That was me. That was who I was. Not Riley Hawkins, human romance novelist from Lysmont. Not the orphan raised by a kind godmother who never spoke of her past.
Riley Mirabelle. Wolf, noble blood from Lytopia.
Everything Caelan said was right. He wasn’t the reason I shifted. His bite didn’t transform me into what I wasn’t. It just... wokeme up. Woke the wolf that had been sleeping inside me my whole life.
I wasn’t human at all.
I’d never been human.
The realization crashed over me in waves. Shock, then grief, then a strange numbness that settled over everything. My whole life had been a lie. Every assumption I’d made about myself, every belief about my identity, my heritage, my place in the world. All of it, wrong.
Cool. Great. Totally fine. Just a complete existential crisis before lunch.
I owed Caelan an apology. A massive one. I’d blamed him for days, accused him of changing me against my will, kept him at arm’s length because I was convinced he’d done this to me.
He hadn’t.
He’d just found me. And in doing so, accidentally unlocked the truth of who I really was.
Wen must have sensed my spiraling, because suddenly she was talking. Bright and fast, pulling my attention away from the journal.
“You know, you’re not the only one whose life got turned upside down by Lytopia,” Wen said, her voice light but her eyes understanding. “I’m actually the reason this whole clusterfuck started seven years ago.”
My head snapped up. “What?”
“The portals. The first one that opened between our worlds.” Wen laughed, a little self-deprecating, a little bewildered. “That was me.”
“You opened it?”
“By accident. I was young and stupid and lonely, and I found this old book in my grandmother’s things. A spell book, though I didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. There was this... soulmate spell.” She shrugged. “I thought it was nonsense. A joke. I did it on a whim, never expecting anything to actually happen.”
“And it opened a portal?”
“To Lytopia. To Ravenor, specifically. Where a certain grumpy Alpha King happened to be standing at exactly the wrong moment.” Wen grinned at Malachar, who rolled his eyes fondly. “I didn’t know I had magic in my blood. My grandparents never told me. I had no idea I was capable of pulling off a spell.”
My mind was racing. “But that was seven years ago. Portals have been opening ever since. All over the world.”
“Exactly.” Malachar stepped forward, his expression thoughtful. “Which raises an interesting question. The spell Wen cast was a soulmate spell. Singular. To find her soulmate. But what if her magic didn’t stop there?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if Wen’s magic is the reason portals keep opening? Not to find her soulmate, that’s done, but to find soulmates. Plural.” He looked between us all. “Wolves finding human mates. Humansstumbling through portals into Lytopia. The boundaries between worlds weakening in specific places, at specific times. What if it’s all connected to that original spell?”
No one said anything. I stared at Wen. Wen stared back, looking just as shocked as I felt.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“That would make sense,” Caelan said slowly. “The pattern of portal openings. The frequency of wolves finding human mates in the past seven years. It’s not random. It’s magical. Guided.”
“By my accidental soulmate spell?” Wen’s voice was faint. “I did that?”
“You might have.” Malachar’s hand found her shoulder, steadying. “Without knowing. Without meaning to. Magic has a way of growing beyond its original intent.”
“But that’s...” Wen shook her head. “That’s insane. I just wanted to find my soulmate. I didn’t mean to... to change the fabric of reality or whatever.”
“Magic doesn’t care about intent,” Caelan said. “It cares about power. And if you had enough power to open a portal between worlds, even accidentally, you had enough power to leave a permanent mark on the barrier between them.”
“Oh great.” Wen laughed, but it was hollow. “So I’m the reason wolves have been showing up in the human world for seven years. I’m the reason all this chaos has been happening.”
