ISLA'S POV
I don't remember how I survive.
One moment, the rogues are closing in. The next, I'm moving on pure survival instinct. My hand shoots out and grabs a vine hanging from above—some kind of nightshade plant I recognize even through the agony. I rip it from the tree and shove it directly into the face of the closest rogue.
The wolf yelps and staggers backward, rubbing at his eyes. It's not poison yet—the plant needs to be processed, needs time to work. But it's enough to break their formation for one crucial second.
That's all I need.
I roll away, ignoring the scream of pain from my ribs, and I run. I don't know where I'm going. I just know I can't die here. Not yet. Not like this.
The rogues chase me, but I have one advantage: I know plants. I know which ones cause pain, which ones cause blindness, which ones make skin burn. As I stumble through the forest, bleeding and barely conscious, I leave a trail of nature's weapons behind me. Thorned vines in their path. Stinging nettles thrown over my shoulder. Plants that make their paws burn and their eyes water.
It's not much. But it's something.
After what feels like forever but is probably only hours, the rogues give up the chase. Too much pain. Not enough reward for such a broken, starving meal.
I collapse against a tree and let the darkness take me.
Three days later.
I don't know how I'm still alive.
My water comes from streams where I lie down flat and drink like an animal. My food is berries and roots—anything I can identify that won't poison me. My wounds are infected. I can feel the fever burning through my body, making everything shimmer and shake.
But I'm still here. The baby is still here.
That's what matters.
That's the only thing keeping me moving.
I'm stumbling through a particularly dense part of the forest when I hear it—a female scream. Raw and terrified and desperate.
Every survival instinct I have screams at me to keep moving. To hide. To protect myself.
But I can't.
I push through the undergrowth and find her—a female rogue with dark hair and wild eyes, surrounded by three massive males. They're circling her like sharks, and she's backing away, her hands up in surrender.
"Please," she's saying. "I don't want trouble. Just let me pass."
"Too late for that, pretty thing," one of the males growls, and they lunge.
My body moves before my mind catches up.
I don't have strength. I don't have speed. I don't have a wolf or power or anything except knowledge. But I rip a handful of leaves from a nearby plant—poisonous, nasty stuff that burns on contact—and I throw it directly into their faces.
The males howl and stumble backward, and the female rogue doesn't hesitate. She shifts into her wolf form and attacks with vicious precision, taking down the nearest male while the other two are still blinded.
It's over in seconds.
The two survivors run, whimpering and cursing, disappearing into the forest like the cowards they are.
The female rogue shifts back to human form, breathing hard, and she looks at me like I've grown a second head.
"You just saved my life," she says, staring. "You're half-dead and covered in blood and you just saved my life."
I don't answer. I can't. My vision is starting to tunnel, and I think I might be about to fall.
The female catches me before I hit the ground.
"Easy," she says, and her voice is surprisingly gentle for someone so fierce. "I've got you. My name is Kaia. And I have a safe place. Not far from here."
The cave is small but dry, hidden behind a waterfall that Kaia seems to know intimately. She lays me down on furs and water, and she works with practiced efficiency—cleaning my wounds, binding my ribs, checking the baby.
"You're pregnant," she says, not a question.
"Yes," I whisper.
"And they beat you like this anyway?"
I don't answer. Kaia's expression hardens into something dangerous, and I realize in that moment that she would have killed them if she'd seen what they did to me. That makes her different from everyone else I've ever known.
That makes her dangerous.
That makes her necessary.
The fever comes that night.
I drift in and out of consciousness, caught between nightmare and reality. I see Damien's cold face. I see Vivienne's smile. I feel the baby struggling inside me, fighting to survive something it shouldn't have to survive.
"Hold on," I murmur, pressing my hand to my stomach. "Please, baby. Hold on. We're going to be okay. We're going to—"
"Shh," Kaia's voice cuts through the fever. She's wiping my forehead with cool water. "You're safe. You're safe now."
But I'm not safe. Nothing about this is safe.
I slip back into the fever dreams, and they're getting worse—darker, more desperate. I'm drowning in blood. I'm falling into an endless pit. I'm—
A sound.
Something outside the cave.
My eyes snap open, and suddenly, I'm not delirious anymore. Every instinct I have is screaming alert. Danger. Something's coming.
Kaia hears it too. She stands, moving to the cave entrance, her body tense.
"Who's there?" she calls out, her voice dropping into something lethal.
The answer comes from the darkness—a figure wrapped in shadows and a black cloak. Even from where I'm lying, even through my fever haze, I can see the mask. Obsidian. Covering the top half of a face I can't see. Can't read.
"I'm not here to fight," the figure says, and his voice is like smoke and thunder mixed together. Deep. Controlled. Ancient.
"Not yet," Kaia growls, and she shifts.
Her wolf form is beautiful and deadly, muscles bunching as she prepares to attack. She launches herself at the masked stranger with the fury of someone protecting what's hers.
The mask doesn't even flinch.
With a movement so fast I barely see it, he disarms her. Not violently. Not cruelly. Just... efficiently. Kaia hits the ground hard, gasping, her wolf form faltering as she realizes with shock that she's been completely outmatched.
The masked figure steps over her like she's nothing.
Like she's irrelevant.
And then he kneels beside my makeshift bed, and even through the fever, even through the pain and the terror, I feel it.
Power.
Ancient, overwhelming, suffocating power radiating from this man like heat from a fire. The kind of power that makes my wolf—the wolf I never had—want to submit just from his presence.
His gloved hand reaches toward me, and I should be terrified.
I should scream.
Instead, I feel something shift deep in my chest. Something that feels almost like recognition.
"Who are you?" I whisper, because I have to know.
The mask tilts slightly, and even though I can't see his face, I swear I feel silver eyes looking directly into my soul.
"Someone who's been searching for you for a very long time," he says quietly.
"For what?" I ask.
And his answer changes everything:
"For exactly what you are."