The deafening roar was gone. In its place was a silence so heavy it felt like it was crushing my lungs. The volcanic heat that had just shredded my body into something new was cooling fast, replaced by a terrifying, crystalline power.
I was back in my skin. My human skin.
I gasped for air, my chest heaving as the tattered rags of my grey dress clung to my damp body. I was still on my knees in the dirt, but the girl who had knelt here minutes ago was dead. The pain of Kael's rejection? It was gone ripped out like a rotted tooth. Where hope and love used to be, there was now only a vast, freezing void.
"You feel it, don't you, little vessel?"
The voice didn't come from the woods. It was inside me. Deep, gravelly, like stones grinding against a frozen lake. It wasn't my voice.
Who are you? I screamed in my mind, my head spinning.
"I am the nightmare they tried to forget," the voice rumbled with an ancient, terrifying arrogance. "I am the White Lycan. And you, Elara Vance, are my host. Your pathetic little wolf didn't survive that rejection it withered and died. I simply moved into the empty house." The presence in my mind felt massive, suffocating.
"I am Lysandra," she continued, her tone dripping with ice. "And we do not bow. Not to traitors, and certainly not to weak packs."
Lysandra. The name felt like a heavy crown being forced onto my head.
"Why me?" I whispered, my voice cracking as I pulled the scraps of my dress around my nakedness.
"Because you were at the breaking point. The Moon Goddess chose the weakest link to forge something unbreakable. You are a clean slate, Elara. We will build a queen from your ruins. But first... survival. We need blood. We need strength."
Lysandra's power was like a drug. As I stood up, my senses didn't just sharpen they exploded. I could hear the heartbeat of a bird a mile away; I could smell the ancient history of the soil beneath my feet. I was starving, but for the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid.
The Dead Woods felt different now. The twisted, skeletal trees no longer looked like threats; they looked like cover.
"Move," Lysandra commanded. "We need clothes. And we need to hunt. No more scraps from Kael's table. Real prey."
I moved with a predatory grace I hadn't possessed an hour ago. I was tracking a deer, my hunger gnawing at my stomach, when a foul scent cut through the air. It smelled like rusted metal and stale sweat.
"Intruders. Shadow Pack," Lysandra hissed, her rage vibrating in my skull. "Scavengers. They are hunting you."
I dropped behind a thicket of dying bushes. Three massive, coal-black wolves were prowling through the undergrowth. These weren't my pack mates. They were scarred, ugly, and their eyes burned with a mindless cruelty.
"The Alpha said the scent of the rejected bitch led here," one of them growled through the mind-link, his voice a jagged saw in my head. "Find the body. We need to make sure the Silver Moon runt is dead before they come looking."
Rage, cold and absolute, flooded my system. Weakling. Runt. Bitch. They were already dancing on my grave.
"Shift, Elara," Lysandra urged, her voice a seductive growl. "Show them what a 'weakling' can do."
I didn't fight it this time. I welcomed the fire. The transformation was faster, a brutal acceptance of my new reality. In a heartbeat, the frail girl vanished. In her place stood the White Lycan—a ghost of fur and fury.
I let out a low rumble, a sound that felt like an earthquake in my throat.
The three Shadow wolves froze. Their arrogance evaporated instantly, replaced by a primal, bone-deep terror.
"White... Lycan..." one of them whimpered, the mental link trembling.
I didn't give them time to pray. I was a blur of white lightning. I hit the first wolf with enough force to snap its spine before we even touched the ground. The bloodlust was simple. It was clean.
The second one tried to run. I was on him in a flash, my claws shredding his flank before pinning him to the dirt.
"Tell your Alpha," Lysandra snarled through my jaws, the sound a terrifying distortion. "Tell him the Queen has returned."
I ended it quickly. The coppery tang of blood filled my mouth, warm and life-giving. The third wolf was already a black streak in the distance, running for his life. I let him go. I wanted him to tell the world. I wanted them all to look over their shoulders.
I stood over the carcasses, my white fur stained with crimson, my breath misting in the cold air.
Then, a new scent hit me.
It was so powerful it made my knees weak. It wasn't the rot of the woods or the iron of blood. It was rich earth, cold steel, and something dark and addictive.
Mate.
Every fiber of my Lycan heart even Lysandra herself went still. My silver eyes snapped toward the ridge.
Silhouetted against the bruised sky was the most terrifying wolf I had ever seen. He was charcoal-dark, massive, covered in the scars of a thousand wars. His eyes were two burning pools of molten gold, radiating a power that felt like a physical weight on my chest.
He wasn't just an Alpha. He was a king.
Alpha Damon. And he was looking right at me.