Sable POV
Run.
The word screams through my mind as howls shatter the silence. I grab the bag they threw at me and sprint deeper into the Wastes.
Branches claw at my face. My boots catch on roots I can't see in the dying light. Behind me, the howls grow closer. Louder. Hungrier.
They're hunting me.
My lungs burn. The small vial the doctor gave me bounces in my pocket with each step. Wolfsbane antidote. Her words echo in my head. They've been poisoning you for years.
But I can't think about that now. Can't process what it means.
Right now, I just need to survive.
A root catches my foot. I slam into the ground hard enough to knock the wind from my chest. Pain explodes through my shoulder. The bag flies from my grip.
"No!" I crawl toward it desperately.
Empty. Just like I thought. They gave me nothing. Not even a blanket.
Howls erupt to my left. Too close. Way too close.
I force myself up and keep running, even though every muscle screams. My hand stays pressed against my stomach. Three months pregnant. Barely showing. But the pup inside me is real. Alive.
I won't let them hurt my baby.
The forest grows darker with each passing minute. Dead trees loom like skeletal fingers. No birds sing here. No insects buzz. Even the air smells wrong—rotten and old.
This is where they send wolves to die.
My foot catches again. This time I don't fall. I stumble against a massive tree trunk and freeze.
The howling has stopped.
Silence presses down on me like a weight. My heartbeat thunders in my ears. I hold my breath, listening.
Nothing.
That's worse. So much worse.
They're not howling anymore because they're close enough to track me silently.
I peer around the tree trunk. Shadows move between the dead trunks. Four of them. No—five. Big shapes with glowing eyes.
Rogues.
My back presses against the bark. I'm trapped. No wolf to defend myself. No pack to call for help. Just me and a pup against five predators who've lost their humanity.
Something wet drips down my face. I touch my scarred cheek and my fingers come away bloody. The branches must have cut me.
The scent of blood will draw them faster.
"Please," I whisper to the Moon Goddess I'm not sure exists. "Please, I'll do anything. Just protect my pup."
A twig snaps.
I bolt.
Don't know where I'm going. Don't care. Just run blindly through the darkness while shapes chase me from the shadows.
My boot catches on something and suddenly I'm falling. Not just stumbling—actually falling. The ground disappears beneath me.
I tumble down an embankment, hitting rocks and roots. My shoulder slams into something hard. My hip crashes into stone. The world spins in a chaos of pain and terror.
Then I hit bottom.
For a long moment, I just lie there gasping. Everything hurts. My shoulder throbs. My hip screams. But when I press my hand to my stomach, there's no sharp pain. No cramping.
The pup is okay. We're okay.
I'm in some kind of ravine. Steep walls rise on either side. Above, I hear the rogues pacing, growling in frustration. They're looking for a way down.
They'll find one eventually.
I force myself to crawl forward. My hands scrape against dirt and stone. Somewhere ahead, I see a darker shadow—a gap in the ravine wall.
A cave? A hollow?
I drag myself toward it. My body wants to quit. Wants to just lie down and give up. But my hand on my stomach reminds me why I can't.
This pup didn't ask for any of this. Didn't ask for a wolfless mother or a father who doesn't want them. Didn't ask to be called broken before they even took their first breath.
I'll be damned if I let my baby die because I gave up.
The hollow is barely big enough for me to squeeze inside. It's the trunk of a massive dead tree, rotted from the inside out. I curl up in the darkness, making myself as small as possible.
Above, I hear the rogues descending into the ravine.
My hand closes around the vial in my pocket. The doctor's words come back: Take it tonight. All of it.
Why? What was Maris poisoning me with? And why would the doctor risk helping me now?
Unless she felt guilty. Unless she knew what was going to happen and this was her way of apologizing.
I uncork the vial with shaking hands. The liquid inside glows faintly blue in the darkness. It smells like moonlight and mint.
Footsteps crunch outside my hiding spot.
"I smell blood," a rough voice says. Male. Rogue. "Fresh."
"And something else," another adds. "Something... sweet."
They smell the pregnancy. Oh god, they smell my pup.
"Pregnant females are valuable," the first voice continues. "We could sell her to the breeding packs. Make good money."
My stomach turns. Breeding packs—where they force she-wolves to produce pups for childless Alphas. I'd rather die.
The footsteps come closer. A shadow falls across the hollow's opening.
I tip the vial back and swallow every drop.
The effect is instant and agonizing.
Fire explodes through my veins. I bite down on my hand to keep from screaming. My body convulses. Every nerve ending lights up like I'm being electrocuted from the inside.
Something inside me breaks. No—not breaks. Shatters. Like chains I didn't know I was wearing suddenly snap all at once.
And then I feel her.
My wolf.
She's been there all along. Sleeping. Trapped. Buried under years of poison.
But now she's waking up. And she is furious.
My eyes fly open. The world looks different. Sharper. Colors I couldn't see before. Scents I couldn't smell.
The rogue's hand reaches into the hollow.
Something inside me roars.
My body moves on instinct. My hand—now tipped with claws I definitely didn't have a minute ago—slashes at the rogue's arm. He howls and jerks back.
"She cut me! The wolfless bitch has claws!"
"Impossible," another rogue snarls. "She doesn't have a wolf—"
Pain rips through my body again. My bones crack and reform. My spine arches. A scream tears from my throat as my first shift begins.
But something's wrong.
The shift is incomplete. Broken. My body gets stuck halfway between human and wolf. My hands are clawed but still hands. My teeth sharpen to fangs but my face remains mostly human. Silver-white fur erupts along my arms but patches of skin show through.
I'm a monster. A half-formed thing.
The rogues back away from the hollow, their eyes wide.
"What is she?" one whispers.
Before anyone can answer, another presence makes itself known.
The temperature drops. Every wolf in the ravine goes silent.
Someone else is here. Someone who makes even the rogues afraid.
A figure drops from the ravine wall above. He lands in a crouch—impossibly graceful, impossibly powerful. Even in my half-shifted state, my wolf recognizes what he is.
Alpha. Not just any Alpha. Something more. Something ancient and terrifying.
He wears a mask of black stone carved with symbols I don't recognize. Only one eye is visible through the mask—violet, like amethyst, glowing in the darkness.
The rogues drop to their stomachs immediately, whimpering submission.
The masked figure ignores them. His violet eye fixes on me, still curled in my hollow, trapped in my broken half-shift.
"Interesting," he says. His voice is distorted by the mask—deeper, layered with otherworldly resonance. "Very interesting indeed."
He takes a step toward me.
My wolf should be terrified. We should be running or submitting or doing anything except what we do.
We growl at him.
This strange, powerful Alpha who just made five rogues submit with his presence alone.
We bare our fangs and growl like we have any chance of fighting him.
He tilts his head, studying me. Then he does something I don't expect.
He laughs.
"You have spirit, little half-shift." He extends one hand toward the hollow. "But you're dying. I can smell it. The forced shift is tearing you apart from the inside."
He's right. Now that the adrenaline is fading, I feel it. My body trying to complete the shift but failing. Organs rearranging wrong. Bones breaking and healing crooked.
"I'll give you a choice," the masked Alpha says. "Come with me and live. Or stay here and die within the hour."
"Who..." My voice comes out wrong, distorted by my half-shifted throat. "Who are you?"
The violet eye gleams.
"I am Calix Mordane. The Rogue King." He crouches down to my level. "And you, little wolf, are far more valuable than you know."
His hand reaches into the hollow.
The moment his fingers brush my arm, lightning strikes through my entire body.
Not pain this time. Something else. Something that makes my broken wolf sing with recognition.
No. It can't be.
"Mate," my wolf whispers in my mind for the first time ever. "Mate."
The Rogue King's violet eye widens behind his mask. He felt it too.
"Impossible," he breathes.
Then my body gives out. The incomplete shift finally breaks me. I collapse forward into darkness, the last thing I see is the Rogue King catching me before I hit the ground.