The heavy silence of the Great Hall shattered like glass. One second, the world had been a frozen portrait of violet light; the next, it was a cacophony of scraping chairs, drawing steel, and the guttural roars of outraged wolves.
"Kill it!" Silas screamed, his voice cracking with a terror he tried to mask as command. "Kill the freak!"
I tried to lunge away, my spectral body flickering like a dying candle. I wanted to melt into the floor, to become the shadow I had been for twenty-one years. But the hand on my scruff was an anchor. Kaelen Blackwood didn't just hold me; his touch felt like a brand, forcing my translucent fur to turn solid and heavy wherever his skin met mine.
"Let go!" I hissed, my voice echoing from the corners of the room rather than my muzzle.
"Not a chance, Little Ghost," Kaelen growled.
He didn't look at me. His focus was entirely on the circle of Silver Moon guards closing in. Silas was scrambling to his feet, his handsome face twisted into a mask of pure, ugly hatred. He snatched a heavy silver spear from the wall display, the tip gleaming with a lethality meant for monsters.
"She is a defect of my pack, Blackwood!" Silas roared. "Unband her and step aside, or you'll bleed on my floors along with her."
Kaelen didn't step aside. Instead, he pulled me closer, tucking my shimmering, wolfish form against his side as if I were a prize he'd already won. A low, tectonic vibration started in his chest, the Blackwood Alpha Aura. It didn't just command; it crushed. The air in the hall grew thick, smelling of ozone and wet earth.
"You call her a defect," Kaelen said, his voice deceptively calm. "I call her a miracle. And in the North, we keep what we find."
"She is property!" Sienna shrieked from the high table, her claws extended, her tawny eyes blown wide with jealousy. "She ruined the Summit! Kill her!"
The guards lunged.
Kaelen didn't shift. He didn't need to. With his free hand, he grabbed the first guard by the throat, the sound of snapping bone lost in the sudden roar of the crowd. He swung the man like a club, clearing a path toward the heavy oak doors.
"Thora," Kaelen muttered, his mouth close to my ear. "If you want to live, stop fighting me and start fighting them. Vanish."
I didn't know how. I was a mass of panicked instinct. But as a spear whistled through the air, aimed directly for my ribs, the "cold hum" in my chest spiked. I stopped trying to run. I simply... stopped being there.
The spear passed through my chest as if it were passing through a cloud of smoke. The guard who threw it stumbled forward, his momentum carrying him into the space I had occupied a millisecond before.
"Good girl," Kaelen grunted.
He used the confusion to vault over a dining table, his heavy boots smashing through plates of roasted meat and fine crystal. We reached the doors just as Silas let out a howl that shook the chandeliers.
"Seal the gates! No one leaves the Silver Moon territory alive!"
The night air hit us like a physical blow. The moon was high now, a bloated silver eye watching the chaos below. Kaelen didn't head for the SUVs. He knew they'd be blocked. Instead, he dove straight for the tree line of the Black Forest, his strides impossible and predatory.
I was running beside him now, my paws barely touching the pine needles. It was a hallucinatory sensation. I felt the wind, but it didn't bite. I felt the ground, but it didn't bruise. I was a passenger in my own body, a spirit tethered to the massive, warm presence of the man beside me.
"Why?" I projected the thought into his mind, the Wraith-link snapping into place without me knowing how. "Why save a 'defect'?"
Kaelen didn't stop. He vaulted over a fallen cedar, his golden eyes scanning the dark woods for the pursuit he knew was coming. "You aren't a defect, Thora. You're a Wraith. The Silver Moon is too stupid to realize they've been harboring a god for two decades. I'm not that blind."
Behind us, the forest erupted. The baying of a hundred wolves echoed through the valleys—the Silver Moon pack was on the hunt. They knew these woods better than Kaelen did. They were faster in their physical forms, their claws meant for the kill.
"They're gaining," I whispered through the shadows.
"I know," Kaelen said. He stopped abruptly in a small clearing, the moonlight illuminating the steam rising from his skin. He turned to face the direction of the noise, his hands balled into fists. "Go."
"What?"
"You're a Ghost, Thora. Fade. Hide in the stones, in the trees. They can't track a scent that doesn't exist."
"And you?"
Kaelen stripped off his heavy coat, his muscles rippling under his shirt. He looked at me, and for the first time, the "Monster" looked human. There was a grim, dark amusement in his eyes.
"I'm an Alpha of the North," he said, his voice beginning to distort as his jaw lengthened and his bones began to crack and reshape. "I don't hide. I hold the line."
He exploded into his shift. It wasn't silent like mine. It was a violent, terrifying display of raw power. In seconds, a massive black wolf, the size of a small horse, stood where the man had been. He bared teeth the size of daggers and let out a howl that silenced the entire forest.
He was going to fight the entire pack alone so I could escape.
I backed away into the shadows of an ancient oak, my violet eyes wide. I could see the first of the Silver Moon wolves emerging from the brush, Sienna in her tawny form, her eyes bloodshot with rage, followed by Silas, a golden wolf with murder in his heart.
They didn't see me. I was just a ripple in the moonlight.
But as Silas lunged for Kaelen's throat, and the black wolf braced for the impact of twenty attackers at once, I felt the "Anchor" pull. It wasn't just Kaelen holding me. It was the bond.
If he died here, I would fade. I would become a memory.
I looked at Silas, the man who had made my life a living hell. The man who was now trying to kill the only person who had ever looked at me and seen a queen.
The violet light in my chest didn't just hum this time. It roared. I didn't run into the woods. I ran toward the fight. I dove into the fray, but I didn't bite. As I passed through the body of the first guard, he collapsed, his skin turning blue as the Wraith-cold drained the heat from his heart. I flickered in and out of existence, a shimmering blur of violet terror.
Silas skidded to a halt, his golden fur standing on end as I materialized directly in front of him.
"You forgot, Alpha," I whispered, my voice a thousand overlapping echoes. "You can't kill a ghost."
I lunged, my spectral claws reaching not for his throat, but for the glowing silver thread of his own "Inner Wolf."
I felt my claws sink into his soul. Silas let out a sound that wasn't a howl, it was a scream of pure, spiritual agony. But as I pulled, a sudden, searing pain shot through my own head.
A silver net, woven with ancient runes, fell from the canopy above, draping over my translucent body. The moment the silver touched me, my world turned to white-hot fire. I fell, my Wraith form flickering violently between wolf and girl, the spirit-realm screaming to take me back.
The last thing I saw was Kaelen's black wolf lunging toward me, his jaws snapping at the air, as a group of hooded figures stepped out from the darkness, men who weren't wolves at all.
"The Wraith is captured," a cold, mechanical voice said. "Bring the cage."