The wolf moved through the twilight forest like a phantom of muscle and shadow. He was a ghost in his own kingdom, broad-shouldered and scarred, his paws making no sound on the bed of damp pine needles. This was Connall Stonepelt, a prince in exile, now nothing more than a predator. His world had shrunk to the simple, brutal realities of the hunt, his senses the only courtiers he had left.
Those senses, honed to a razor's edge by years of solitude, reached out into the dusk. He tasted the air—pine, wet earth, and the rich, warm scent of the buck he'd been stalking for the last hour. It was close. He lowered his body, muscles coiling like overwound springs, his grey fur a seamless part of the deepening shadows. His goal was survival. His discipline was absolute.
The buck was just beyond a thicket of ferns, its head down as it stripped tender bark from a young birch. An easy kill. A necessary one. As he prepared to launch himself forward, a flicker of memory, unwanted and sharp as a shard of glass, pierced his focus. The smoky scent of a pack bonfire. Laughter echoing under a gentler moon. The solid, reassuring warmth of his father's presence at his back during a shared hunt, a celebration of life, not a grim necessity for it.
*The past is dead.*
He shoved the thought down, crushing it with the cold, hard weight of practicality. He was nothing but what he was now: alone.
A sharp crack shattered the stillness. It was not the sound of a deer, nor any other creature of the wild. It was clumsy, arrogant. The snap of a dry twig under a heavy, careless boot. Human-shifted. The wind shifted, and a new scent fouled the clean air, a stench of stale sweat, bloodlust, and the territorial musk of pack wolves reeking of dominance. Bloodfang warriors. Guntram Volkov's dogs. His hated rivals.
The buck, startled, bolted into the gloom. Connall let it go without a second thought. His hunt was over. His first instinct was not to fight, but to fade away. A pack of Volkov's thugs meant trouble, and trouble was a threat to his solitary existence. In the wilderness, any uncontrolled threat meant death. He began a silent, tactical retreat, melting back between the ancient oaks, his objective now changed. He would see who dared trespass in his territory, and then he would vanish.
From the safety of a rocky ridge overlooking a small clearing, Connall watched the scene unfold. A low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound of pure contempt. It wasn't a patrol. It was an execution.
Three hulking Bloodfang warriors were toying with their prey: a lone she-wolf. Her silver fur was matted with dirt and blood, but she was not yet broken. She moved with a desperate, cornered grace, her teeth bared in a defiant last stand. He could smell the Bloodfang scent on her, faint and old, but present. A rogue, then. Cast out and now hunted by her own kind for sport.
He recognized the lead warrior, a brutish Alpha named Kael whose loyalty to the usurper Guntram was infamous. Kael's sneer was one of cruel sport. "Nowhere left to run, little traitor," Kael snarled, his voice a low rasp. "Lord Guntram wants your pretty pelt as a rug. Should have stayed loyal."
He and his thugs herded her, letting her think she had an escape before one would lunge, cutting her off, their claws leaving fresh, shallow wounds with every pass. She snapped and twisted, but she was tiring, her movements growing sluggish.
Connall's jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. This was not his fight. Rogues died. It was the law of the wild, a law he himself lived by every single day. His survival depended on anonymity, on avoiding the very pack that had butchered his family. Getting involved was a fool's errand, an invitation to a shallow grave. His cold, pragmatic mind had already made the decision. He turned to leave, to melt back into the forest and put miles between himself and this dishonorable display.
It was at that exact moment the clouds parted.
The moon broke through, full and swollen. It was not the gentle silver of the Goddess, but a baleful, blood-red orb that hung in the sky like a fresh wound. The Mating Moon. Its light flooded the clearing, oppressive and ancient. The very air grew thick, thrumming with a raw, undeniable power that vibrated deep in his bones.
The force of it washed over him, a physical wave of heat and pressure. He froze, his decision to flee evaporating like mist in a harsh sun. Down below, the she-wolf faltered, her head snapping up toward the crimson light, her defiant posture crumbling for a fatal instant. In that moment of distraction, Kael laughed and lunged.
But the instant the moon's light touched Connall, it ignited something inside his soul. It was not a feeling. It was a physical violation, a white-hot spear of energy that shot through him, branding him from the inside out. A phantom claw scrabbled inside his chest, tearing at his ribs as if trying to rip its way out to meet the bloody moon. A gasp was ripped from his lungs and he staggered, one paw flying to his chest as if he could somehow claw the agony out. The pain was excruciating, a fire that threatened to consume his sanity.
Across the clearing, the she-wolf cried out, a sound of pure shock and agony that had nothing to do with Kael's attack. Her silver eyes, wide with a torment that mirrored his own, locked on his position in the shadows. He didn't just see her pain; he *felt* it. A shocking, impossible echo of her exhaustion, her bone-deep pain, her defiant terror slammed into him, mingling with his own torment. She stumbled, her defenses dropping completely.
It was the opening Kael had been waiting for.
Connall watched the brute's claws extend, long and sharp, aimed for the soft flesh of her throat. In that instant, every wall of logic, every ounce of discipline, every cold, hard rule he had built to survive shattered into dust. The choice was gone. His body moved, driven by a primal, protective command he didn't understand and already hated with every fiber of his being.
He exploded from the ridge, a blur of grey fur and righteous fury, crashing into the clearing with the force of an avalanche. He slammed into Kael, sending the larger wolf flying with a snarl of bone-jarring impact. His mind reeled, not from the thrill of battle, but from the searing, impossible connection to the wolf he was meant to abandon. His first coherent thought was a snarl directed at the heavens.
*What twisted fate have you chained me to now, Goddess?*