TWENTY ONE

The path from the river curved between tall pines, their needles dripping in the after-rain hush. I had only taken a few steps when shadows detached from the trees ahead.

Six of them.

Beiler stepped out first, his smirk already tugging at the scar on his cheek. Fisher and Sylva flanked him, the three of them spreading out like they’d been waiting for this moment all morning. Behind them came Lindin, Nox, and Hamish, the trio of hunters who always made sure I remembered my place.

While I had successfully managed to beat some of the younger hunters like Hadrin, these three had never lost against me. I was able to claw them up pretty good, but their extra years of training kept me from ever being able to grab onto them, no matter how much I chased.

“Going somewhere, little prodigy?” Beiler’s voice carried the lazy edge of a growl.

I didn’t answer. Talking wouldn’t change anything. The only language they understood was dominance and pain.

Water ran in rivulets down my arms, soaking into the dirt beneath my bare feet. My hair clung to my neck, heavy and cold. Usually, I’d braid it before a fight, but I hadn’t expected company.

“Are we still on this?” I pushed the wet strands back, flicking them over my shoulder. They slapped against my skin with a wet snap.

Sylva’s smug grin tightened at my drawl.

I sighed, “I get that your egos are too fragile to stand the idea of losing to someone like me, but I’m not a pathetic human anymore, you know? You don’t have to take losing so hard anymore.”

Lindin cracked his knuckles. “You think a few lessons from Yaga make you better than us?”

Ah, is this what this was about? Yaga refused to train anyone unless she wanted to. Even if the alpha suggested she give a lesson to a promising apprentice, it was always her prerogative to accept.

That got their hackles up. The smirks vanished.

There was no point trying to talk them down. They wanted a fight, and running would only feed their narrative that I was still the weak one.

Six against one was suicide, but at least I’d go down swinging. And they knew it.

Fisher shifted left. Lindin mirrored him to the right. Sylva and Nox fanned out behind me, herding me toward Hamish and Beiler like I was some cornered deer.

Good. Let them think that.

My eyes flicked to the trees, searching for movement. The forest pressed close with its wet bark, dripping leaves, the heavy breath of pine. Someone else was still out there. I could feel the stare on the back of my neck.

I tried to scent the air, but the river’s spray and the sharp tang of sap blurred everything. They’d chosen their spot carefully, staying downwind so I couldn’t place them until it was too late.

A low growl hummed through my chest as I crouched, rolling my shoulders loose. My claws burst free, long and white against the dark forest floor. The familiar sting of venom burned under my tongue. My body was ready, even if my mind was screaming how stupid this was.

I drew in one last breath, steady and slow.

Three… wo…

A scream shattered the silence.

High. Raw. Terrified.

Every head snapped toward the river.

For a heartbeat, none of us moved, the sound still ringing through the trees. Then instinct took over.

I spun, hair whipping against my cheek, and bolted down the path. Mud kicked up under my heels as the others followed, their footfalls thudding close behind.

We might have hated each other’s guts, but none of us could ignore that kind of cry.

Hadrin had been the only one near the water when I left. There hadn’t been any danger then.

So what the hell had happened in the last few minutes to make someone scream like that?

The riverbank came into view through the trees.

I skidded down the muddy bank, my boots splashing through shallow water as I scanned for the big rock that marked the bend.

Empty.

“Hadrin?” My voice vanished beneath the rush of the current.

No answer.

Upstream, Nox suddenly broke into a sprint, his head snapping toward something beyond the spray. I didn’t hesitate. I tore after him, feet pounding over slick stone. The others followed close behind, the thunder of our approach blending with the roar of the falls.

We climbed fast, scrambling over wet rock and tangled roots. Water stung my eyes as we climbed the series of small waterfalls. It was on the third shelf that I finally spotted the danger.

A massive grizzly loomed at the top of the fall, its brown coat matted with water. It stood over Hadrin’s crumpled body in the shallows, the current churning red around him. Deep gashes split open his back.

He was still moving, barely, but at least he was alive. One of his arms dragged through the water as he tried to lift himself.

“Beiler!” Hamish’s shout cut through the rushing river, “We’ll distract the bear. You get Hadrin out of here. Sylva, you run ahead and tell the healers.”

No one hesitated. Orders were everything in moments like this.

Sylva bolted down the trail, her form a blur of pale hair and speed. Hamish splashed forward, water exploding around him as he charged the bear. The beast swung its head toward him, bellowing.

Then Hadrin lifted his head, blood streaming down his face. He flung out a hand in warning.“Hamish no! The cub is over there!”

The bear’s roar drowned out his warning as she loped towards us, claws gouging the riverbank. Hamish barely threw himself aside, the bear’s paw tearing through the space he’d been standing. Spray and mud exploded into the air.

“Move!” I shouted, but Beiler was already in motion, darting past the bear’s flank while it turned on Hamish. He grabbed Hadrin under the arms and heaved him up, muscles straining as the smaller hunter sagged limply against his shoulder.

“Go!” Hamish roared.

The grizzly reared up at us, swiping at Nox with a giant paw. The hunter ducked and rolled through the shallow water. “Find the cub!” he shouted at the rest of us while avoiding another heavy swipe.

Hamish and Lindin split off, eyes darting across the rocks. They twisted this way and that, searching desperately. The mother bear followed their movement, head swinging low, jaws snapping.

“Here! It’s trapped between these rocks!” Hamish called, leaping atop the boulder, his back to the water.

Upon seeing the two hunters, the baby bear cried for its mother.

The mother froze for half a breath, then roared, turning all her fury toward Hamish.

She charged, and I moved.

I lunged between them, claws slicing across her muzzle. Hot blood splashed my hand before I threw myself sideways, rolling through the icy water.

The bear whirled on me, massive head lowering, eyes black with rage. I stumbled backward, feet skidding on slick stones, water churning around my knees. She reared up, front paws lifted high, and then crashed them down.

I somersaulted backward, but the ground vanished beneath me. I tumbled over the waterfall, hitting the lower shelf hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. Rocks hammered into my back and scraped up my arms. I hit the shallow water with a crack that made my vision dance.

“Fuck,” I gasped, rolling to my side. Pain flared through my ankle when I tried to stand. I shifted my weight, favoring my good leg, and forced myself upright.

The bear’s bellow echoed from above. My pulse was still hammering, but anger burned hotter than fear now. That tumble had hurt, and my patience had just snapped.

My irritation only grew as I slowly climbed the rocks up to the shelf above. The boulders were slick, the water cold against my palms. Every pull sent pain up my leg, but I didn’t stop.

When I hauled myself over the final ledge, the fight above had turned desperate. Nox and Fisher darted in and out, attacking, retreating, doing anything they could to keep the bear focused on them. Hamish and Lindin were crouched near the crevice, straining to pull the cub free.

Fisher was barely on his feet. His arm pressed tight against his side, blood leaking through his fingers and dripping into the river. His face had gone gray, lips colorless, but somehow, he still swung his other arm, teeth bared in defiance.

The grizzly lunged at Nox.

Fisher hurled a rock. The weak, desperate throw managed to smack the stone against the grizzly’s shoulder. It turned and charged him.

“Move!” I shouted.

He didn’t.

I splashed forward, water exploding around my legs, and slammed into him just as the bear’s paw tore through the space we’d occupied. We crashed hard into the shallows, my shoulder screaming on impact. Fisher groaned, half-conscious.

The bear reared again, towering above me, jaws opening wide in a vicious roar. I roared right back, the sound ripping up from my chest raw and furious. The air between us trembled with our rage.

Three hunters against one bear, and still we could barely make it flinch. What kind of “hunter” was I if I couldn’t even handle this?

How could I be anything great if I couldn’t even handle a bear?

It lunged again—

—and something blurred through the air.

A flash flew from the riverbank and crashed into the bear. The beast toppled sideways into the river.

I blinked, frozen.

Makona.

The beta hit the ground in a crouch where the bear had stood, his eyes flashed with cold fury. He rose slowly, every inch of him radiating power, and before I could react, he had a fistful of the back of my soaked top.

“Up,” he snarled—and suddenly, I was off my feet, half-dragged, half-hauled backward through the water.

His grip was iron, dragging me toward the bank. My feet sliced open against the rocks, my body jarring with every step.

I glanced back. Lindin and Hamish had managed to free the cub and were now standing around the enraged grizzly as if they planned to take it down.

“You fucking imbeciles!” Makona’s voice boomed across the river. “What the fuck do you think you are doing? Just give the damn bear her cub and scram!”

I did my best to keep up with the beta while backpedaling.

“For the love of the moon,” Makona muttered, then suddenly released me.

Without his momentum yanking me upright, I stumbled and dropped straight into the shallows with a graceless splash.

Makona was a blur of motion as he stormed back toward the others, voice slicing through the roar of the river.

“You damn boys, what the hell did I just say? Do you think my orders are suggestions?” His shout cracked through the clearing. “Get your asses back to the cabins! If you want an ass whooping, I’ll be happy to hand one out personally! Now move!”

Snapping to attention, Nox grabbed Fisher under the arm and hauled him up, the two of them stumbling away from the fight. The bear’s focus shifted to Hamish. Lindin hovered a few paces back, torn between saving his frien and the Beta’s command.

Makona didn’t shout again. He just crouched, eyes locked on the grizzly, and picked up a smooth river stone the size of his fist. He tossed it once, twice, getting a good sense of its weight.

He wound his arm back and chucked it with all of his strength at the bear. The rock cut through the air with a sharp crack and slammed into the bear’s chest. The impact echoed like a lightning bolt, knocking the beast a half-step sideways and tearing a growl from its throat.

That was all it took.

“Move!” Makona barked.

Lindin lunged forward, grabbed Hamish by the arm, and yanked him away before the bear could recover and hightailed it.

TWENTY TWO

Makona didn’t linger to watch the others run. The instant the rock left his hand, he was already moving straight for me.

Before I could react, his shadow fell across me, and then I was airborne. He hauled me up from the water like I weighed nothing and slung me over his shoulder.

The forest blurred past, flashes of dark trunks and streaks of light filtering through the canopy. My stomach jolted with every stride, the rhythm of his run thudding through his back and into my ribs. I twisted my head just enough to watch the river vanish behind us, the bear’s roar fading into the distance until only the pounding of his boots remained.

Instead of taking the left path back to the residential area with the others, Makona took the right fork leading towards the border of pack lands.

My pulse quickened.

He didn’t stop until the sound of the river was gone entirely, replaced by the soft crush of moss and leaves underfoot. Then, finally, he set me down.

Neither of us said anything at first.

I stayed still, chest rising and falling hard. He stood across from me, unreadable, damp hair plastered against his temples, eyes sharp even in shadow.

Usually, this was where he’d turn away, where that unspoken wall between us would stay unbroken.

But this time. I couldn’t meet his eyes. The smell of pine and rain hung thick in the air, grounding and suffocating all at once.

Shame clawed up my throat. My gaze slipped anywhere else, the wet stain across his shoulder where I’d soaked his shirt, the mud splattered along his boots, the dark earth glistening beneath us.

I wanted to explain myself, but the words wouldn’t come. My jaw clenched instead. All I could think of was how pathetic we must have looked: six trained hunters, outmatched and flailing, until he’d stepped in.

And me—he hauled me off like a reckless child.

Surely that had sealed it for Makona. Proof that I was still undeserving of his attention.

I swallowed hard, fingers tightening around my arm. Every muscle in my body waited for the inevitable thud of his boots retreating down the path, leaving me behind again.

But instead came the low rumble of his voice. “I can’t smell the lycan blood in you anymore.”

My head snapped up.

Shock didn’t reach my face, I refused to give him that, but resentment flared, sharp and hot. So finally, finally, he was going to address it?

“I told you I took care of it,” I responded evenly.

Apparently, that pissed him off.

The beta took a step towards me with a raised finger. “Oppressing your beast to this extent is dangerous,” he growled, each word bitten off. “I told you to gain control, not to—”

“It was the only way!” The words tore out of me before I could stop them.

Silence hit us both. My teeth sank into my lip, the copper taste of blood grounding me, reminding me to breathe. I’d sworn not to let emotions steer me anymore, especially around him.

I drew a slow breath and forced my voice steady. “My beast and I aren’t the same, Makona. Not like the others.” I stepped closer, meeting his gaze now. “It isn’t an extension of me, it’s separate. A lycan mind trapped in a hunter’s body. It doesn’t want this life. It doesn’t want you. It wants its pack.”

My tone softened, but only slightly. “It was either the beast won control of me…or I won control of it.”

It was the truth and one the beta knew very well.

“You can’t tell me this isn’t what you wanted,” I said. “You and everyone else, you all want me tame. Manageable. Safe.” My chest tightened, anger mixing with something rawer. “If I hadn’t done this, no one would ever trust me. Who would respect a half-breed that smells like the enemy? Who’d sleep soundly knowing I could lose control and tear their throat out in the middle of the night?”

My voice faltered, but I didn’t look away. “I know what they see when they look at me.”

All of the hunters were aware of my situation, and the distrust was always present in their eyes as they looked at me.

In their eyes, my presence was no different than having an enemy in the heart of their pack. It made me wonder what my father had told them to keep them from poisoning my food or staging an accident during one of my training sessions.

They were all waiting to see where I’d peak. Whether I’d prove useful enough to justify the constant mistrust that shadowed every step I took.

Maybe they believed Masuma and Father had already broken the beast inside me, turned me into a trained hunting dog to be unleashed on my own kind. Maybe some of them simply liked the idea of a lycan, half-blood or not, killing another lycan.

Whatever their reasons, the fact remained: I was collared. I was tolerated. I was allowed to train with them because I’d been forced into a shape they could use.

“Bringing the beast to heel was never an option,” I reminded the beta. “I had to defeat it, or I’d never have been allowed off that mountain.”

I’d learned to live with that bitter ledger of truths. Masuma and my father had been ready to kill me if I failed.

“If you had to kill a lycan, you wouldn’t hesitate?”

When would it be enough? What more proof did they want? What other blood did I have to spill to prove I’d chosen hunter over lycan?

The answer lodged in my throat like ice. “You seem to forget I already killed one.” Saying it aloud pulled a cold ribbon through me, the dark hole in my soul yawning open to remind me why it was there.

“That’s not what I am asking, Zikara.”

“I am a hunter,” I returned levelly. “My loyalty is to this pack. More importantly, my loyalty is to you. You want the lycans gone from this world.”

My hand flattened against my chest, fingers splayed over the steady beat of my heart. I drew a slow breath until the world narrowed to Makona’s eyes and willed him to see I was dead serious as I said, “I will kill for you and die if it comes to that.”

The beta ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “You…I don’t understand you. Your undying loyalty should be for the pack, to your father, the alpha. Not me.”

My eyes narrowed. A spark of irritation lit in my chest. What right did he have to decide where my loyalty belonged? That was mine to give.

“I am loyal to the pack because I have to be.”

He knew they would get rid of me the second I proved disloyal, and I didn’t fool myself into believing otherwise.

I took a step closer, the air between us tense enough to hum. “But I’m loyal to you because I choose to be. Because I want to be. You earned that.”

They represented two distinct types of loyalties, each with varying strengths.

Makona seemed to understand that much. “If you had to choose between being loyal to the pack and me…”

The wind howled, filling the void of the unfinished question. It was a dangerous thing to be asking, but not nearly as dangerous as my answer.

I could have stayed silent. A nod would have been safer. But safety had never been what defined me. I lifted my chin and met his gaze head-on. “I’d choose you,” I said. “Every time. I serve this pack because they allow me to, but my loyalty to you will never waver.”

“Why?”

I was almost hurt that he asked that one word so sincerely. As if he really didn’t know or simply didn’t want to admit that he did.

“You already know the answer to that,” I whispered.

Those icy blue-grey eyes bored into me as his lips pulled into a grim line. “As of late, you can hardly say that I still deserve your level of loyalty.”

I sighed, just a quiet breath, but it was enough to tell Makona that this was wearing me out. I hated running in these circles. Why did he have to hear me confirm everything he already knew?

“I made an oath, Makona. I swore to Fate that I would stand by you no matter what storm I have to weather. Besides, I am not so weak as to turn my back on you just because you did to me.”

My fingers curled, biting into my palms. The ache had burned itself out long ago, leaving only something hollow, smooth, and cold where grief used to be.

I shrugged. “Everyone has done it, and I knew one day I would watch you walk away from me. The only difference is that I chose to believe that when you did, you’d still reach back for me. That you’d offer your hand again…and keep me by your side once more.”

His eyes sharpened, but his words cut sharper, irked that I readily admitted how pathetic I was. “You don’t care how many times I toss you away as long as in the end I take you back?”

Even if he was disgusted, I no longer hated this weakness of mine. It was the only one I allowed myself to have. “I don’t have the luxury of discarding the little loyalty I have just because it doesn’t remain constant.”

Branches creaked overhead, leaves rustling in a strong breeze. I leaned back against the rough trunk of an oak, letting its solidity bear some of my weight. The dull ache of my shoulder from the fall throbbed faintly, and my ankle twinged as I shifted my weight.

“If the problem is you discarding me when I lose my worth,” I murmured, “then I’ll just have to work harder to make myself invaluable. If I can’t do that, maybe I don’t deserve your loyalty in return.”

The words hung between us like frost that refused to melt. A crow’s call cracked the stillness, and then the silence folded back over it, heavy and familiar.

Then: “How can you have such little self-worth?”

A drop rolled from my hairline and slid down my neck. I dug my fingers deeper into the bark, splinters pricking my palms and catching under my nails. “Isn’t that just the way it is? If I’m not enough, then I’m not enough. I have no right to arrogance when I sit at the bottom of the pack.”

“You aren’t sitting at the bottom, Zikara.”

My eyes flashed up.

“You’ve never been sitting there, you have always been–” He paused, as if stopping himself was instinct. There was a notable shift as the rest slipped through on a near inaudible mutter. “You’ve always been held down so that you could never rise.”

I pressed my back harder against the rough bark of the oak, toes digging into the uneven roots, fingers clenching at the grooves in the wood. My arms tensed at my sides, legs coiled like springs. Every fiber of me wanted to take a step forward, to run to him, but I held myself in place.

“What are you talking about?”

The forest hummed around us, the drone of buzzing insects interrupted by the occasional crack of a branch under some small creature’s weight.

And then he moved.

Makona’s boots shifted through the leaf-strewn ground. Every step narrowed the distance and slowly squeezed the air from my lungs.

He stopped just short of me, and then his hand settled on my head. The pressure was firm, a certainty I had never allowed myself to rely on, and it flowed down into my shoulders, into the hollow spaces I had carried for so long. The tautness in my arms, the coiled strength in my legs, the grip of my palms on the bark all loosened without thought.

I leaned into him automatically, allowing the weight of his presence to anchor me. My eyes closed, not because I needed to hide, but because I could finally let go. For the first time, he had crossed the distance I always bridged alone.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” The vibrations of his voice rumbled through me. “He’s already succeeded. There is no point in telling you now.”

I shifted, ear pressing against the solid plane of his chest. “I don’t understand.”

His fingers brushed through the hair. “You don’t need to understand.”

No words were spoken for some time after that. My fists rested lightly on his chest, the solid thrum beneath my palms steady and grounding. The familiar scent of smoke and pine lingered around him, threading through the quiet and settling into my lungs.

I breathed it in.

This was the scent that had kept me calm through a blizzard. The scent that had lulled me into a sleep, even when I was surrounded by dangerous rogues. The scent I trusted to keep me safe.

A forest on fire––that was the beta.

That was my beta.

We stayed like that, his warmth seeping into the jagged edges of my heart. His fingers moved through my hair, slow, deliberate, untangling knots I hadn’t even noticed, and I let the rhythm pull some of the tension from my shoulders, from my spine, from the emptiness I carried inside.

When he shifted, large hands cupping my small shoulders and gently pushing me back, my eyes peeled open.

We started walking back, his stride halved to match mine. Our arms brushed occasionally, the contact fleeting but enough to remind me the world hadn’t completely slipped away.

For once, I didn’t mind silence.

Makona’s presence was enough to chase away the loneliness that always threatened to swallow me.

TWENTY THREE

My father stood shoulder to shoulder with Masuma. Yaga stood a few paces away, her arms crossed and her usual scowl marring her face. Makona wasn’t far from her, his penetrating gaze scrutinizing my every move as I faced the rouges.

They’d hauled four savage creatures up from the basement cages for this stage of my training.

Whatever came next would mark a monumental shift in my training. What was waiting for me after, I didn’t yet know, but I didn’t need to worry about that now. All I needed to focus on was killing these pitiful monsters in a timely fashion.

The secret of the rogues locked in the cabin basement went hand in hand with the secret of this fighting pit.

Sitting just outside pack boundaries—where no one traveled without permission—the pit stayed hidden. It yawned eight feet deep and twenty feet across, open to the sky so spectators like my father and Makona could watch everything. The floor was packed earth, which meant footing changed with the weather: mud demanded different moves than dry dirt.

Fortunately, it hadn’t rained, but the easy terrain helped the rogues as much as it helped me.

Strangely, I didn’t feel nervous about being boxed in with four bloodthirsty beasts.

I would kill them all. Everyone watching knew that, and that knowledge made the real objective clear. This wasn’t about survival, it was a demonstration of my skill mastery. This was an opportunity for my teachers to see where I stood compared to other hunters.

Each attack and defensive maneuver I demonstrated had to be flawless.

That’s what it meant to be a hunter. There was no such thing as a lucky hit or dodge. Every movement was intentional, and every wound I took or escaped was a result of my own design.

My mind was empty, and so was my heart. I felt no remorse or empathy for the werewolves that had gone Wild. They were murderers, no matter their pain, and their deaths would serve to boost me higher.

When my display ended and four rogues lay dead at my feet, blood seeping into the earth, I planted myself in the center of the pit and waited for judgment.

Yaga preened, a satisfied, almost proud curl at the corner of her mouth. Whatever she whispered to Masuma made him glance at me with thinly veiled doubt before he grunted, dismissed me, and muttered something to my father.

Makona said nothing beyond the few clipped words my father prompted.

At last, they reached a decision. My father climbed to the lip of the pit and jumped down.

He stepped over one corpse and kicked another’s paw aside as he strode toward me.

I was on my guard, knowing full well my father had not come to talk to me.

Still, even though I was expecting what was to come, I was hardly prepared for it. His brown eyes swallowed me, and then he struck, raining short, fierce attacks on me.

I had no choice but to go on the defensive, unable to find an opening.

The alpha mercilessly destroyed me in a matter of minutes, showing me just how big the gap was between us.

I might carry his blood, his eyes, his light-brown skin, his thick black hair, but that was where our likeness ended.

Every strike targeted the weaknesses he’d watched me reveal against the rogues. His claws tore my flesh, and his venom flared through me, a white-hot agony that froze my limbs for long seconds. It was far stronger than the poisons I’d trained against, the kind that taught me to fight while numb. This felt like proof in living color: I was behind him by more than skill.

He had me on my knees inside three minutes, one hand crushed around a fractured arm, my breath ragged and my head bowed.

“You are still weak.” My father’s voice lacked emotion, which to me was worse than Masuma’s loathing insults and Yaga’s mocking taunts.

“Yes,” I replied. I was weak, physically and mentally.

“You killed them as painlessly as you could. That’s a weakness I will not tolerate. We do not show mercy, especially to our enemies.”

Again, there was nothing I could say to refute him. “Yes.”

“I will fix that. Starting tomorrow, we’ll correct every mistake you made today. You’ll also receive the pain you spared those rogues from. Kindness, no matter how small, is never rewarded. It is only ever exploited. Since Masuma and Yaga have failed to teach you that, the task now falls to me.”

I bit down on my trembling lip until the metallic tang of blood hit my tongue. I had hoped, foolishly, to be reassigned to Makona’s guidance. Never, not even in my nightmares, had I imagined my father would take that place.

It was something my younger self used to wish for. Now, I could only curse her naïveté.

I didn’t move until he’d climbed out of the pit and walked away, Masuma following at his heels.

Yaga lingered long enough to throw me a grin over her shoulder. “Nice work today, fire ant. I look forward to seeing your progress under the Alpha.”

There was a sadistic glint in her eye that suggested malicious intent beneath her encouragement. She knew that my father would beat every weakness out of me, even if he risked killing me in the process. My pain would only be the pack’s gain, and for those like Yaga, they could only lick their lips in anticipation of the weapon Tarak Farrayn could turn his half-breed daughter into.

I didn’t realize Makona had dropped into the pit until his fingers brushed my neck, gathering my sweat-damp hair and twisting it into a loose knot at the top of my head.

“You should start braiding your hair.”

I snorted, “I’m not old enough.”

He wasn’t talking about childish plaits. He meant the warrior braids, the small, tight ones that wove through loose hair, marking adulthood and belonging. Most females started wearing them after completing their apprenticeships and official initiation into the pack.

“You’ll be eighteen come winter.”

I shook my head until the loose knot of hair uncoiled. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still an apprentice.”

The beta gathered up my dark locks again and began to mess around with the strands. “If you wait until you’re a fully fledged hunter to braid, you’ll have several more decades of waiting.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking.” His voice dropped. “Your father won’t stop until he sculpts you into the weapon he wants.”

I grunted as he tugged roughly on my hair. “That won’t take him much longer.”

A stretch of silence passed between us. Then, the beta mumbled, “I hope it never happens.”

“Why?” I frowned at the dirt. That’s what everyone wanted from me. It’s what was expected of every hunter.

“Weapons don’t need a mind of their own.”

Oh. Right. I wasn’t just another hunter. I was a half-breed, and for some reason, that made everyone believe I would flip sides the moment I met a lycan. Still, Makona didn’t have to worry about my mind breaking entirely. Going to that extreme would put me at risk of going Wild and losing me as a weapon entirely. Better a flawed weapon than none at all.

I didn’t believe the Alpha would ever risk such a gamble. “It’ll be fine as long as he knows our goals are the same.”

“No.” Makona’s reply came sharp and certain. “Maybe that’s true for others, but not for you.”

He draped his handiwork over my shoulder—a perfect fishtail braid, clean and tight.

I ran my fingers down the weave of my black hair before twisting to look at him. “My lycan blood doesn’t hold the power over me everyone thinks it does. Do I really seem that fickle? That I’d switch sides just because of what runs through my veins?”

“There are things you don’t know,” he said. “There’s an entire world that half of you belongs to.”

I clenched my jaw, frustration flaring. No matter how many times I said it, this hunter refused to hear me. “I belong nowhere but here. With you.” I punched the last two words through gritted teeth.

“Zikara.” There was a harsh bite in his reprimand. “This isn’t something you can deny. You are half lycan. You didn’t choose it, but you can’t escape it either.”

He made a fist and held it up. “This is the world you know, the one you’ve grown comfortable in. You understand its laws, its hierarchy, and your place in it. But at the same time, there is a parallel world,” he held up his other fist, pointing his knuckles inwards at each other. “A part of you belongs to this world.”

He met my eyes, “During all this time, you have managed to keep these two worlds from colliding. But one day…” He brought his knuckles together, “You will find these two worlds crashing together. If you aren’t prepared, you will be destroyed in the explosion.”

Silence swallowed his words.

Two worlds. The world belonging to the hunters and the world that belonged to the lycans never had and never could coexist peacefully.

Makona was right. Sooner or later, they’d crash together. But I had no intention of standing still and letting the blast consume me.

The beta’s face was stricken, and it made me hesitate. His eyes had gone distant, fixed on some old memory only he could see. His stubbled jaw tightened, and his lips pressed into a grim line. Whoever haunted him was someone he feared or respected enough to tread carefully around. He was hiding something from me. Something big.

I tried to offer him comfort, though unease gnawed at me. Whatever or whoever could put Makona on edge had to be formidable. I could only hope I’d never cross paths with such a threat. “Whatever waits for me in that other world,” I said quietly, “it’s not worth my life. If I falter even once, my father will turn on me. He’ll call me a traitor, and he’ll come for my head.”

My life wasn’t worth anything the lycans had to offer. Even if I believed they could protect me—which I didn’t—they were too few now, too fractured. They would fall before my father’s pack ever would. “I’m not foolish enough to think I could find acceptance among them,” I added. “I killed one of their own. That’s a sin they’ll never forgive.”

“Zikara–”

“You don’t have to worry.”

His concern meant more than I could say, even if the danger he warned me of was, to me, inevitable.

I patted his cheek gently and stepped back. Before my hand could drop, he caught it. His eyes locked on mine, brimming with words he didn’t speak. Truths he carried but couldn’t share. I saw it all there: the weight of his silence, the secrets he kept for my sake or his own

“When,” the beta licked his lips and diverted his gaze, looking out across the pit at the dead rogues. “When he forces you to break,” his eyes flicked back down to meet mine, “promise me that you won’t.”

I blinked up at him, forcing a smile. “Can you really break something that is already broken?”

“Yes, Zikara,” the beta said solemnly. “Yes.”

With a heavy sigh, I tipped my head back and looked up at the sky and the sun that was beginning its descent. “Walk me home?” I asked.

It would likely be the last time for a long while that I’d walk beside him freely. Makona was right, my father would leave no part of me unshaped by his hand. Every hour, every breath, would be bent toward his design. Freedom, even in the smallest sense, would be gone.

TWENTY FOUR

When it came time for me to sleep, I couldn’t. I lay in the dark, staring at the low ceiling, listening to the wind thread through the cracks in the walls. The night was thick, heavy with the kind of silence that pressed down on my chest. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my father’s cruel eyes and heard the sound of claws slicing air.

I tried to breathe evenly, tried to tell myself I was safe here, in the tiny cabin that smelled faintly of pine and smoke. But my mind wouldn’t stop circling the same dread: what tomorrow would bring. What he would bring.

The Alpha’s training.

Even thinking the words made my throat tighten. I could already feel the bruises he hadn’t given me yet. His venom burned phantom-hot under my skin, memory and fear weaving together until I couldn’t tell them apart.

Running crossed my mind. For the briefest moment, I imagined slipping out into the forest, the night air cold and clean against my face, the world wide open. But I knew better. Running wasn’t escape. It was suicide.

If I wasn’t under this pack’s control, I wasn’t a hunter. And if I wasn’t a hunter, then I was nothing but a foul-blooded lycan.

And the pack didn’t forgive that kind of blood.

They’d chase me through the woods, through the rivers and the mountains, until there was nowhere left to hide. I’d die in the most horrible of ways—ripped apart like a hare by hounds that wore the faces of my kin.

No, running was not an option. Not for me. Not after the oath I’d sworn to Fate, and to Makona.

The thought of the beta’s face, his solemn eyes, his rough voice warning me not to break, was the last thing I remembered before exhaustion finally dragged me under.

And into the nightmare.

---

I was back in the cabinet.

Only this time, the door wasn’t cracked open. There was no light slipping through the wood, no muffled voices, no glimpse of my mother’s trembling hands reaching for me.

Only darkness.

It was the kind of darkness that felt alive, the kind that hummed just below the surface of the skin. My breath came out sharp, too loud in the tiny space. The air was old, stale, suffocating. I could smell dust and the faint, sour tang of something long dead.

I pressed my palms against the wood, pushing. Nothing moved. The walls were closer than I remembered. I could barely raise my elbows without hitting something solid.

Panic flickered in my chest.

I kicked and punched, but the cabinet didn’t so much as creak. Crawling forward, I groped along the walls, trying to find the hinges, the edge, anything that might give me an escape. My fingers met only smooth, seamless wood.

The hinges were gone.

The door was gone.

There was no way out.

A shiver crawled up my spine. “Hello?” My voice sounded small, childlike. “Anybody out there?”

No answer.

I pounded my fists against the walls until my knuckles throbbed. “Help me! Get me out of here!”

Silence pressed back, thick and final.

Then something wet hit my scalp.

I froze, tilting my head up. Another droplet landed on my cheek. Then another, sliding down the side of my neck. The drops quickened, turning into a light drizzle that pattered softly in the dark.

I reached up, brushing at my skin. Whatever it was, it was thicker than water. Sticky. I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together and lifted them to my nose.

The smell hit me instantly. Metallic. Sharp.

Blood.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no—”

But it was already too late. The drizzle turned into a steady downpour. Warm blood streamed from above, pooling around my feet. It licked at my ankles, rising quickly.

I shoved at the walls, desperate now. My palms slipped against the slick surface. The box didn’t move. The air filled with the thick, suffocating scent of iron.

By the time the blood reached my knees, I was screaming.

It didn’t help. The sound was swallowed whole by the dark.

I kicked and clawed, my breath coming in gasps. The liquid rose higher, up my thighs, over my waist. It soaked my clothes, seeped into my skin, heavy and hot. I slammed my fists into the ceiling. Once, twice, again, again, again, until my hands stung and slick warmth ran between my fingers. My own blood mixing with what poured from above.

It was already up to my shoulders.

“Please!” I screamed. “Somebody!”

My voice broke. My throat burned raw, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe. The blood pressed in on me from every side, clawing into my ears, my mouth, my nose. I gasped, and the world turned red.

The taste of iron filled me. The smell choked me. The heat burned against my skin like liquid fire.

I tried to scream again, but swallowed blood instead. It slid down my throat, thick and warm, filling me from the inside. My chest seized. My lungs convulsed. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing or drowning or both.

And then nothing.

No sound. No feeling.

The pain stopped.

The weight of the blood pressed all around me, but it didn’t crush me anymore. It simply held me, inside and out, like I was part of it.

And in that silence, I realized something terrible.

I wasn’t dying.

I couldn’t die.

The blood wasn’t killing me, it was keeping me. Binding me.

The walls were gone now. There was no cabinet, no space, no air. Only the endless red around me, stretching out in every direction. I floated, suspended, in an ocean of blood.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear.

I was trapped in the gaping void of my own soul. Trapped in the endless, suffocating nothingness.

And deep inside that void, I felt it.

My beast.

The thing I’d locked away years ago.

It wasn’t snarling or clawing to get out. It just watched. A silent, distant presence, buried somewhere beneath me. I could feel its pulse faintly, like the echo of a heartbeat far below.

This was where I’d put it.

This was what I’d done to it.

I had caged it in this emptiness, this ocean of blood. Stripped it of air, of sound, of freedom. Left it to rot in silence.

And now, I was here with it.

A punishment, or a reminder. I couldn’t tell which.

I wanted to scream, but no sound came. I wanted to cry, but even my tears were swallowed by the void. The blood wasn’t just around me; it was me. I had become part of it, my essence bleeding into its depths.

An eternity passed—seconds, minutes, hours—I didn’t know. Time didn’t exist here. Only the endless weight of the blood pressing closer and closer until I thought it might fold me in half.

Somewhere far away, a voice whispered my name.

“Zikara.”

It was faint, warped, like sound moving through water. I tried to reach for it, but my body wouldn’t obey. My arms felt heavy, my fingers unresponsive. My chest ached with the effort.

“Zikara.”

---

I woke gently. Not with a start, not screaming the way I usually did after a nightmare. My eyes opened slowly, heavy-lidded, to the faint silver wash of moonlight spilling through the window. The logs that made up the roof were rough and familiar.

For a long time, I didn’t move.

Then I turned onto my side and pulled my knees to my chest, curling into myself. The fur blanket brushed my skin. I breathed in the scent of woodsmoke and dirt and pine resin. The wind whispered faintly through the cracks.

Small things. Real things.

Proof that I was here. Alive.

Not drowning. Not buried in blood.

It wasn’t me trapped in that dark ocean anymore. It was my beast.

Tears welled in my eyes before I could stop them. They slid hot and quiet down my cheeks, dripping onto the fur. I didn’t swallow the sound this time.

I let the tiny, broken sounds escape—the whimpers, the soft hiccups. They felt strange, raw, but honest.

Maybe the sound would reach the creature buried in that endless sea inside me. Maybe it would hear me, and know it wasn’t forgotten.

It was all I could offer it.

Because I couldn’t free it.

I was too afraid. Too selfish. Too bound by the pack and my father and my own fear of what it might become if I let it out.

The guilt of what I’d done to it—the pain, the loneliness, the silence—I could live with that.

But the truth? The truth was unbearable.

Because if I admitted that the beast was me, then I’d have to admit that I had done this to myself.

That I had chosen this prison.

That I had caged my own soul and called it control.

That I was the one killing myself, piece by piece, for a pack that had no love for me, for a father who saw me only as a blade to sharpen.

That I had no love left for myself.

No. It was easier to turn numb. To silence every emotion before it could turn into a scream. To feel nothing, want nothing, need nothing.

Because if I let myself feel, I’d have to face what I’d done.

I’d have to admit that I needed saving.

And there was no one in this world who would save something as monstrous as me.

So I lay there in the dark, listening to the wind, eyes open, tears drying on my face, waiting for the first light of dawn to creep through the cracks in the wall.

Tomorrow, I would rise. I would stand in front of my father again.

And the slow killing would continue.

TWENTY FIVE

Rain poured down around me, the wind blowing it in heavy sheets that pelted my body. The rain had not let up for several days, turning the earth into a massive mud pit. The muck was splattered all over my legs, the water turning into brown streaks as it ran down my skin.

My bare feet splashed into the puddles of wet earth, squelching as they sank down into the mud. My moccasins had been abandoned some ways back, where they had been swallowed up by the deep muck. It had been too much of a hassle to try and keep them on my feet with every step I took.

I ran an arm across my face, trying to clear the water streaming down my soaked hair and into my eyes. The stringy strands of my dark hair were caked with so much grime and blood that even the heavy downpour was struggling to wash my hair.

Behind me, my outstretched arm twisted as my prey thrashed around to escape my hold. I only tightened my grip on the coarse rope acting as a leash to dragged the female along.

She pulled at the noose I had looped around her neck and insisted on thrashing around, kicking her legs and twisting every which way in hopes to dislodge the rope from my hand.

I gave a harsh jerk. A strangled whine was followed by a few seconds of hacking.

At least she stopped struggling so much.

Tossing a look over my shoulder, I saw the small boy was having a hard time keeping up. Between his ceaseless crying and the strong wind, he was stumbling this way and that, losing his footing in the mud that swallowed up half of his calf. He was soaked from head to toe in mud, having fallen countless times into the puddles that had flooded all of the trails.

“Hurry up, boy,” I hissed, raising my voice enough that it would reach him through the thunderous downpour.

My sudden shout startled him. His foot got caught in the deep muck, and he failed to pull it free, face-planting into a puddle.

I gave him a second to get to his feet. His arms quivered in exhaustion and fear as he managed to push himself up. He hardly managed a step before falling back to his knees.

With an annoyed growl, I turned on my heel and stomped over to him, dragging the female with me. I snatched up the child’s arm and yanked him to his feet. “If you can’t even do something as simple as walking, I have another rope for you.”

“You sadistic bitch! What is wrong with you?” His mother screamed at me, her words choked and hoarse from the rope synched tight against her windpipe. “He’s just a child! A child!”

I ignored the female and raised a brow at the child trembling before me.

“I-I’ll walk.” He managed to stutter out.

“Then keep up.”

We still had a little way to go, but soon enough, I could be done with this and finally get out of this damn rain. Maybe have a nice meal too. It had been a few days since I had been able to eat anything that hadn’t been cold or cured.

Just as I’d expected, the Alpha was waiting for me in front of the great firepit, the same one used for every pack gathering and ceremony. It sat in the heart of the pack lands, atop a low man-made hill designed to draw every eye toward it.

He wasn’t alone. Vern and Masuma stood beside him, their faces carved with the same grim composure that the occasion demanded. They must have been alerted of my return, seeing the preparations were already complete. A wooden T-frame had been planted at the crest of the hill, just beyond the pit, its purpose plain to anyone who passed by.

At the foot of the slope, I released the lead and gripped the female by the noose, dragging her up toward the waiting figures. The ground was slick from the morning dew, the turf tearing under my boots as I climbed. The boy stumbled beside us, scrambling on hands and knees, trying to keep pace with his mother before I reached back and hauled him upright.

My father’s cold eyes betrayed nothing as I tossed the female I had spent the last four days tracking down at his feet.

The female wheezed, hunching over on her hands and knees before the alpha. She coughed violently, alarming the small child.

“Mother!” the boy tried to dart around from behind me to her side, but I caught his arm and shoved him at my father. The boy tripped over his feet, nearly crashing into Tarak Farrayn.

The alpha caught his jaw and yanked his head to the side to see the three claw marks down his cheek that were still open and bleeding.

His gaze slid from the boy over to me, demanding an answer for the wounds.

“He bit me,” I shrugged. “I guess I forgot to retract my claws when I slapped him.” There was no hint of remorse in my voice. Sentiments like that had long been beaten out of me by the very male standing imposingly before me.

The Alpha hummed, then released the boy’s face with a push of his thumb. “Masuma,” he said, his tone curt, directing the male at his left side.

The hunter stepped forward, his large hands enveloping the boy’s slim shoulders. The child whimpered, trembling in Masuma’s grip as he pleaded for his mother. When the high-pitched whining persisted, Masuma slammed a hand over the boy’s mouth and snarled, a clear warning to shut up.

With a flick of his fingers, the alpha ordered me to present my prey. “It took you longer than I expected to return with them,” he said.

Fisting the female’s ratted hair, I yanked her head back and removed the noose I’d used as a leash and collar. “The rain made it hard to follow their trail.”

“How far did she get?” The Alpha stepped closer, lifting his chin to signal me forward.

I shoved the female down onto her hands and knees with a swift kick between her shoulder blades. My father’s boot came down on the side of her head, pressing her cheek into the mud.

She sputtered, mud clogging her mouth, water filling her nostrils, but the one eye not forced into the ground glared defiantly at both of us.

“Kipling Ridge,” I answered calmly. “Though she didn’t make it to the top before I caught her.”

“Hmmm,” my father cocked his head at the female prostrated in the mud before him. “And what,” he asked, “did you plan to do after you crossed the ridge?”

He pressed his boot harder against her cheek. “Were you hoping one of those alphas would offer you asylum? Or that you could fade into the Forest Kingdom and be forgotten? You do know the Forest Kingdom turns over every hunter they find, don’t you? So, what, exactly, was going through your dense head when you came up with this foolish plan of yours?”

“He’s my son!” the woman cried. “I couldn’t just leave him.”

“This is where he belongs,” the alpha hissed, drawing his foot away.

I pulled the woman to her knees and forced her head back.

The alpha crouched before her and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’ve already been judged. You failed to meet the expectations that are required in order to be a member of this pack. Just like all of the other weak failures, you were exiled. This pack has nothing to do with you. You are owed nothing.”

“He’s mine!” The female protested. “Alpha, please, you have so many children already. I have nothing! Please just let us go.”

The scene might have evoked some sense of compassion from a normal alpha, but Tarak Farrayn was far from ordinary. The sobbing mother pleading for her right to keep her child did nothing but disgust the male that might as well have been watching a slug wriggling in the mud at his feet.

“Hunters belong to me and this pack.” The alpha stood from his crouch and kicked at the female’s outstretched hands. She screamed and pleaded with him, knowing what was to come.

“Deal with the thief accordingly,” he commanded me, and then to Masuma, “Make sure the boy watches until the end.”

I grabbed the screaming woman before she could leap at the alpha. My claws cut open her throat. I held her steady, forcing her face up toward her son so he would not miss a single moment. He watched, eyes wide and uncomprehending, as her strength left her. Her struggles grew ragged and then stopped. She slumped, limp, the fight draining from her.

The alpha left as soon as it was done. Masuma followed, dragging the boy with him. Vern and I stayed behind to finish what remained.

We dragged the woman’s body to the wooden post and set her on her knees before it. Vern tied her wrists high, crossing them above her head while I secured the knots tight enough to hold against the weight of rain and time.

The water pooled beneath her, darkening to red before running down the slope in thin, branching streams. By morning, it would stain the whole hillside. She’d remain here for three days, long enough for everyone to see what happened to those who thought they could leave.

“Hamish and Nox have enjoyed your few days away,” Vern said lightly, pulling the rope taut before stepping back.

“A bunch of babies,” I muttered, splashing through the mud. “If they spent half as much time training as they do whining every time I beat their asses, they might actually improve.”

The hunter kept pace with me, striding down the hill with me, continuing a conversation I had no desire to participate in.

“Your venom isn’t something to dismiss, fire ant,” Vern said as we started down the hill together. “It’s far stronger than most. You’ve felt the difference yourself between the alpha’s and Masuma’s, even mine. Two years under Tarak’s training have set you apart from the others faster than anyone expected.”

Smoothing my wet strands back from my face, I squinted through the sheets of rain to try and identify which of the washed-out trails would lead back to my cabin. A towel and a nice warm blanket sounded so good. Way better than this pointless chatter anyway. But Vern was senior to me, and ignoring him wasn’t an option.

“And yet,” I said, “instead of sending Lindin or Hamish on this ridiculous chase, he sent me. Seems like a waste of my time.”

Vern stepped neatly around a puddle as I trudged straight through it, forcing him toward the narrow shoulder of the path. He didn’t even glance down; his steps were sure, instinctive.

“It wasn’t a waste,” he replied. “You brought back a stolen hunter child. That matters more than you think. Hunters are the pack’s core. Losing even one is a loss we can’t afford. It might’ve felt like a simple errand, but it wasn’t.”

Once, I might’ve rolled my eyes. Two years under the alpha’s direct training had cured me of that reflex. The last time I had, I spent three days unable to see through swollen lids. That lesson stuck.

Our deerskin boots slapped wetly against the earth as the rain eased, the sound swallowed only by the gusting wind that sent heavy sheets sweeping over us.

“That boy would have come back eventually,” I said. “Everyone knows the pull between us and the pack can’t be resisted.”

“Eventually, yes,” Vern agreed. “But time changes things. If he’d been gone for years, he’d have been too old to train properly. It takes twice the effort to unteach what the outside world fills their heads with. Their loyalties split, their ideals twist, and by the time they return, they’re already half-broken. Trying to turn scraps into something useful is harder than shaping a weapon from raw steel.”

The first of the cabins came into view through the misting rain. Relief nearly made me sigh, but I caught myself in time. Sighing was another habit beaten out of me. My father had once said if I had breath to waste, he’d test how long I could go without it.

A shiver ran up my spine, only it wasn’t from the chill of the rain. That cold had long since soaked into my bones. “It’s endearing how hunters always refer to each other as objects that need fixing and maintenance.”

Vern escorted me all the way to my door, thankfully not stepping inside when I opened it, and hesitated halfway in.

Catching my subtle hint that I wasn’t interested in further conversation, he left me with one of the pack’s golden tenets: “We are all just resources, fire ant, to keep this pack above all others.”

I watched him disappear into the rain, likely heading toward his own cabin. Only the children seemed to enjoy this storm. They squealed and laughed, splashing in puddles and throwing mud at each other.

Instead of retreating inside, I stepped back into the rain and closed the door behind me. I stood there, letting the cold sheets soak through my clothing, tilting my face upward toward the dark gray clouds.

Thunder rolled overhead, but I paid it no mind, scrubbing at myself with the rain. I tried to wash away the blood and mud clinging to my hair, arms, and legs. When I deemed myself clean enough to tolerate lying in bed, I finally entered the first dry space I’d encountered in days.

Part of me wanted to collapse right there at the doorway, but I forced my heavy feet to carry me upstairs. I peeled off the soaking deerskin top and skirt, hastily drying myself before slipping into a fitted shaft of dyed animal hide.

Nearing my bed, I pulled back the blankets only to freeze at the sound of the door opening. Poking my head out, I saw my father entering, the massive frame of his beta right behind him.

Then came Yaga, followed by a few other powerful female werewolves.

I frowned, unease coiling in my stomach. What could possibly bring them here at this hour? My brows furrowed further when, just a minute later, the door opened again to admit Masuma, Zartan, Vern, and a slew of other hunters filing in behind them.

“What in the name of the moon is going on here?” I muttered under my breath, inching further out of my room, careful not to step into the gathering without an invitation.

Once they all seemed to have settled, my father’s back turned, and his brown eyes pierced right through me.

TWENTY SIX

It took effort not to flinch away from that domineering gaze.

“Zikara,” he called for me. I was just one word, but it was all the permission I needed. I stepped into the crowded room, far too small for the number of warriors packed inside.

I skirted along the edges, uneasy. Finding a place among the greatest fighters of the pack was no easy task. I settled in the corner near the door, where no one dared stand in case it swung open again.

A few eyes lingered on me, curious or calculating, but most of the hunters dismissed me as I melted into the shadows.

“Here, kid.” Makona’s low timbre rumbled across the room, snapping my attention to him.

He tossed a small purse, the bag sailing over the heads of the gathered hunters before landing neatly in my outstretched hands.

My father shot his beta a sharp look of disapproval, but Makona ignored it, his focus entirely on me. I opened the drawstrings, and the smell of freshly baked bread nearly made me moan in relief. Without hesitation, I grabbed a bun and sank my teeth into it.

When I looked up, Makona’s gaze had already shifted away, but the corner of his lips betrayed him. A small, fleeting smile lingered for the briefest second before disappearing.

I smiled to myself as I tore off another chunk of bread, grateful for the way the warm food melted in my mouth. Honestly, even a chunk of freshly cooked meat couldn’t compare to the three buns now in my hands.

Makona and I had adapted the way we interacted ever since I’d begun under my father’s tutelage. It had been two long years of small things like this. I’d leave him a pair of gloves or maybe a coat if I managed to find the time, and I would find small carved beads to add to my hair or a jar of honey.

That was how we kept ourselves steady.

Even as my father forced me to harden, Makona and I found ways to preserve the bond between us. He would flash me a sneer, and I would stick out my tongue when my father wasn’t looking.

The beta always managed to be there for me in the moments I needed him the most. During those times my father nearly broke me, Makona made sure he was there to stop it from happening.

He could sense every shift in me and somehow managed to be the one in place of Yaga or Vern to take over my training when my father had to attend to his other duties as alpha. He never went easy on me, but some of his touches were meant to offer a silent comfort: squeezing my hand as he helped me up, ruffling my hair, lingering a reassuring touch on my shoulder. His eyes always spoke what words could not.

Still, Makona couldn’t stop everything. There were days he wasn’t there to pull me from the dark hole my father forced me into. I did my best to remain unchanged for him, to keep the promise I had made. But no matter how careful I was, I couldn’t escape the shape my father had forced me to bend into.

The truth was that I had changed.

I was exactly what my father wanted me to be. I killed without hesitation at his command, I had abandoned all emotions, I lived for nothing but to become a hunter capable of slaughtering the lycans.

My lycan beast had been banished to a part of me so dark and frightening that I no longer even dared to brush my consciousness against the gaping pit filled with an ocean of blood. My glacier walls kept everyone out, but there was still a clear window I kept just for Makona.

But it was a struggle to keep that clear window from frosting over or hardening into a cloudy sheet of ice that would keep even him out as well.

My father tipped his chin toward his beta, an unspoken order to begin the meeting.

Makona pushed off the wall he had been leaning against, uncrossing his arms and straightening his posture.

He didn’t need to call for silence or make some petty display like clearing his throat. The moment he began to speak, every eye in the room snapped to him. “As you all know, the end of the Lycan Wars cost both sides many skilled warriors. Our victory was not total, but it was decisive. We eliminated every alpha but one. Raiken Blaklynd remains, and he has scoured the earth for the last of the lycans.”

Yaga stepped forward, shoulder to shoulder with my father.

She was the very embodiment of strength. Though not a hunter by trade, she had clawed her way to the top, earning the same respect afforded to warriors like my father and Makona. Raised alongside him, she had fought in the Lycan Wars and knew the creatures as intimately as any of the pack’s greatest hunters.

“Our enemy still lives, and they have not abandoned this war. They will fight us until every last hunter falls, just as we intend to exterminate them. Their numbers are small compared to ours, but they will fight ten times harder than any of us.”

Murmurs rippled through the room. The hunters did not take kindly to being told their opponents would be fiercer, stronger, and more relentless than themselves.

Yaga didn’t flinch at the interruption. She didn’t growl or bark orders for silence. She only raised her chin and continued, calm and unshakable. “The fate of their kind rests with them and their goddess, Lune. She will not grant an easy victory in this final battle between lycans and hunters.”

“For some time,” the alpha picked up where she left off, “the lycans have been gathering in the Old Kingdom, securing a foothold in the northern territories. Raiken Blaklynd is not to be underestimated. He is far too volatile and unpredictable. His weaknesses are not easily exploited, and I have been waiting all of this time to find something that will not only unbalance the lycan pack but the alpha himself.”

He paused, shifting his piercing gaze toward me.

“And now,” he said, “we have it.”

All eyes followed his direction, landing on me in the far back corner. I pushed off the wall and straightened, my eyes flicking nervously from hunter to hunter before quickly looking away.

“Zikara still has much to learn,” my father said, his gaze scorching me like fire. I ducked my head, hunching my shoulders and curling inward, unable to withstand the intensity. “But if we do this right, her infiltration will assure us a victory, and we will finally have that lycan bastard by the throat.”

My head snapped up, and I stared at my alpha, so forgotten in my shock that I met and held his gaze for longer than what was considered appropriate.

From what the others had been saying, there was no way the lycan alpha, Raiken Blaklynd, would invite me into his pack. I was part hunter after all, and he was much more likely to kill me on the spot than allow me close enough to become a weakness for his pack. But my father wasn’t just insinuating that I would be the pack’s vital point, but the alpha’s.

That made even less sense to me.

How could I, a twenty-year-old, barely trained half blood, possibly prove to be anything of importance to the last lycan alpha?

There may only be a few lycans left, but I didn’t think he would readily accept even a half-blood. The risk was too great. Especially because I would just pop out of nowhere. If that didn’t spell suspicious, I didn’t know what else did. Not to mention that anyone without a pinecone for a nose would be able to tell I was the offspring of Tarak Farrayn.

I had always assumed I would fight on the battlefield alongside Makona, Yaga, and the other hunters. But now it sounded like my father intended me to infiltrate their ranks, gain their trust, and manipulate them from within.

If my role wasn’t to fight, but simply to gather intelligence and deceive the lycans, then his plan made a little more sense. That would explain why he wanted to use me now rather than wait for years before launching this final expedition.

A rumble of thunder caused the foundations of the cabin to shake.

The glowing candles and lit oil lamps illuminating the room flickered as their surfaces trembled.

“I know that we hunters pride ourselves on honor and disdain underhanded tactics,” my father said, his gaze sweeping the room. “And I feel the same. But our methods alone have never accomplished a centuries-old task. Never have we been closer to ending the despicable lycan race than when we combined our claws, our teeth, and our heads. Outsmarting our enemy is not something to curl your lip at. A trap that captures the desired prey is a trap worth setting.”

The prospect of victory riled the hunters in the room. There were grins and nods of approval. At this point, only the death of the last lycans mattered, not the way we would go about it.

My father tapped the small wooden table with a finger, calling the room to silence once more. “I know many of you have become restless, wondering when we would finally carry out this last hunt. Hear me now, we wait no longer. The time is here. This time, the alpha will not elude us.”

My blood roared in my ears, Tarak Farrayn’s words lost under the storm of thoughts surging in my mind.

I was to be used as bait. I endured two years of my father’s brutal lessons to act as fodder.

He intended to throw me at our deadliest enemies, hoping that if they did not kill me on sight, I would get close enough to uncover some exploitable weakness. It was total lunacy. I did not have the capabilities to fool the lycans. My father had beaten emotion out of me. How was I to fool them into believing my ruse, get them to like me, when I hardly liked myself?

“Tomorrow,” they said, and I was filled with a sense of foreboding. “My daughter will kill the lycan bitch that has been rotting away in our prison and initiate the final lycan hunt.”

Deafening cheers were raised as I sagged against the wall for support. I did not know if it was their calls that rattled the walls or the thunder of the ongoing storm.

I lifted my hand and watched as it trembled, understanding then that it was not the house that was shaking, but me.

TWENTY SEVEN

Sleep was not an option. My heart refused to slow, hammering against my ribs as I paced in front of my bed, over and over again, until I’d worn a faint path in the floorboards.

Strangely, it wasn’t nerves that had me so on edge. The nausea twisting my gut had nothing to do with the thought of killing the lycan female tomorrow. My father had turned me into a murderer long ago. Taking another life didn’t even make me flinch anymore.

What terrified me was that this had already begun.

It was too soon. I’d thought I had years––ten, at least—before I’d have to face this hunt. If I failed to prove my worth now, there would be nothing stopping my father from killing me alongside the lycans.

It was my life or theirs, and I didn’t have the faintest idea how to give my alpha what he wanted. None of this was supposed to happen yet. I was supposed to have time to study, to plan, to understand what the hell I was walking into.

But I wasn’t given that. I was expected to play my part tomorrow.

“Moon,” I hissed under my breath, running my hands through my hair. “Moon, moon, moon!”

What in the hell was I going to do?

I was trained for combat, not infiltration. I didn’t know the first thing about subterfuge or deception.

I allowed myself one minute to freak out before forcing myself to calm down. Being in hysterics would not solve anything. I had to be levelheaded about this. I had to be clever, cautious. There was no room for anything but precise calculation. Just like the way I was trained to fight.

Yes, that’s how I had to do this. Take it one step at a time and design a plan as I go.

Even if I’d had time to prepare, none of it would matter once I crossed paths with the lycans.

Drawing in a slow breath, I held it until my lungs ached, then exhaled, pushing every shred of fear and panic out with it.

Tomorrow, I would kill the lycan prisoner. I would do as my alpha commanded. I would survive. For my life. For Makona’s faith in me.

Lying down on my bed, I was optimistic enough to wish for sleep, but I hoped to rest my body if not my mind.

But as my breathing steadied, I felt a faint stirring at the edge of consciousness, a familiar sensation that brushed against some deep, buried memory. The warning I always felt before my recurring nightmare dragged me under.

The instant I recognized it, I snapped my eyes open, but it was already too late.

Instead of the familiar wooden rafters of my room, I was in the cabinet again.

Not the one that forced me to watch my mother die. The dark box. The one that bled.

A slow, steady trickle of blood seeped down from the top and along the sides, painting the wooden walls in thick crimson streaks.

“No!” I screamed, pounding my fists against the walls that caged me in. “No! I won’t go back there! Let me out!” I kicked and hammered until my voice broke. My arms trembled violently, every hit weaker than the last as the blood rose higher, soaking my legs, my stomach, then my chest.

“Someone let me out!” I cried, voice hoarse. “Please! Anyone!”

Shame stung almost as sharply as the terror. I hated how pitiful I sounded, how small and weak.

Hot tears cut through the blood on my cheeks. I tipped my head back, stretching my neck, desperate to keep breathing just a little longer before the crimson tide swallowed me whole.

I would be trapped in the blood ocean of utter darkness. Where I would feel nothing, hear nothing, taste nothing, and see nothing. A fate worse than death. The fate of eternal loneliness.

A host of fear burned in my heart. The fear of never waking from this nightmare was more suffocating than the blood itself.

Rather than gulping in one last breath, I uttered a final plea. “Please,” I whimpered, “save me.”

The blood surged higher, swallowing my face, and then the cabinet door burst open.

The torrent spilled out across the floor, and I collapsed forward, choking and gasping as I coughed up thick mouthfuls of blood.

When I finally blinked through the red haze, I saw my mother’s body sprawled across the floor. And standing over her, blocking the light, was him.

Her killer.

His worn leather boots, already darkened by old blood stains, were splattered anew.

The copper tang of it burned my throat. My body convulsed as I scrubbed frantically at my skin, desperate to get the sticky red off.

Then he moved.

The man crouched down until he was level with me, elbows resting on his knees, bloodied hands hanging loosely between them. The claws at his fingertips were slick with gore.

My gaze flicked from his hands to his face, and I pushed myself deeper into the cabinet’s back wall, trying to disappear.

He looked god-like.

Not just because of the blood spattered across his skin and the dried clumps tangled in his blond hair, but because his entire face seemed carved by war. His eyes were too old for the rest of him, shadowed and cold. His mouth was a grim line, his expression one of practiced indifference.

He wore his violence like a second skin.

His blond hair was cropped short at the sides, slightly longer on top, as if freshly cut for battle.

And then I saw his eyes.

They had the forest in them. Rich and deep, alive with shifting shades of green. Flecks of moss and emerald swirled together, encircled by a thin ring of silver. A forest kissed by the moon.

Too bright. Too alive. Sparkling as if he were experiencing the thrill of battle for the first time.

It terrified me to my very core, yet I couldn’t look away. I choked on a whimper.

The male tilted his head slightly, studying me before reaching out one blood-slicked, clawed hand to rest it atop my head.

I was blasted with his pheromones, the strong scent of bergamot chasing away the iron smell of blood with citrus. Beneath it lingered the soft, grounding note of clary sage that tickled my nose.

It eased my mind, calmed my heart, and had me leaning into his touch. I had always thought that Makona’s ash and pine scent would be the only thing that could comfort me like this. However, this male was doing the same thing, only differently.

When I forced my eyes open again, I stared at him in confusion. He had just murdered my mother. Her blood still dripped from the hand resting on my head. I should have been revolted, but instead, I sat there, calm, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Another wave of pheromones rolled off him, but this time they yanked at something inside of me. They pried a piece of myself free that he was not supposed to take.

Pain exploded through my chest, twisting my heart until I gasped. Instinctively, I tried to fight him, to hold onto whatever he was trying to rip away from me, but the resistance only made it worse.

I suffered through the agony for what seemed like ages. I screamed at myself to wake up from this horrible nightmare and escape the pain that wasn’t even real.

But then I realized the horrifying truth. The pain wasn’t fake. It was indeed quite real. My beast was stirring, and it was fighting against me for control.

My wide eyes lifted to the male, and I knew that he was the cause of this.

I tried to ask who he was, how he was doing this, but before I could speak, the back of the cabinet gave way. I tumbled backward, the blue-eyed male vanishing from sight as I plunged into darkness.

I fell through the pit where my beast had been imprisoned and hit the ocean of blood, sinking into its depths.

A sudden light flashed out of the darkness and then dulled into a clear picture. Just like the times when my beast had taken control before, I was left to stare out of my own eyes, unable to command my words and actions.

I was in the underground prison where the rouges were kept. I was staring at the cages in the very back where the lycan was kept, waiting silently for the female to come forward.

“I have been waiting for you to return.” Her strangely accented voice slithered out of the darkness. Her bony fingers wrapped around the bars of her cage.

“Not this soon, I will admit,” she murmured, one slanted eye squinting through the curtain of her snarled, stringy hair.

My beast could not speak, yet that didn’t stop the lycan from understanding it.

The female chuckled lowly. “Ahh, I see. You wish to go to him.”

I didn’t understand who she meant, or how she could possibly know the one my beast sought.

“Very well, I shall take you there.” Lifting her thin wrist, she rattled the chain obnoxiously. “I hope you brought a key.”

My hand uncurled slowly, revealing a small key nestled in my palm. I didn’t remember where it came from, but it was clear now that my beast had been in control longer than I realized. Somehow, it had taken me from my room, down into this prison, and to this very cell.

The key slid easily into the lock. The old metal groaned as I turned it. I prayed, futilely, that it wouldn’t fit her manacles as well. I didn’t want to know what would happen if my beast’s reckless plan to free this lycan succeeded.

My heart sank at the sharp click that followed. The chains fell away.

The lycan grinned up at me through her curtain of filthy, matted hair. “Let’s go then,” she rasped. “I’ve been dying to return home.”

The faint light vanished, and darkness swallowed everything. I couldn’t even scream.

I was trapped again, adrift in the endless blood ocean.

Was this what it was to be Wild?

When my father discovered the lycan was gone, and I with her, he would know. I was already as good as dead. The hunters would call me a traitor, and they would come for me.

Maybe that was for the best. If I was dead, I wouldn’t have to live this miserable existence any longer. I was as good as dead…only painfully aware that I wasn’t.

Time had no meaning in the blood ocean. My beast showed me nothing more, no visions, no glimpses. Perhaps it was its revenge for the years I’d kept it locked away. I couldn’t even blame it. If I’d been caged that long, I’d do the same.

Then I smelled something. A faint whiff of citrus. I clung to it, desperate, reaching for that thread of life beyond the suffocating blood.

Next came sound. Deep, indistinct rumbling—voices—but I couldn’t make out the words.

Then touch. Cold. My skin prickled as a draft of chill air brushed against me.

And then, control.

I stumbled forward as my consciousness slammed back into my body. My beast retreated, melting into the corners of my mind.

Blinking hard, I raised my head, trying to make sense of where I was. Grand buttresses and magnificent stone arches greeted me. I was in a building like nothing I had seen before, made out of stone rather than wood.

Looking down, I realized I wasn’t standing on earth or dirt but on colored stone cut into perfect squares and fitted together so precisely it looked unnatural. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. The texture beneath my bare feet was smooth, slick like the first skin of ice that formed over the lake in early winter—and just as cold.

Only when I lifted my gaze did I notice the faces surrounding me. That was when the true strangeness began.

The people had skin tones I’d never imagined, ranging from deep bronze to pale as moonlight, and features unlike any I had ever seen. Some had bits of metal stuck through their noses or eyebrows, others through their lips. Their clothing, if that was what it was, hung in strange shapes and colors, hides so thin and sheer I doubted they came from any animal at all.

“Where in the name of the moon have you stolen me away to, you stupid beast?” I muttered to myself, not even knowing where to begin with a plan to get back to my pack and try to explain myself to my father.

The circle of werewolves parted, the commotion coming from behind me. I whirled around and came face-to-face with the male from my nightmare.

He had the same towering frame, taller even than Makona, with a sharp, angular jaw and a narrow, predatory face. His hair was longer now, unbloodied but still that same dirty blond, and his eyes, those forest green eyes, were exactly as I’d seen them.

Alive, bright, and utterly terrifying.

I could smell the same scent of bergamot and clary sage from him, but more importantly, I smelled what he was.

He was a lycan.

Author’s Note

Thank you so much for reading this chapter. It means more than I can say that you’ve taken the time to dive into Zikara’s world and follow her through the darkness, doubt, and quiet moments of defiance that define her journey. Every word written here is a step deeper into her fractured loyalty and the strange pull between duty and something far more dangerous.

If you’ve made it this far—thank you. Your time, your thoughts, and your curiosity keep this story alive.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a comment, review, or even a simple like. Your feedback not only helps me grow as a writer but also helps this story reach a wider audience, so others can discover it too. I’d love to hear your thoughts, what you felt, what you guessed, and what you’re hoping comes next.

Thank you again for reading and supporting this journey.

~ A.K.Glandt