The first thing you know is breath.
Not yours.. But Theirs, Dozens of them. Slow, deep, layered: sleeping wolves, resting guards, someone pacing outside a door.
The second thing you know is that you're listening to all of them at once.
You open your eyes to dim stone and soft light. The ceiling curves low, ribbed with old wood beams. A fire snaps quietly in a pit at the far side of the room, its smoke drawn up through a vent you can't see. The air smells like pine, ash and fur, and something else… something sharp and clean that you recognize now as Him.
You're on a cot, a blanket thrown over you that feels like someone remembered comfort halfway through folding it. Your muscles ache in strange places—deep in the hips, along the ribs, behind the knees—as if you've run for miles in a body that wasn't exactly your own.
You sit up. The world flares into high definition.
You hear water dripping in a cave somewhere beyond the walls. You hear a bird beat its wings twice before settling in a tree outside. You hear your own heart, and under it—
Atlas's.
Steady. Heavy. On the other side of the Sanctuary, maybe. But your body doesn't care about geography anymore.
"You shouldn't be able to do that."
Thorne's voice pulls your gaze to the doorway. He stands with his arms folded, a bruise darkening along his jaw, dried blood at his temple. He looks infuriatingly composed for someone who has obviously been picking fights with chaos all night.
"Do what?" you ask.
"Track an Alpha's pulse from across the ridge." He steps inside. His eyes sharpen as he studies you. "How do you feel?"
You consider the inventory. "Like my skin doesn't fit right. Like I could hear a lie from three floors away. Like the air is… crowded."
"Half-turned," Thorne mutters. "Too fast."
"Comforting," you say.
He tosses you something. A wooden training staff. You catch it one-handed without thinking. The motion is smooth, almost too smooth.
"Humor me," he says. "Stand."
You do. The blanket falls; you're still in the soft shirt and loose pants someone put you in—Sanctuary clothes, not hospital ones. Barefoot, you step into the cleared space near the fire.
Thorne mirrors you with another staff. "I attack. You defend. Don't think. Just move."
"That's very reassuring," you say, but your mouth is operating on habit. Your body is already listening for the shift of his weight.
He moves. Fast, but not full speed. The staff whistles toward your shoulder.
You're not there when it arrives.
Your own stick snaps up, wood meeting wood with a crack loud enough to make the rafters complain. The vibration stings your fingers, but your grip holds. He swings again. You deflect. Again. You duck. A backward step, a pivot, and somehow you've turned his momentum against him—his staff clatters to the floor as yours jabs lightly at his throat.
You freeze.
He blinks.
"Again," he says.
You repeat the drill. This time you don't just block—you step in, twist, and bring your staff down with more force than you intended. The tip hits the stone floor.
The staff snaps clean in two.
Silence.
You stare at the broken halves in your hands, breath coming faster, heart loud in your ears.
"That wasn't supposed to happen," you whisper.
"No," Thorne agrees. His expression is unreadable. "It means the wolf in you is… listening. And the Sanctuary is, too."
As if on cue, the stones under your bare feet hum. A vibration, faint but unmistakable, climbs your bones. The fire flares higher without more wood.
"The Moonstone Chamber," Thorne says. "It's reacting to her again."
You swallow. "Her?"
"Atlas will explain." Thorne retrieves the broken pieces from your hands with surprising gentleness. "Try not to break anything else that isn't the enemy."
"Define enemy," you say.
"Anyone between him and you," he says, and leaves you with that.
—
Atlas waits at the entrance to the Moonstone Chamber.
He's changed: simple dark shirt, sleeves rolled, throat bare. The scars across his shoulders catch the ambient light like pale script. His eyes track you as you walk toward him, something tight in them loosening by degrees.
"You're awake," he says.
"And you're still here," you answer.
He huffs a sound that's almost a laugh. "Somehow."
The chamber's interior glows faintly even before you step in. The runes carved into the floor and walls—lines and curves you don't recognize but your blood does—shimmer soft silver.
The moment your foot crosses the threshold, they flare.
The light doesn't answer him. It answers you.
All around, wolves in human skin—the Sanctuary pack—are gathered along the walls. Some you've seen in passing, others not at all. As the glow rises, their heads bow, one by one, without a word. Knees bend. Spines incline.
They're kneeling. Not to Atlas.
To You…
Panic claws up your throat. "No," you say, stepping back. "No, don't—"
"Rise," Atlas says, voice sharp, commanding. The word cracks the air like a whip.
They obey. Instantly. Heads lift. Eyes flick between you and their Alpha, confusion, awe, and a touch of fear in them.
"The chamber thinks you're something else," Atlas says quietly, for you alone. "Not Alpha. Not wolf. A bridge."
You wrap your arms around yourself. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"Neither did I," he says. "Yet here we are."
He leads you to the center, where a circular design sits dark on the floor—dormant, for now.
"You're the first Half-Born we've seen since the Old War," he says. "Last time, it ended with three dead packs and a city cut in half. We swore never to let it happen again."
"How'd that work out for you?" you ask, a bitter edge you can't help.
His mouth curves. "You exist, so… poorly."
The wolves file out at his nod, leaving the chamber suddenly enormous around you two. When the echo of their footsteps fade, the space feels sacred and dangerous in equal measure.
By the firepit later, a quieter moment finds you.
You sit shoulder to shoulder on a low stone ledge, watching flames eat through the last of the kindling. The room is empty. The ridge is quiet. For once, the world isn't demanding anything.
"You're afraid," you say.
He doesn't deny it. "Yes."
"Of what?" you press. "Losing control?"
"No." His gaze stays on the fire. "Losing you. To this. To the moon. To the part of me that doesn't know how to let go once it's decided something is… mine."
The word doesn't land the way it did in the wet grassy median, when it was a weapon in someone else's mouth. Here, beside him, it sounds like a confession.
You lean your head against his shoulder. Slowly. Carefully. He doesn't move away.
"Then don't let go," you say softly.
For a long time, neither of you speak. The fire burns lower. The Moonstone hums beneath your feet like a heartbeat waiting for the right moment.
And overhead,
the Full Solstice Moon begins its climb