WHAT THE PRIESTESS SAW

The ceremony ended in silence that was louder than screams.

Caelan dismissed the entire gathering with a single word—a command that cracked through the pack bond like a whip across stone. Three hundred wolves filed out of the great hall without question, though their confusion rippled through the fortress like tremors before an earthquake. The priestess's milky eyes had gone wide during the bonding kiss, wide enough that Caelan saw genuine terror in them. And when she grabbed his arm—hard enough to bruise, her ancient fingers digging through layers of ceremonial fabric—she'd whispered something that made his blood crystallize in his veins.

Now Caelan sat in the priestess's private study, a chamber carved so deep into the mountain that the air itself felt ancient. Bone-bound texts lined walls of black volcanic rock. Candles burned with flames that never flickered, filled with oils that smelled of sage and something else—something that reminded him of tombs and secrets that had been kept so long they'd become part of the stone itself.

Orin stood across the obsidian table, her white eyes unseeing yet somehow more perceptive than sight. Her robes were the color of old paper, and silver wire threaded through her braided hair like captured lightning. When she moved, her cane tapped against stone with a sound like a heartbeat counting down.

"Tell me again," Caelan said quietly. "The exact words. Don't summarize. Don't interpret. Tell me what you saw in the blood."

Orin settled into her chair with a sigh that contained centuries. "It was not a mate bond, Alpha. What formed between you and the girl..." She paused, searching for language that had to bridge two different species, two different worlds. "The modern texts don't have the vocabulary for what I witnessed. But the old writings—the ones written before the Great Purge—they have a word."

"Say it."

"A blood tether," Orin whispered. "Pre-lunar. Older than wolves. Designed for a species that no longer exists. Or should no longer exist."

Caelan felt his wolf go perfectly still inside his chest. The beast had been churning since the moment he saw her in that cellar—since the instant his hand found hers in the ceremony and something ancient in his blood had whispered a single word: *mine*. The wolf had been pacing ever since, a caged animal that wanted to claim, to possess, to bind itself irrevocably to the small creature they'd just married. Now the wolf laid down. Not in submission. In certainty.

"What species?" Caelan asked, though the answer was already forming in his mind like a terrible prophecy taking shape.

"The First Kind," Orin said, and each word seemed to weigh more than stone. "Though they should all be dead. Should have been dead for three thousand years. The Great Purge was absolute, Alpha. The Moon Goddess herself oversaw it. No Skinwalker was supposed to survive—not a single one, not a single cell, not a single drop of blood."

The word hung in the study like a curse spoken in a language that predated language. *Skinwalker*. The genetic memory coded into every wolf's DNA from the moment of their creation activated at the word—a deep, primal revulsion that crawled up Caelan's spine and made his skin itch. He'd never heard the word spoken aloud in his entire life. It was a dead language describing a dead species, a threat so ancient it existed only in the stories told to pups to make them obey.

"My father hunted them," Caelan said quietly.

"Yes. He was one of the Goddess's chosen enforcers. Tasked with finding and destroying the last of them. The divine corruption from that work destroyed his mind and turned him into the monster you eventually had to kill." Orin's sightless eyes turned toward him as if she could see through the darkness. "If the girl carries Skinwalker blood, then the Moon Goddess would want her dead. Would *require* her dead, no matter how long it took to find her."

"How certain are you?" Caelan's voice was steady, but through the tether he'd just started to feel the weight of his own fear.

"Completely," Orin said. "The blood tether doesn't form for any species but the First Kind. It's a bond older than wolves, older than the pack system itself, older than the Moon Goddess's hierarchy of creation. If a tether formed—and Alpha, the spiritual pressure of that bond shook the very stones of the sanctuary—then the girl is Skinwalker. And if she's bonded to you through a blood tether, then you cannot escape her without dying. And she cannot escape you. The bond is eternal. Absolute. Irreversible."

"And the danger?" Caelan asked, though he could already feel it.

Orin was quiet for a long moment. The candles flickered once, all at the same time, as if the priestess's next words were so important that even flame would pause to hear them. "The danger is absolute. If a Skinwalker can do what the old texts say they can do—if she can shift into any form, absorb any shape, become anyone—then she's the most powerful weapon that could possibly exist in your territory. And the most hunted. And the most tempting to those who might want to use her."

"We need to know everything," Caelan said. "Everything you know about what she is. Everything from the texts. I need—"

The door to the study exploded inward.

Kira stood in the frame like a thunderstorm given wolf form, her hand already on her blade, her eyes blazing silver with controlled fury. "Orin said you needed intelligence about the girl," she said, her voice clipped and sharp as breaking ice. "I assumed it was political. A rival pack trying to cause trouble."

She stepped inside and her nostrils flared, reading the scent of the room—fear, ancient books, the ozone-like scent of divinity that clung to all the priestess's chambers. Her hand tightened on her blade. "What happened? What did you see?"

Caelan didn't answer. He stood without permission and walked past his sister without meeting her eyes. The priestess's words were still echoing through his mind—*the most powerful weapon that could exist, the most hunted, the most tempting*—and he needed to see Nyx. He needed to look at her and decide if he was about to execute his own wife or if the wolf that had claimed her in blood had the right of it.

Behind him, Kira demanded answers. The priestess's voice was soft, explaining what the ceremony had revealed. But Caelan was already moving through the fortress corridors toward the Luna's chambers, his mind racing with impossible calculations. If Nyx was Skinwalker, then the Moon Goddess was hunting her. And if the tether had bonded them—truly bonded them, blood to blood—then by accepting her as his wife, Caelan had just declared war on the Goddess herself. He wasn't sure if he'd made that choice willingly or if his wolf had made it for him. He wasn't sure if there w

as a difference anymore.