Garrett's screaming started before anyone could react.
Black veins spread from his chest like spiderweb cracks in glass, pulsing with each heartbeat. His emotions—already laid bare by the Shadow's feeding—turned into something else. Something hungry.
"Get back!" I shoved Luna behind me as Garrett's form began to shift. Not into a wolf. Into something between.
"What did they do to him?" Marcus demanded, Alpha command keeping the panicking pack from fleeing.
But I could feel it through my gift—Garrett wasn't Garrett anymore. He was a doorway. And something was pushing through from the other side.
"They're using him as an anchor," Selene snarled, her ancient power flaring. "The Shadows can't survive long in our world without—"
Garrett's mouth opened wider than any jaw should allow. Shadow poured out like black bile, forming shapes in the air. Wolves. Dozens of them. But worse were the whispers that came with them—promises of power, of freedom from pain, of emotional silence.
Several pack members stepped forward, eyes glazing over.
"Don't listen!" I pushed my gift outward, trying to shield them. "It's lies! They'll drain you dry!"
But Garrett—or the thing wearing his body—laughed. "The Broken Luna speaks of lies? Tell them, Aria. Tell them what you've hidden. What your daughter truly is."
Luna pressed against my leg, and I felt her fear. Not of the Shadows. Of discovery.
"She's my daughter. That's all that matters."
"Is it?" Shadow-Garrett stood, movements wrong, jointless. "A child born of rejected bonds. Conceived in corruption. Did you think the Moon Goddess blessed you? Or cursed you with an abomination?"
"Don't call her that!" Marcus stepped forward, and my heart clenched. Even now, even after everything, paternal instinct flared.
"The Alpha defends what he threw away. How touching." Shadow-Garrett's attention fixed on Luna. "Show them, little one. Show them what you really are."
"No." But Luna was already reacting to the emotional assault. Her power, usually silver-bright, flickered with threads of darkness.
The same darkness the Shadows were made of.
"You see?" Shadow-Garrett spread arms that bent in too many places. "She's not just an empath. She's a bridge. Born to be our vessel into this world. The rejected child of a rejected mother—the perfect host for our kind."
"You're lying!" But even as I said it, I remembered Selene's words. The first of her kind. A power not seen since the first wolves.
What if that power wasn't entirely wolf?
Luna's emotions spiked—fear, anger, but underneath, recognition. She could feel the truth in the Shadow's words. Part of her nature called to theirs.
"I won't let you have her," I snarled, pulling Luna closer.
"You won't have a choice." More Shadows poured from Garrett's mouth. "She'll come to us willingly. When she realizes what the wolves will do once they know. How they treat different. How they fear power they can't control."
Around us, pack members were backing away. From the Shadows, yes. But also from Luna. I felt their fear, their suspicion. History repeating.
"That's enough!" Marcus's roar shook the ground. "Shadow or not, truth or lies, she is a child. My child. And I'll kill anyone—anything—that threatens her."
For a moment, the clearing went still. Then Luna stepped forward, away from my protection.
"You're wrong," she told Shadow-Garrett, her small voice carrying impossible authority. "I am a bridge. But not for you."
She raised her tiny hand, and I felt her pull on something deep. Not shadow. Not light. Something between. The place where all emotions were born, where feeling became form.
"I bridge the rejected and the accepted. The broken and the whole. The shadow and the light." Power poured from her—not silver, not dark, but twilight. "And you? You're just hungry ghosts who forgot how to feel."
She pushed.
It wasn't violent. It was worse. She gave them back what they'd lost—the ability to feel everything. Joy, sorrow, love, loss, hope, despair. Centuries of suppressed emotion crashed into the Shadows at once.
They fled screaming, unable to bear what they'd spent lifetimes avoiding. Even Shadow-Garrett released his host, the darkness pouring away like smoke in wind.
Garrett collapsed, human again but changed. The black veins remained, pulsing faintly. Alive but marked.
Luna swayed, and I caught her. "Tired, Mama."
"I know, baby. You did so good."
But around us, the pack's emotions told a different story. Fear. Uncertainty. The question none dared voice: What exactly had they just witnessed?
Elder Thorne cleared his throat. "The challenge... given circumstances... perhaps we should postpone—"
"No." I stood, Luna sleeping in my arms. "We settle this now. All of it."
I looked at Marcus, at the pack, at the future hanging between us.
"But first, someone needs to decide. Am I the defective Luna who deserved rejection? Or am I the mother of the most powerful wolf ever born? Because you can't have it both ways."
The silence that followed was answer enough.
We'd survived the Shadows. But the real battle—for acceptance, for place, for Luna's future—was just beginning.