Lyra's POV
The screams grew louder. The air turned heavy with the scent of burning wood and wet fur. I could barely breathe not just from fear, but from the weight of the betrayal spilling through our bond. Every pack wolf could feel it. The breaking. The splintering. Bonds that had been steady and loyal for generations… suddenly snapping one by one.Theo pulled me down a narrow stairwell leading into the tunnels beneath the manor. The corridor was dimly lit by torches, their flames shivering as the ground above us shook. "Stay close," he said through gritted teeth. "I don't understand," I whispered, my voice trembling. "Why are our wolves fighting each other? Why" He didn't answer. Couldn't. The truth was too heavy even for him. The tunnels smelled of damp stone and earth. I could hear our wolves howling above not in unity, but in chaos. Some of those voices I knew. Warriors who had taught me to shoot arrows, to ride, to climb trees. And now they were dying. Theo stopped suddenly. His body went rigid. I followed his gaze and froze. Ahead of us stood a man. One of our own. Elder Garran Father's Beta, his most trusted advisor. He was tall, gray-haired, his amber eyes glowing faintly in the torchlight. For a heartbeat, I thought he'd come to help.
Then I saw the blood dripping from his claws. "Theo," he said softly, as though greeting a son. "You shouldn't be down here." Theo moved in front of me, his dagger drawn. "You betrayed us." Garran sighed. "Tristan was a good Alpha. But good doesn't keep power. The Silverfang line has ruled too long. The packs need new order." "Order?" Theo's voice shook with fury. "You call this slaughter order?" Garran's expression didn't change. "Sometimes the forest must burn for new life to grow." His gaze shifted to me. And I felt it the heavy, cruel recognition. "The youngest," he murmured. "Tristan's little girl."
Theo snarled, stepping closer, every muscle in his body coiled like a spring. "You don't touch her." Garran's smile was almost pitying. "It's not me you should fear." Then movement shadows in the tunnel behind him. Three wolves, dark-furred and blood-streaked, closing in. "Theo!" He pushed me behind him just as Garran lunged. The clash was sudden, brutal steel against claw, echoing through the stone. Theo fought like the son of an Alpha should fierce, desperate, graceful even in rage. But there were too many. I screamed as one of the wolves tore into his arm. He spun, slashing its throat, blood spraying across the wall. Garran caught him by the throat and slammed him against the stones. "The pack belongs to the strong!" Garran growled. Theo's eyes met mine — gold burning, pleading. "Run, Lyra." "No!" I sobbed, reaching for him. "I'm not leaving you" "Run!" he shouted again, and this time his voice carried the Alpha command. It hit like a shock through my body my knees buckled, my breath stopped.
Tears blinded me as I stumbled back, the pendant he'd given me clutched in my fist. I turned and ran down the tunnel, my bare feet pounding the cold stone. Behind me, I heard his growl turn into a roar and then a sound I'll never forget. A strangled cry. A thud.
Silence. The world tilted. I ran until my lungs burned, until the tunnels opened into the forest at the southern border. Smoke billowed above the treetops, and the packhouse was nothing but a distant glow of fire. The Silverfang Pack my home was gone. I collapsed on the forest floor, my body shaking. My hands were slick with tears and dirt. The moonlight flickered through the branches, cold and distant. And then, for the briefest heartbeat it pulsed again. That same strange warmth in my chest.
That same second heartbeat. Someone, somewhere, felt it too. I didn't know it then but far beyond the burning forest, another child, a boy with storm-gray eyes, stirred from sleep, his heart pounding with the echo of mine.
Lyra's POV
The forest was quiet again too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes after a storm, when the air feels hollow and everything you love has already been taken. I don't remember how long I ran. Time didn't exist anymore only breath and pain and the pounding of my feet on the earth. I stumbled through roots and branches, my dress torn, my hair matted with smoke. Every sound made me flinch the snap of a twig, the rustle of leaves, the echo of distant howls that might have been hunters… or ghosts.
When I finally stopped, the world seemed to tilt around me. My chest heaved, my throat raw from crying. The air here smelled different damp and wild, the edge of a land not ours. I had crossed the border. Silverfang territory was gone. Everything behind me burned in the darkness, and everything ahead was unknown. I fell to my knees by a small creek, the water catching the moonlight in shattered fragments. My reflection stared back a pale-faced girl with ash streaked across her cheeks and eyes too wide to look like her own. "Father," I whispered, my voice breaking. "Mother. Theo…"
The words dissolved into sobs. I pressed the silver pendant against my chest the one Theo had given me that morning. The wolf etched in its center caught the light, gleaming faintly. Run south. Find Riverbend Pack. Tell them who you are. His voice echoed in my mind, even as part of me already knew: if I told anyone who I really was, I'd die before sunrise. Garran's betrayal wasn't a moment it was a takeover. Whoever survived in Silverfang was already hunting the Hale bloodline.