Zephira goes still.
The illusion releases its hold on Juno.
My hand opens but the knife remains in place, embedded deep into the bone and ripped flesh. I leave it there.
I turn to Juno, breath still ragged and my heart hammering, but I can’t hear it over the roar of the fighting still happening around me. Her eyes lift to mine, unfocused, and the near-feral gleam that seems to be a constant for her shines too bright under the green light of the ward. For one awful second I’m not sure if she knows who I am.
“Juno,” I murmur, directing it toward the wolf half while understanding it’s the human part that really needs me to reach her. I push the thoughts in her direction and pray they find their way to her.Juno.Are you with me? What the witch showed you wasn’t real. It was an illusion.
Her ears flatten again, her tail curling tight around her hindquarters as she sinks lower, her frame trembling as though she’s trying to escape a cold that’s settled too deep.
He left me, she sends back, the words catching and repeating. Over and over again. Whatever she saw triggering her trauma.He left me. He left me. He left me there alone.
Right here in the middle of this improvised battlefield, my heart breaks a little more for the Nightingale, and even though every shred of logic and basic situational awareness tells me this isn’t the moment, I reach for her anyway. I offer her something solid to lean against and hopefully something to tether her to this reality.
My fingertips never reach her dark fur.
A cry cuts through everything else, wounded and distressed, and my head snaps back toward the fight, a sound catching in my throat as recognition wraps its cold fingers around my neck.
Siggy.
She’s in her wolf form now, pale wheat fur stark against the tangle of bodies and magic, trapped beneath the weight of a larger alpha from Pack McNamara. He has her front leg locked in his jaw, his sharp teeth biting deep enough that fur and muscle part before the bones finally give with a deafeningcrack. It’s a sound I feel more than I hear. My instincts surge ahead of conscious thought, and a fresh wave of heat fills all the cavernous places as my wolf surges hard against my skin.
My world narrows until there’s nothing left but Siggy.
The alpha shifts his weight. He releases her damaged leg, not because he’s done with her, but because he isn’t. The way he lines himself up above her, it’s all too clear he’s set his sights on her throat next. From here, I can see the bloody saliva dripping from his gaping maw as he hovers over her pinned body.
Something structural within my being fails as I throw myself forward.
I’m closing the distance between us at a dead run when my body simply lets go. Mid-stride, it surrenders completely and allows what was always meant to be mine roll through me in one steady and relentless tide of power. Everything I’ve ever been told says the first shift hurts, that you feel every bone splinter and slide into a new alignment, every muscle tears as it reshapes, the burn of skin as it yields to fur, but none of that finds me now. It happens fast, mere seconds. There’s no pain waiting on the other side of this, no struggle or resistance, only an overwhelming sense of rightness, like something vital has finally been restored after years of being kept just beyond my reach.
It feels less like becoming something new and more like remembering who I’ve always been, two halves finally turning toward each other instead of being ripped apart.
But I don’t linger in the rightness of it. I can’t.
My wolf takes the lead and I welcome it, yielding control to her fully as she drives us forward. On four paws, I cross the distance and crush into the alpha pinning Siggy, knocking him sideways across the road. He’s bigger, built heavier, stronger in every way that matters, but he’s slower. My wolf takes the opening the moment it appears.
My teeth dig into his throat. Blood floods my mouth as I clamp down and hold, shaking him once, then again, feeling the resistance fade until the weight beneath me finally goes slack and whatever fight he has left drains out of him entirely. Only then do I release him.
I turn to Siggy, needing to see with my own eyes that she’s okay.
She’s trying to get to her feet, careful to keep weight off her front paw as she does, but her legs tremble uncontrollably. Not just from the injury but from the fear clawing back in, old memories stirred by the combination of alphas and violence. I press in close, nudging her to move with my snout. The fight is still raging around us, and with Siggy unable to run or fight back, she’s an easy target. A sitting duck.
I’m sorry, Sig, we have to move. We can’t stay out here in the open. It’s not safe.
She manages to find her balance on three shaking legs, and once she’s standing, she bumps her head against mine.She’s free. You’re a wolf. Welcome to the pack, Luna.
I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t soar hearing this.
I’m a wolf,I confirm,It doesn’t feel real?—
“Noa!”
Amara’s voice, commanding and urgent, cuts through the frenzy. But why does she also sound…scared?
I turn toward her, and what follows takes only seconds, yet somehow feels endless, because the universe is cruel enough to allow both at once. It’s always the moments you wish you could forget that time stretches thin for, making certain they harden into memories you’re forced to revisit with ruthless clarity.
Amara goes still, her attention sharpening so fast it’s unmistakable, and I follow her line of sight without prompting. A witch from Tanith’s coven stands just past the heart of all the fighting, an elementalist, her hands raised around a spear of ice that gleams under the sickening green glow of the ward. She holds it steady, clearly aiming to kill with a single strike.
