Chapter Seventeen

Kimberlys Trial by Night

The forest was merciless.

Lucien hadn’t given me time to rest. My wounds from Derrick’s wolves still bled beneath hastily wrapped cloth, my ribs ached with every breath, but none of it mattered. At dawn, he had led me deep into the wilderness, far beyond the caves, far from the familiar trails I once roamed as a child.

He stopped at the edge of a ravine, the air sharp and biting, the trees looming like watchful sentinels. His shadows receded, leaving only the silence of the wild.

“This,” he said, voice calm, “is where your next lesson begins.”

I looked around warily. “There’s nothing here.”

His lips curved faintly. “Not yet.”

Before I could ask, the shadows slithered from his hands, spreading across the ground like liquid night. They sank into the earth, into the trees, into the air itself, and the forest answered. The silence broke with growls, low and guttural. Eyes glowed in the underbrush—red, unnatural, hungry.

“What did you do?” I whispered, my hand instinctively clenching.

Lucien’s smile sharpened. “I opened the door. You will fight what comes through.”

Shapes emerged from the shadows, half-beast, half-nightmare. Twisted wolves with too many teeth, serpents of smoke, things that slithered and crawled yet bore no true form. They circled me, their growls rising.

My chest tightened. “Alone?”

“Always alone,” Lucien said softly. His coal-dark eyes burned into mine. “Survive until dawn. Or be swallowed by the dark.”

And then he was gone, his form dissolving into the shadows, leaving me alone in the circle of monsters.

My wolf snarled in my chest, furious and alive. Stand, Kimberly. Fight.

The first beast lunged—a wolf of smoke with jaws that gleamed silver. I twisted aside, shadows snapping from my hand to lash across its body. It shrieked, the sound unnatural, before dissolving into ash.

Two more replaced it instantly.

I spun, shadows forming into a blade in my grip, swinging wildly. The blade tore through one, but the second clipped my shoulder, claws slicing into torn flesh. I staggered, breath ragged.

They weren’t real. Not flesh and blood. But their claws burned, their teeth tore, and each wound was agony.

Control, I reminded myself through the haze of pain. Lucien said control.

The shadows writhed eagerly at my command, but they weren’t enough. They flickered, too wild, too untamed. Each time I struck, they responded late, clumsy, as though testing me.

The beasts circled, waiting for me to stumble.

“Not again,” I hissed, pressing my hand over my wound. I thought of Derrick’s voice calling me nothing, of Mona’s smirk as she slid into the place that should have been mine. Rage burned hot, filling the cracks of fear.

I lifted my marked palm high, forcing the shadows to obey. “You are mine!”

This time, they answered.

The clearing darkened, the beasts snarling as tendrils of shadow wrapped tighter around me, not as chaos, but as armor. My wolf roared inside, silver heat merging with the black storm. For the first time, it felt right—my blood and the darkness, one.

When the next beast lunged, I didn’t dodge. I met it head-on, driving my shadow-blade through its chest. It screamed, collapsing into ash. Another leapt at my back, but the shadows flared like wings, striking it down before it touched me.

The storm grew. My strikes were faster now, sharper. The beasts fell one by one, shrieking into nothing.

Hours bled into one another. My body screamed with exhaustion, my wounds burned, but I didn’t fall. I couldn’t. I carved through nightmare after nightmare, shadows answering every command, every cry of defiance.

At last, silence fell. The clearing was littered with ash and smoke, the ground blackened where beasts had fallen. My chest heaved, every muscle trembling, but I was still standing.

The first rays of dawn slipped through the trees, pale and merciful.

Lucien stepped from the shadows, as calm and unruffled as if he had been watching the entire time. Which, I realized, he probably had.

“You survived.”

I sank to my knees, my body threatening to collapse, but pride glowed faintly through the exhaustion. “Barely.”

His eyes glinted. “Barely is enough. For now.” He crouched before me, his presence filling the clearing. “Do you feel it? The difference?”

I swallowed hard, nodding. “Yes. The shadows… they obey me.”

“For now,” Lucien corrected. “But this is only the beginning. If you want to defeat Derrick, if you want vengeance against Mona, you’ll need more than obedience. You’ll need mastery. And mastery demands sacrifice.”

His words echoed in my chest, heavy and certain. Sacrifice. The cost was already steep—blood, pain, pieces of the girl I used to be. But I had chosen this path, and I would not turn back.

“I’ll pay it,” I whispered, hoarse but steady. “Whatever it takes.”

Lucien’s smile was sharp, but there was something softer in his gaze, almost approval. “Good. Then your real trials begin now.”

The shadows curled tighter around me like a crown, and as the dawn light touched my skin, I re

alized something had changed.

I wasn’t just surviving anymore.

I was becoming.