I wake with the taste of smoke in my throat.

  Not from the fire.

  From memory.

  For several slow breaths, I lie still, staring at the stone ceiling as if it might fracture and spill answers down on me. The cave is quiet, the embers barely alive. Somewhere deeper in the rock, water drips with patient rhythm. The air is cool enough to raise goosebumps along my arms, yet my skin feels stretched too tight, like something beneath it is pacing.

  Azrael’s words circle my mind like wolves around prey.

  You were never safe.

  They were never prepared for what you are.

  If you cannot control it, it will devour you.

  They raised you out of duty.

  Duty.

  The word settles in my chest and refuses to move.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. It doesn’t matter what he says. It doesn’t matter what he implies or what he refuses to explain. My parents are my parents. Kellan is my future. Pack Vale is my home.

  I repeat it like a vow.

  And still, the harder I cling to those truths, the more my memories begin to splinter.

  As if my mind has grown tired of protecting me from myself.

  I push myself upright, the furs sliding from my shoulders. My head still aches sometimes, a dull reminder of stone and water and collapse. But this ache is different. This one lives deeper, lodged beneath my ribs, pressing outward like it has waited long enough.

  I bring a hand to my throat and swallow.

  The ceremony returns without warning.

  Not as a dream.

  As if I am there again.

  The circle closing. The air thickening. Hundreds of wolves forming a glowing ring of bodies and breath around me. Moonlight catching in their eyes, their focus slicing into my skin. The drums beginning slow and steady, then faster, faster, until my heart has no choice but to obey.

  I remember thinking it was devotion.

  Honor.

  Celebration.

  Now, when I replay it, the details feel wrong.

  Too sharp.

  Too intent.

  The scents slam into me all over again. Awe, yes. But not only awe. Possessiveness so heavy it turns my stomach. Fear so raw it leaves a metallic tang at the back of my tongue. Disdain and confusion braided together until even the air feels unstable.

  I remember the way they looked at my body.

  Not my face.

  Not my eyes.

  My body.

  As if they were watching a weapon being unsheathed.

  My wolf roars awake at the memory, and the inside of my chest hums in response, a low vibration that raises every hair on my skin.

  I force a breath in.

  Slow.

  Controlled.

  The drums in my mind fade slightly, but Kellan does not.

  Kellan tearing free of his mother’s grip.

  Kellan shifting too fast, too rough, as if something inside him snapped.

  Kellan’s eyes burning with something that was not love.

  Claim.

  I had told myself it was nerves. The pressure of tradition. The weight of becoming. The intensity of the full moon.

  But I remember his parents’ faces now.

  Not pride.

  Not excitement.

  Fear.

  And I remember Luna Marienne’s voice, sharp and urgent, like steel drawn from its sheath.

  Don’t take your eyes off her.

  Her.

  Not him.

  Me.

  My fingers dig into the furs, knuckles whitening.

  Was Kellan losing control because he was overwhelmed?

  Or because something in him reacted to something in me?

  The thought turns my stomach hard enough that I have to brace myself.

  No.

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  This is Azrael’s influence.

  This is doubt seeded where it doesn’t belong.

  And yet, I cannot unsee it.

  The way the pack leaned in without meaning to.

  The way some recoiled like they’d been burned.

  The way the circle felt less like a celebration and more like containment.

  A ring.

  A cage.

  My breathing quickens. Heat unfurls beneath my ribs, unpleasant and insistent, like a coal being stirred.

  Stop.

  I draw another breath and anchor myself in what I know.

  My parents.

  My mother’s warm hands in my hair.

  My father’s steady presence.

  Kellan’s laugh.

  The scent of Vale territory after rain.

  The rhythm of home.

  The longing hits so sharply my eyes sting.

  I miss them.

  I miss the life that was supposed to be mine.

  And the moment I let myself want it, the cave feels smaller.

  The stone heavier.

  The air thicker.

  My gaze drifts to the cave entrance, where faint daylight spills in at an angle. I imagine slipping out while Azrael is gone. Running until my lungs burn. Shifting if I have to. Finding the trail back to Vale lands.

  Kellan would come for me.

  My parents would be frantic.

  They would hold me. Tell me everything will be all right.

  My wolf stirs sharply.

  Not soothed.

  Agitated.

  The ripple runs straight up my spine.

  Then it surges.

  Heat blooms beneath my skin, sudden and vicious. Pressure flares along my spine like something forcing its way outward. I gasp, but the air feels thin, useless.

  “No,” I whisper, clutching the furs.

  My fingers spasm.

  I watch in horror as my nails darken and lengthen, pushing past skin with a sickening burn. Not claws yet. Not human either. My knuckles swell, bones grinding softly beneath flesh.

  Pain lances through my jaw.

  My teeth ache, gums throbbing as if being rearranged from the inside. A sound crawls up my throat, not quite a growl, not quite a cry.

  I curl inward instinctively, but my legs refuse to obey. Muscle tightens too far, too fast. My calves burn as if they’re being stretched into something else entirely.

  I am shifting.

  Not fully.

  Not cleanly.

  Painfully.

  Panic crashes through me.

  “No—no—no,” I gasp. “Stop.”

  My wolf does not argue.

  She moves.

  Heat spreads everywhere at once. Shoulders. Ribs. Hips. My body caught between forms, trapped in a terrible in-between where nothing fits.

  I cannot think.

  I cannot breathe.

  Every sound is too loud. Every scent too sharp. Stone. Fire. The lingering trace of Azrael in the cave. It all slams into me at once.

  I claw at the furs, shredding them without meaning to.

  “Lirian.”

  Azrael’s voice cuts through the chaos.

  I turn toward it, vision blurring as he crosses the cave with controlled urgency. He stops just short of the bed, eyes tracking every wrong angle of my body.

  “I need you to calm your emotions,” he says. Tight. Focused.

  “I can’t,” I choke. “I’m stuck. She’s not stopping.”

  “I know.”

  The words nearly break me.

  He doesn’t grab me. He crouches so we’re level, his presence steady without overwhelming. He takes my hand gently.

  “You’re not losing control,” he says quietly. “You’re leaving it.”

  “What does that even mean?” I gasp.

  “It means your mind went to escape,” he says. “To memory. To home. And she stepped in.”

  Another wave of pain tears through me as my spine arches, a feral sound ripping free.

  “She’s taking over,” I sob. “I don’t want this.”

  “She’s filling the space you abandoned,” he replies. “To bring you comfort.”

  “I just wanted…”

  “I know,” he says gently. “You wanted safety.”

  My throat tightens.

  “And she interpreted that as flight.”

  He touches me then.

  Not restraining.

  Grounding.

  His hand settles over my sternum, firm and warm. Another braces my shoulder.

  “Stay here,” he murmurs. “In your body.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You have to feel it.”

  The heat.

  The pain.

  The terror.

  The grief.

  All of it collides.

  For a heartbeat, I feel her teeth against the inside of my skull.

  Azrael holds me together.

  “I’m scared,” I confess. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  The pressure eases.

  Just enough.

  “You can do this,” he murmurs. “You’re strong enough for both of you.”

  The burning recedes inch by inch. Not gone. Contained.

  I am stuck between forms.

  Human enough to understand.

  Wolf enough to feel everything.

  “You stopped her,” he says quietly.

  “I didn’t,” I whisper.

  “You did,” he replies.

  When the shaking finally subsides, exhaustion crashes over me.

  I look down at the claws still there. The faint fur tracing my arms.

  Proof.

  “This is why you need to stay,” he says softly.

  My wolf does not fight anymore.

  She watches.

  “You didn’t fail,” he says. “But you came close.”

  He steps back.

  Inside me, my wolf stands at attention.

  And the thought that chills me is not what if I escape.

  It’s…what if next time, she doesn’t stop halfway?