I had fought in dozens of battles.
Border raids. Rogue hunts. The bitter war that took my father's life when I was sixteen.
But nothing felt like this.
Not the way the night held its breath.
Not the way my wolf clawed at my chest.
Not the way the girl standing beside me made the world tilt like fate itself was holding its breath, watching.
Lyra didn't cower. She didn't plead. She didn't tremble the way you'd expect someone with a death sentence written in her blood to tremble.
She stood.
Barefoot, bruised, bleeding… and defiant.
Outside, the wolves closed in.
I counted six heartbeats. Fast. Controlled. Tactical.
They weren't wild. They weren't rogues.
They were trained.
Sent.
My pack?
No.
I knew my wolves. I'd bled beside them, mourned beside them. The ones out there weren't mine. They moved too quietly. Too deliberately. And the scent there it was again.
Ash.
Shadow.
Death.
The same cloying rot that clung to Lyra's skin like a forgotten prayer.
"What are they?" I muttered, stepping away from the window and reaching for the iron-forged blade hidden beneath the rotted floorboards.
She answered without hesitation. "Shadowborn beasts."
I froze, fingers tightening around the hilt.
"I thought they were extinct."
Her gaze didn't waver. "They were. Until I was born."
The silence between us turned thick.
"What do they want?" I asked.
Her voice was barely audible. "Me. Or my death. Whichever comes first."
Outside, a howl split the air.
Low.
Wrong.
It didn't rise like a call it fell, like a curse.
Lyra's breath hitched. She knew the sound. Too well.
"We can't fight them head-on," she said. "Not without"
I turned to her, growling. "You don't get to speak like you're part of this. You're the reason they're here."
Her eyes met mine, and for a second, I regretted the words.
Not because she didn't deserve them.
But because she didn't flinch from them.
"I know," she said simply.
The lantern beside us flickered. The flame inside it twisted as though trying to escape.
The first wolf broke the tree line.
Then another.
Broad shoulders. Snarling jaws. But not fully shifted. These things weren't like any shifter I'd seen.
They were twisted.
Corrupted.
And their eyes,gods help me were completely black. No light. No soul.
One locked eyes with me. Not as prey. Not as predator.
But as something else entirely.
It knew me.
Then it spoke.
"You've chosen poorly, Alpha."
My grip on the blade tightened.
They shouldn't be able to talk. Not like this.
Lyra stepped forward, eyes wide. "You... you were my father's general."
The beast grinned, lips peeling back over jagged teeth. "He chose peace. You were the cost."
"What do you want?" I growled.
"We came for her blood," it said, voice dripping with hunger. "And yours, if you stand in the way."
My wolf roared up inside me.
But it wasn't rage that moved me.
It was something else.
Possession. Protectiveness. Instinct.
I shifted without thinking bones snapping, fur tearing through skin, my vision flooding with silver and rage.
And I lunged.
The first blow came fast.
The beast met me mid-air, and we collided with bone-crunching force. We rolled through the clearing, claws ripping at flesh, jaws snapping. I drove my teeth into its shoulder and yanked hard tasted blood that burned.
It wasn't normal blood.
It was cold.
Wrong.
Like poison that remembered being alive.
Lyra stood in the tower doorway, the wind ripping at her hair. She didn't run. She didn't scream.
She watched.
And then gods she glowed.
Not bright. Not like fire.
Like moonlight caught in flesh.
The runes on the walls pulsed in answer.
My breath caught even in wolf form. Every cell in my body screamed mine, but it was more than that.
She wasn't just a girl. Not just a hybrid.
She was a trigger.
And the prophecy was waking.
The beast roared, slamming me into the stone wall. Pain shot through my ribs, but I kept fighting. Clawed. Bit. Tore.
Another leapt from the trees but Lyra raised her hand, and the air shimmered.
Not magic. Something older.
Moonborn energy.
The beast slammed into an invisible wall and howled as light sliced through its chest, burning it from the inside.
Lyra stared at her hand like it had betrayed her.
"I didn't mean to" she whispered.
Three more wolves circled her. She stepped back, trembling now.
"Keal!" she cried.
I turned just in time to see claws reaching for her throat.
I moved on instinct.
Faster than breath.
I tackled the beast mid-leap, and we both crashed into the underbrush. Pain sang through my limbs, but I didn't stop.
I killed it. I killed all of them.
Blood coated the ground. The scent of ash thickened. The clearing pulsed with silence once more.
When it was done, I shifted back, chest heaving, skin slick with sweat and gore.
Lyra stood in the doorway, arms wrapped around herself.
I walked to her. She didn't move.
Her eyes searched my face.
"Why did you save me?" she asked.
Because you're mine.
Because you're the prophecy.
Because if I don't, the world burns.
But all I said was: "Because I had to."
She looked down at her blood-covered hands.
"They'll keep coming. That was just a warning."
I nodded. "I know."
She stepped closer. "And if the Council finds out you helped me"
"I'll deal with them."
"You'll die."
"Maybe."
She shook her head. "You don't understand. I was never meant to live this long. My mother died the day I was born. My father sent me away in secret. The elders wanted me drowned before I took my first shift."
"Why didn't they?"
She looked up. "Because the moon turned red."
I stared at her, heartbeat skipping.
"What?"
"The night I shifted for the first time. The moon bled. And they believed it was a sign."
A sign of destruction. Of war. Of prophecy.
I backed away, mind racing.
This girl wasn't just dangerous.
She was the beginning of something we couldn't stop.
My father's old words rang in my ears:
"Beware the one who bleeds shadow and walks with the moon. She is the Alpha's curse and the kingdom's undoing."
But as she stood there, barefoot and broken, looking at me like I was the only tether she had to this world...
I didn't see a curse.
I saw a question I wasn't ready to answer.
And then the sky split open with the sound of the horn.
Three sharp blasts.
Moonbound pack signal.
Someone was coming.
I looked at her, every instinct howling in conflict.
Do I protect her?
Or turn her in?
And what if the real war doesn't start with an army...
But with a choice I'm about to make?