Mira's POV
Three days pass like a countdown to death.
Mira stays in the servants' wing with the door locked like Seraphina ordered. She doesn't go to the kitchens. Doesn't help with meals. Doesn't do anything that might draw attention. Other servants bring her food and avoid her eyes. They know what staying near her means. They know Seraphina's patience has limits.
So Mira waits alone in her small room with white stone walls and one small window that looks out over the ceremonial grounds.
The night of the Blood Moon Hunt, she can't stay away from that window.
The moon hangs huge and red above the pack house. Torches flicker around the grounds below, casting everything in orange light. Mira watches as unmated Alphas arrive one by one. Warriors she's seen in the great hall. Young Alphas hungry for power. All of them strong. All of them dangerous.
Thirty of them strip down and their bodies transform. Humans one second, massive wolves the next. Furs ranging from gray to black to russet. Muscles rippling under moonlight.
And then Kael arrives.
His wolf is pure black, so dark it almost disappears into the night. But his eyes glow amber, bright as fire, and they cut through the darkness like he's carrying torches in his skull. He's larger than the other wolves. Scarred. Built like violence itself.
Mira's hand presses against the window glass.
The Elders stand on a raised platform holding a leash. At the end of that leash is a white stag with antlers that catch the firelight. The animal is beautiful and doomed and it doesn't know it yet.
Elder Thaddeus raises his hand and the crowd goes silent.
"The hunt begins."
The stag is released. It bolts toward the forest in pure panic, its white body flashing through the shadows. For one second nothing happens. The Alphas watch it run.
Then they lose their minds.
The howls that rip from thirty wolf throats at once shake the entire building. It's a sound that makes every instinct in Mira's body scream to run and hide. It's hunger and dominance and wild power all mixed together.
Kael's howl is different from the others. Darker. Deeper. Like it's calling to something primal in the earth itself.
Then they all bolt after the stag into the forest, their massive bodies crashing through the ceremonial grounds and disappearing into trees. The screams and growls fade into distance, leaving only the sound of Mira's own heartbeat.
She should feel relieved. The hunt is happening exactly like it's supposed to. Kael and the other Alphas are gone. She's safe.
Instead she feels something else. Something like anticipation. Like the universe just took a breath before doing something terrible.
She turns away from the window and that's when she smells it.
Smoke.
Not the normal kind from the kitchen fires. This is wrong. This is sharp and choking and spreading fast. Mira's wolf instincts flip on like a switch and she knows immediately that something catastrophic is happening.
Fire.
The servants' wing is on fire.
She yanks open her door and steps into a hallway filled with thick smoke. Flames lick up the wooden walls. The main staircase is completely blocked by orange and red, the heat so intense that it forces her back. People are screaming. Other Omegas are running past her toward the back stairs, their eyes wild with panic.
Nobody is thinking. Nobody is organized. It's pure survival instinct running wild.
Mira starts moving toward the back stairs with everyone else when a sound cuts through the chaos.
A child's voice. Crying. High and terrified and coming from inside one of the burning rooms.
She stops moving.
Around her, the other Omegas keep running. Their feet pound down the back stairs, getting away from the heat and flames. Servants shout orders that nobody follows. The whole wing is descending into chaos.
And somewhere in that chaos, a child is crying.
Mira knows she should keep running. Smart people run from fire. Smart people save themselves. Smart people don't throw their lives away for someone else's survival.
She's never been particularly smart.
She strips off her dress and shifts before she can think about what she's doing. Her small gray wolf form is weak compared to the others but she's fast. She's always been fast because her whole life has been about quick movements and quick thinking.
The smoke burns her lungs as she plunges deeper into the wing. The crying is getting louder. She can smell a child now. Young. Terrified. Very close to passing out from smoke inhalation.
The room is blocked by flames but there's a window. Mira shifts back to human just long enough to grab a cloth from a nearby shelf. She soaks it in a water pitcher and ties it across her wolf's muzzle when she shifts back. It won't completely protect her but it might be enough.
She runs through the wall of fire.
Heat scorches her fur. Flames lick across her skin and she feels flesh burn. Pain explodes but she doesn't stop. The crying is right there, so close she can almost touch it.
She finds the girl huddled under a bed. Young. Maybe eight years old. Crying so hard she's gasping for breath she doesn't have. Her name is Lily and she used to serve in the great hall with Mira before being moved to the children's quarters.
Mira doesn't waste time with comfort. She grabs the girl's scruff in her jaws and drags her toward the window. Lily is screaming and choking but she's moving. She's alive.
They make it to the window and Mira uses her wolf strength to knock the shutters open. They're four feet up but Mira manages to squeeze through, pulling Lily with her. The girl tumbles onto the grass below and Mira follows, her body smoking, her paws burned black.
She collapses next to Lily and shifts back to human just long enough to pull the child against her chest.
They made it. They're both alive.
Mira lies on the grass gasping for breath and watching flames consume the servants' wing. Her whole body is screaming with pain. Her hands are burned from before and now her paws are burned worse. Her fur is singed. She's bleeding in places she doesn't even know she got hurt.
But Lily is breathing. Lily is alive.
That's what matters.
Except it doesn't stay that simple.
Because that's when Mira smells it. The scent that stopped her dead in the ceremonial grounds. The scent that made her watch from her window like she was drawn by invisible strings.
Pine and blood and winter storms.
Kael.
But he shouldn't be here. The hunt just started. The Alphas should be chasing the white stag through the forest right now. They shouldn't be back for hours.
Something made him return.
Mira lies there bleeding and burned, cradling an unconscious child against her chest, and realizes that the night is about to get infinitely more complicated.
Because in the distance, she can hear it. A single howl that cuts through the noise of the dying fire.
Not the hunting howl from before. This is different. This is primal. This is a wolf claiming something for itself.
And it's getting closer.
Very, very close.
Mira's heart stops in her chest because she recognizes that howl. She recognizes the sound of Kael's wolf losing control.
And something in her own wolf recognizes it too, in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with a bond that hasn't formed yet but is about to.
The forest explodes with movement.
A massive black wolf crashes through the trees with his amber eyes glowing in the dark. He has blood on his muzzle from the hunt. He has power radiating off him like heat from fire.
And when his eyes land on Mira lying naked and burned and bleeding on the grass, holding a child against her chest, everything in the world stops moving.
He sees her.
Really sees her.
And Mira understands in that moment that she's never going back to being invisible again.