My Father's Face

Behind her throne, in the shadows of the ice palace, something huge opened two eyes the color of blood. And smiled with my father's face.

It was not my adopted father. Beta Ward had kind eyes, brown beard, soft hands.

This face was carved from cruelty. Sharp cheekbones. Black hair streaked with white. Amber eyes that bled into red at the edges. A scar over the left lip - the same scar Jaxon's father, Alpha Magnus, had.

But it was not Magnus. Magnus was fifty, broad, human.

This thing was taller than the throne. Its shoulders brushed the ice towers. Its body was covered in fur that was white in some places, black in others, as if two wolves had been sewn together. And when it smiled, it had too many teeth.

Elara shoved me behind her with a strength that didn't match her frozen-thin arms.

"No!" she screamed, not at me, at it. "You promised! You promised you would sleep if I sealed the kingdom! You promised you would not touch her!"

The thing laughed. The entire city of light shook. Blue flowers wilted.

"Elara, my love," it said, and its voice was two voices - one was Magnus's Alpha growl, the other was something deeper, something that made Lyra whimper and hide deep inside my chest for the first time ever. "You have been asleep for twenty-one years. Promises rot."

It looked at me. Its blood eyes fixed on my mark, on my half-silver hair, on the fang necklace that had belonged to Elara.

"And you," it said to me. "My daughter. You finally woke her. I have been waiting to meet you, Stella."

Daughter.

The word hit me harder than rejection had.

_No,_ Lyra whispered, small, terrified. _No no no, Stella, do not listen. Do not accept his blood._

"My father is Beta Ward," I said out loud, my claws coming out again, half-shift taking over without permission. "My mother is Elara White."

The thing tilted its head, amused.

"Beta Ward raised you because I let him. Elara birthed you because I bred her. Do you really think a White Queen can be born from a Beta? White comes from White, little star. But power? Power comes from me."

Elara spun to me, her silver eyes wild. "Don't listen! He is the First Cursed! The wolf the Moon Goddess herself banished for trying to eat his own mate! Magnus found him chained under the Northern Mountains and made a deal - his power for a vessel! He used my body to make you!"

My knees gave out. I sat hard on the light floor.

My mother was a Queen. My father was a cursed god.

That was why I was wolfless for eighteen years. Two bloodlines that should never have mixed - pure light and pure cursed darkness - fighting inside one body. Lyra had been sleeping not because she was weak, but because she was keeping the other half from eating me alive.

"Why?" I whispered to Elara. "Why would you..."

"Because Magnus was going to kill all of us!" Elara cried, tears freezing on her cheeks. "The White Kingdom was dying! The Cursed offered me a deal - a child who could be both. A child who could end the war between light and dark wolves. I thought... I thought I could love the darkness out of you."

Behind her, the Cursed laughed again and took one step forward. The ice under his paws turned black.

"And you did love me, Elara. For one night. That was enough to make her."

He reached out a hand the size of my whole body toward me.

"Come, daughter. Let me see what we made. Let me taste if you are more mine or more hers."

Lyra ROARED inside me, not in fear, in fury. For the first time, she didn't ask permission. She ripped control from me.

I shifted.

Not half-shift. Full.

But not into the white wolf I had been at the pack hall. This wolf was bigger. Much bigger. Half my fur was still snow white, but the other half - down my left side, over my left eye - was pitch black, with red tips. My eyes were not silver. One was silver. One was blood red.

I was both.

The Cursed stopped smiling.

"Impossible," he whispered.

Elara gasped, hands over her mouth. "No - Stella, no - you were supposed to be white -"

I was standing between them, a monster of light and dark, and for the first time, I felt balanced. Not torn. The white side had always felt too pure, too heavy. The black side felt like rage, like hunger, like truth.

I looked at the Cursed, my father, and I spoke with two voices now, like he did.

"My name," I said, "is Stella White. I am not yours. I am not hers. I am mine."

And I lunged.

Not at him. Past him. At the back wall of the ice palace, where I had seen, in the reflection of the light floor, a second throne, smaller, covered in chains.

The Cursed roared and grabbed for me, but he was slow - twenty-one years chained in ice had made him slow.

I hit the chains with my black claws. They shattered. Not because I was strong, but because they recognized my blood.

The second throne was empty. But on it lay a cloak. Pure white, lined with black fur. And a letter, sealed with a paw print.

Elara's voice behind me broke.

"Your real cloak, my star. I made it for your eighteenth birthday. Before I sealed myself."

The Cursed was coming, ice cracking under his fury, the whole kingdom waking up - I could hear other thrones, other sleeping wolves, cracking open in the distance.

Elara grabbed my white-and-black muzzle.

"Take it and go! The roof will open for you! Kael will know! You must go now! He cannot leave this palace - the seal holds him - but you broke it when you woke me! He will hunt you!"

"What about you?" I whimpered, back in human voice for a second.

Elara smiled, and for the first time, she looked like my mother.

"I have been waiting twenty-one years to hold you. One minute is enough. Now run, my Queen. Run and do not look back until you are strong enough to kill your father."

She shoved the cloak and letter into my jaws and pushed me toward the light floor, which was already opening into that circle again, showing snow, showing Kael's terrified face looking down.

I jumped.

I fell up, through light, through ice, through water that wasn't water, and landed hard in the snow at Kael's feet, in full wolf form, white and black, cloak in my mouth, letter stuck to my fur with frozen blood.

The river sealed shut behind me with a sound like a coffin closing.

Kael stared at my fur - at the black half that wasn't there before - and fell back, his face white.

"Goddess preserve us," he whispered. "You are not just White. You are... you are the Eclipse."

From under the ice, deep, muffled, we both heard it. A roar so loud the snow on the trees fell off.

The Cursed was free.

And he was coming for his daughter.