The only thing weaker than Kaelen's wolf was his human heart.
In the Grand Lyceum of Aethelburg, where the air was thick with the scent of pine, wet stone, and aggressive pride, he was a ghost. He moved through the cavernous training halls and moon-drenched courtyards not with the predatory grace of his kin, but with the hesitant shuffle of one who expects to be struck. At twenty winters, he was the oldest initiate still un-Bonded, a walking shame to the memory of his father, a War-Chief who had died with a song of glory on his lips.
Tonight was the Blood Moon Culling. The night the pack's young wolves would finally summon their inner beasts and forge the sacred Bond with a wolf spirit, ascending from mere initiates to full-fledged members of the Aethelgard Pack.
Kaelen stood at the edge of the roaring bonfire, its heat a mockery against the cold dread in his veins. The flames licked at the star-flecked sky, casting long, dancing shadows that looked like battling titans. All around him, boys and girls he'd grown up with were shedding their tunics, their bodies already thickening, muscles coiling and cracking as the first tremors of the Change took them. The air vibrated with raw, untamed power, a symphony of snapping sinew and guttural growls that made his own bones feel hollow.
"Look at them, Kaelen," a smooth, venomous voice slithered into his ear. Ronan, broad-shouldered and golden-maned, already had a dark shadow of fur creeping up his spine. His canines were pronounced, his eyes glowing with amber promise. "The future of the pack. It's a pity you won't be part of it. Maybe you can be a steward. Polish my armor after the Culling."
Laughter, sharp and brittle, echoed from Ronan's cronies. Kaelen said nothing. He had learned long ago that words were just another kind of weakness here. He simply stared into the fire, trying to find an ember of courage in the inferno.
"Initiates!" The voice of Alpha Borin cut through the chaos like a cliff-face breaking a storm. He was a mountain of a man, his face a roadmap of old battles, his presence a physical weight that demanded silence. "The Blood Moon rises! It calls to the wolf within you. It demands its due. Heed its call, and you will become what you were born to be. Fight it, and you will remain… less."
His gaze, heavy and dismissive, swept over the crowd and seemed to pause for a fraction of a second on Kaelen. Less.
One by one, the transformations began. It was a brutal, beautiful, and terrifying spectacle. Ronan's change was a thing of awful majesty. He threw back his head and a roar tore from his throat, half-human, wholly beast. His body expanded, muscles surging, dark silver fur erupting from his skin. Within moments, a massive, powerful wolf stood where the boy had been, shaking its great head, eyes burning with intelligent, ferocious fire. The pack elders nodded in approval.
Others followed. Some changes were clean, others were messy, accompanied by screams of pain and the sickening crunch of reshaping bone. But they all Changed. They all found their beast.
Until it was Kaelen's turn.
The circle cleared around him. The expectant, pitiful stares of the pack felt like physical blows. The Alpha gave a curt, almost bored nod.
"Begin, Kaelen."
He closed his eyes, seeking the void within himself where the wolf was supposed to reside. His father had described it as a raging sun, a coiled storm of instinct and power. Kaelen found only a cold, silent emptiness. A hollowed-out cave where a titan should have slept.
He strained. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. He begged, he pleaded with the silent moon above. He dug his nails into his palms, drawing thin trails of blood, hoping the pain would be a key.
Nothing.
A low, uncomfortable murmur rippled through the pack. He heard a girl snicker.
"Focus, boy!" an elder barked, impatience sharpening his tone.
Tears of frustration and shame pricked at Kaelen's eyes. He pushed harder, his body trembling with the effort, veins standing out on his neck and forehead. A low, pathetic sound, a whimper, escaped his throat. It was the sound of a kicked dog.
Then, it happened. Not a transformation, but a spasm. A violent, shuddering contortion that wracked his frame. His spine arched painfully, but no fur bloomed. His jaw distended with a crack that was too small, too human. His fingers curled into useless, blunt claws. Patches of thin, russet fur, patchy and sickly, sprouted in uneven tufts across his arms and cheeks. One of his eyes flooded with a dull, watery yellow, while the other remained its usual, hopeless grey.
He was caught in a horrific middle ground. Not man, not wolf. A monster. A joke.
The silence that fell was worse than the laughter. It was a blanket of pure, unadulterated contempt.
Ronan, back in his human form, laughed, a loud, cruel bark. "By the blood of our fathers! What is that? A mangy fox?"
The dam broke. The pack howled with derision. They pointed, they jeered. Children imitated his hunched, twisted posture.
Alpha Borin looked away, his face a mask of disgust. "It is as I feared. The son of Theron is a Husk. A barren field. Get him out of my sight."
The word 'Husk' landed like a death sentence. It was the term for the rare few who could not complete the Change, who were left as broken, powerless things, rejected by both man and beast.
Two pack guards grabbed his arms, their grip unnecessarily hard. They didn't look at him as they half-dragged, half-marched him away from the fire, away from the howls of the newly Bonded, away from the life he was supposed to have. The last thing he saw was Ronan's triumphant, pitying smirk.
He was thrown into a small, windowless storeroom near the armory, used for cleaning supplies and disciplining unruly pups. The door slammed shut, the heavy iron bolt sliding home with a finality that echoed in his soul.
He was alone. In the profound darkness, he slid down the rough-hewn stone wall, the patchy fur on his arms retracting, leaving his skin raw and sensitive. The shame was a physical acid in his stomach. He was a disgrace to his father's name. He was nothing.
Hours passed. The celebrations outside died down. The only sounds were the distant, lonely cry of a true wolf and the frantic beating of his own heart. He had no plan, no future. He would be cast out, sent to live with the human sympathizers in the border towns, a permanent reminder of failure.
A soft scraping sound at the door broke him from his despair.
The bolt slid back with a quiet, deliberate click. The door opened just a crack, letting in a sliver of silvery moonlight. A figure slipped inside, closing the door silently behind them.
It was Elara.
Her name was a breath in his mind. She was the pack historian's apprentice, a human girl who had been granted sanctuary within Aethelburg years ago after her own village was destroyed by vampires. She was all softness where the she-wolves were hardened edges. Her hair was the colour of dark honey, and her eyes, the grey of a winter sea, held a quiet intelligence that saw too much.
In her hands, she carried a small cloth bundle and a waterskin.
"Kaelen?" she whispered, her voice a balm on his raw nerves.
He turned his face away, hiding in the shadows. "Go away, Elara. You shouldn't be here."
She ignored him, kneeling before him. She unfolded the cloth to reveal a hunk of bread, some cheese, and a strip of dried venison. "You need to eat."
"I'm not hungry," he muttered, though his stomach clenched with a hollow ache.
"Liar," she said softly. She uncorked the waterskin and handed it to him. Her fingers brushed against his, and a jolt, warm and entirely human, shot up his arm. He took it and drank, the cool water a blessing.
He risked a glance at her. She wasn't looking at him with pity, nor with the revulsion he'd seen in everyone else. She was studying him, her head tilted, as if he were a fascinating, complex text in her archives.
"What happened out there, Kaelen?" she asked, her tone not accusatory, but curious.
"What always happens," he said, the bitterness thick in his throat. "Nothing. I'm a Husk. A broken thing."
"I saw you," she said. "You were trying to force it. You were fighting yourself. The Bond isn't about domination, Kaelen. It's about acceptance. It's a partnership."
"What would you know of it?" he snapped, the words coming out harsher than he intended. "You're human. You don't have a monster screaming to get out."
Her grey eyes flickered, and for a moment, a deep, old pain surfaced in them. "No," she said quietly. "I don't. But I know monsters. I've seen what the vampires do. I've seen what a real monster looks like. And you, Kaelen, are not it."
Her words should have comforted him. Instead, they fueled his anger. She didn't understand. No one did. "You're wrong. I'm worse. A real monster has power. I have nothing. I am a shadow of my father. I am shame given flesh."
He expected her to recoil, to stand up and leave him to his misery. But Elara did something that shattered him completely. She reached out and placed her warm palm against his cheek.
The contact was electric. It was the first gentle touch he had felt since his mother died years ago. It burned away the anger, the shame, leaving only a vast, aching vulnerability. A single, traitorous tear escaped his damaged eye and traced a path through the grime on his face.
"Your father was a great warrior," she whispered, her thumb gently stroking his skin. "But greatness isn't only found in the howl. Sometimes, it's found in the silence that endures. Sometimes, the strongest thing a person can do is not become a monster, even when the world demands it of him."
Her words wove a fragile spell in the dark room. For a fleeting moment, the hollowness inside him didn't feel like emptiness, but like potential. Like a vessel waiting to be filled with something other than rage.
He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes. The beast within was silent, a dormant, absent god. But here, in the darkness with this human girl, a different kind of spark flickered to life. It was small, and fragile, and terrified. But it was there.
The sound of heavy, booted footsteps marching towards the storeroom broke the moment. Elara snatched her hand back, her eyes wide with alarm.
"The guards on their rounds," she hissed. "I have to go."
She stood, gathering her things. At the door, she paused and looked back at him, her silhouette framed in the moonlight.
"They're sending a contingent to the front at dawn," she said, her voice urgent. "To the Silveron Marches. The war is worsening. They need every able body, even… even the ones they don't understand."
She slipped out, the door clicking shut, plunging him back into darkness.
But this time, the darkness was different. It was no longer an ending. It was a beginning, fraught with terror and a sliver of impossible hope. The Great War. The front lines. A place where werewolves died in droves against the ancient, merciless vampire legions.
It was a death sentence.
But in Aethelburg, he was already dead. In the Silveron Marches, he could at least die as a soldier, not a shameful secret. And maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to fill the hollow space inside him. Not with the beast he was supposed to have, but with the man he was forced to become.
As the first hints of dawn tinged the world grey outside his prison, Kaelen made a decision. He would not be sent away in disgrace. He would volunteer for the war.
He would go to the place where monsters roamed, a weakling among titans, armed with nothing but a human girl's faith and the desperate, foolish dream of a Husk who refused to be broken.
The howling was over. Now, the long, hard road began.