It began with a spark.
Not fire, not light. But something more ancient. A pulse of knowing that came alive beneath my skin.
After I completed the blood oath under the ash tree, I felt it something shifting inside me. My wolf had gone silent for hours, not in fear, but reverence. As if even she was uncertain how to greet what now lived inside us.
By dawn, I wasn't the same.
I didn't feel tired, despite not sleeping. I didn't feel cold, despite the chill that lingered in the air. I felt… alive. Charged. Like my skin was too small for what my soul had become.
I hid the scroll beneath the floorboards of my room. I didn't trust anyone not even Kieran with the full truth of what I'd read, or the bond I'd made.
Some things had to be held alone.
But I wasn't invisible anymore.
The moment I stepped outside that morning, I could feel the difference in the way wolves looked at me. Heads turned. Whispers followed. I could hear them now, clearer than ever. Their words brushed against my mind like fog lifting from water.
"Is that her?"
"She smells like moonfire…"
"Lucian won't tolerate this for long."
"She's dangerous."
Good.
Let them feel it.
Let them know.
I wasn't hiding anymore.
By midday, I found myself in the training ring.
I didn't come to train. Not really. But something drew me there an urge I couldn't resist. Kieran spotted me from across the yard, halting his spar with two young warriors.
He waved the others away and walked over, chest rising with breath, brow slick with sweat.
"You shouldn't be out here," he said.
"Why not?" I stepped into the circle. "Afraid I'll make the others nervous?"
"No," he said slowly. "Afraid you'll make yourself a target."
"I already am."
Kieran studied me. "You feel it, don't you?"
I didn't answer.
He didn't need me to.
"I felt it the moment you stepped onto the field," he continued. "You're giving off something… ancient. Dominant. Even the warriors backed away when they saw you."
"I didn't ask them to."
"No," he said. "But you called them to."
I looked down at my hands. They were steady. Strong. But something deeper was brewing beneath the surface like fire behind my ribs, waiting to be released.
"What's happening to me, Kieran?"
He stepped closer. "You took the oath, didn't you?"
I froze.
"Lucian told me what you found. What you did." His eyes searched mine. "You don't understand what that scroll is tied to. That blood has memory. History. Rage."
"I had no choice," I said quietly. "If I'm going to survive what's coming, I need to become who I'm meant to be."
"Not every prophecy ends with survival."
"I'm not aiming for survival," I whispered. "I'm aiming for freedom."
Kieran's mouth tightened.
"I want to help you," he said. "But Lucian's already issued the challenge."
My chest tightened. "What challenge?"
"He summoned the Elders," he said. "They're arriving tonight. He's going to accuse you of breaking the Luna accords."
"That's a death sentence."
"For anyone else, yes."
"But for me?"
Kieran hesitated. "They'll test you. They'll decide if your bond to the Moon is real… or a threat."
"And if they think I'm a threat?"
He didn't answer.
That night, the courtyard was lit by torches, fire flickering along the stone walls like whispers of war.
The Elders arrived at twilight three of them. Old, cloaked in dark robes lined with wolf fur, eyes like steel.
They didn't look at me when they passed.
But they felt me.
One paused briefly, sniffed the air, and frowned. Another muttered something in the old tongue I didn't recognize, but my wolf snarled at the sound of it.
I stood in the center of the ring while the pack gathered around, murmuring.
Lucian sat on the Alpha's stone chair, arms resting on the arms like a king watching judgment unfold.
And he didn't look away from me once.
"Let it be known," said Elder Vira, the oldest of them all, "that Aurora Quinn stands before the council accused of invoking forbidden rites. Of summoning blood-locked prophecy without sanction. And of claiming status beyond her bond."
I didn't flinch.
She turned her eyes on me. "What do you say to these charges?"
I stepped forward, voice steady. "I say your laws are older than the truth. And I was chosen long before you wrote your codes."
The crowd murmured.
Elder Vira raised an eyebrow. "Do you defy the Luna Accord?"
"I redefine it."
A flash of power surged through me as I spoke. The torches around the courtyard flared just for a moment and every wolf stiffened.
"She speaks in moonfire," whispered one of the younger Elders.
Vira stepped down from the platform and approached me. "Then we will test her."
Before I could react, she slashed her palm and pressed it against my forehead. Blood smeared across my skin, and with it, heat.
Pain.
Vision.
My knees buckled.
I gasped as my mind was flooded with images fires, shadows, wolves tearing each other apart, a crown broken into two, and my own face reflected in a pool of silver.
Then I saw Lucian.
Holding a blade.
Facing me.
Eyes torn between love and destruction.
I screamed.
The pain vanished. I collapsed onto my hands and knees, panting, the blood now burned into my skin like a sigil.
Elder Vira knelt beside me. Her face pale.
"You are marked."
"I know."
She stood. "And you are no longer Omega. You are a vessel of prophecy."
Lucian rose, fists clenched.
"This breaks the bond of hierarchy," he growled. "She cannot be allowed to walk free with that kind of power."
"She does not walk free," said Vira. "She walks watched."
Lucian stepped down. "And when she loses control?"
"Then we will decide if she burns alone…"
He moved closer to me.
"…or takes the pack with her."
I looked up at him, fury in my chest.
"I will never become what you fear," I hissed. "But I will never be yours again."
"You were never mine," he replied coldly. "You were hers. And I will not let you destroy everything I've built."
He turned and walked away, but I knew the war had begun.
Not with claws. Not with fangs.
But with fire.
Fire inside me.
And soon… outside too.