"It does more than that," Mara said. "Your mother's blood had a unique property. It could show the truth of a wolf's nature. What they were before the power of the pack changed them. It could reveal false claims and false bonds."

"Like what?" I pressed.

"Like whether a man was truly an alpha, or just a man playing at power," Mara said quietly. "Your blood could strip away all of Marcus's carefully constructed authority and show everyone what he really is. A murderer. A usurper. A fraud."

"How do you know this?" I asked.

"Because your mother showed me," Mara said, and she rolled up her sleeve. There, on her upper arm, was a mark. Not a scar or a tattoo, but something that looked like it had been burned into her skin. The shape of it was intricate and ancient, and it glowed faintly in the dim light of the tent.

"She marked me with her blood," Mara explained. "It was her way of creating a record, a witness to the truth. The mark glows when a lie is being told in my presence. When false power is wielded. It's been burning almost constantly since Marcus took control."

I stared at the mark, comprehension slowly dawning. "You want me to do the same thing."

"Eventually, yes," Mara said. "But first, we need to understand your power completely. That means testing it, learning its limits, understanding what it can and can't do."

"And what if I refuse?" I asked.

"Then you'll spend the rest of your life running," Mara said simply. "And eventually, you'll die. Kael will be forced to choose between you and his pack, and he'll choose his pack. You'll have nothing and no one."

The truth of it hit me like a physical blow. Because Mara was right. I could run forever, and it wouldn't change anything. Marcus would hunt me, Kael would eventually stop looking, and I'd become a ghost haunting the edges of the world that had once been mine.

Or I could stop running. I could stand and fight. I could use the power in my blood to expose the truth and reshape the world that had destroyed me.

It wasn't really a choice at all.

"What do we do first?" I asked.

Mara's smile was grim and satisfied. "First, we make contact with Elena. We give her the truth she's been looking for. And then, when the time is right, we bring the whole structure down."

In the distance, I could hear wolves howling. The hunt continued. But I wasn't afraid anymore. I was angry. And angry wolves, wolves with purpose and power and nothing left to lose, were the most dangerous kind.