I dreamed of running through a forest I'd never seen before, my paws hitting the earth with a power I'd never possessed. In the dream, I was strong. I was fast. I was everything I'd never been in real life. The moon hung full and bright above me, and when I howled, the sound was pure and powerful, echoing through the trees like thunder.
Other wolves ran with me, wolves with silver fur that glowed in the moonlight. We moved as one, a pack united by something more than just territory or hierarchy. We were family. We were power. We were...
The dream shattered, and I woke with a gasp.
Except I couldn't see anything. My eyes were open, but everything was dark. Panic seized me. Was I blind? What had that tea done to me?
I tried to sit up, but my body felt wrong. Heavy and light at the same time, like I was made of something different than flesh and bone. I managed to get my hands under me and push myself up, and that's when I saw it.
Silver light was glowing beneath my skin. Actual light, like I'd swallowed starlight and it was trying to escape through my pores.
"What..." My voice came out rough and strange.
I crawled toward my small mirror, my limbs shaking. The glow from my skin provided enough light to see my reflection, and when I did, I stopped breathing.
I looked like me, but also not like me at all. My dark brown hair now had thick streaks of silver running through it, gleaming like threads of moonlight. My face was the same but sharper somehow, more defined. And my eyes—my eyes were glowing. Not hazel anymore, but bright gold, almost luminous in the darkness.
"This isn't real," I whispered, touching my face with trembling fingers. "This can't be real."
But it was real. I could feel the power thrumming through my body, energy that had never been there before. My wolf was fully present in my mind for the first time in my life, her voice clear and strong.
"Finally," she said, and there was relief in her voice. "We are finally whole."
"What's happening to me?" I asked out loud, still staring at my transformed reflection.
"We are becoming who we were always meant to be," my wolf answered. "The herbs in the tea didn't change us. They awakened what was sleeping inside us. We are Silver Moon, Nessa. We always were."
Silver Moon. The name stirred something deep in my memory, like I should know what that meant but couldn't quite grasp it. I'd heard stories about ancient wolf bloodlines, powerful families that had existed centuries ago. But I didn't know anything specific, and I certainly didn't understand how I could be connected to any of that.
I looked down at my hands, watching the silver light pulse beneath my skin. As I watched, it started to fade, sinking back down until I looked almost normal again. But the silver streaks in my hair remained, and when I looked closely at my eyes, I could still see gold swirling in the hazel.
I sat back on my heels, my mind racing. Helena had known this would happen. She'd known what was in that tea and what it would do to me. But why? Who was she? And how did she know what I was?
A wave of dizziness hit me suddenly. I grabbed onto my wooden crate to steady myself, but the world was spinning. How long had I been unconscious? The tiny window near my ceiling showed darkness outside, but I didn't know if it was the same night or if I'd slept through a whole day.
My body felt strange, powerful but also exhausted, like I'd run a marathon in my sleep. I needed water. I needed food. I needed to understand what was happening to me.
But first, I needed to hide what I'd become.
If anyone in the Silverwood Pack saw me like this, with silver in my hair and power radiating from my skin, they'd either try to use me or kill me. Probably both. I'd seen how they treated anything they perceived as a threat. I couldn't let them know about this, not until I understood it myself.
I dug through my small crate of belongings until I found an old scarf. I wrapped it around my head, covering the silver streaks in my hair. It wasn't perfect, but in the dim light of the basement, maybe no one would notice.
My eyes were a bigger problem. The gold glow had faded somewhat, but they still didn't look quite right. I'd have to keep my head down and avoid direct eye contact, which honestly wasn't that different from how I normally behaved.
I checked my reflection again. With the scarf covering my hair and my eyes downcast, I looked mostly like my old self. It would have to be enough.
I crept out of my room, moving silently through the dark basement. My body moved differently now more gracefully, with a confidence I'd never had before. Even my senses seemed sharper. I could hear heartbeats in the rooms above me, could smell cooking food from the distant kitchen, could feel the vibrations of footsteps through the floor.
This was what it felt like to be a real wolf. Not the broken, incomplete thing I'd been before, but something whole and powerful.
I made it to the basement bathroom and drank water straight from the tap, gulping it down desperately. My reflection in the bathroom mirror looked haunted, dark circles under my eyes, face too pale, but at least mostly human.
As I was drinking, I heard footsteps on the stairs. Heavy boots, moving with purpose. I quickly dried my face and stepped out of the bathroom just as Derek, the same warrior who'd summoned me to Alpha Thorne's office yesterday, appeared at the bottom of the stairs.