ZARA POV
"She'll become the first Feral Tamer in history."
Mara's words echoed in my head as Kael dragged me back to his den. A Feral Tamer. Something that could corrupt every bonded beastman alive with a single thought.
I was going to become the thing that destroyed this world.
"Get inside." Kael shoved me into a small cave chamber and blocked the entrance with his massive body. "Don't try to run. Don't try anything. Just... stay here until I figure out what to do with you."
Through the bond, I felt his exhaustion. His fear. His desperate wish that he'd never met me.
Same, I thought bitterly.
He left without another word, and I heard something heavy scraping across stone. He was sealing me in. Trapping me like the monster everyone thought I was.
Maybe they were right.
I slid down the cave wall and finally let myself cry—really cry. Not the silent tears from before, but ugly, broken sobs that tore through my chest. Everything hurt. My arms burned where the black marks were spreading. My heart ached from Kael's hatred bleeding through our bond. My mind screamed with the memory of that Feral dying because I'd tried to help.
Back home, I'd been good at my job. Smart. Capable. I'd spent years studying ancient civilizations, understanding how they lived and died. And now I was living in one, destroying it from the inside out.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the darkness. "I'm so sorry."
Nobody answered.
Hours passed. Maybe days—I couldn't tell in the pitch-black cave. My stomach growled with hunger, but I ignored it. What was the point of eating when I was going to be executed at dawn anyway?
Through the bond, I felt Kael somewhere in the distance. He was arguing with someone, probably about whether to kill me now or wait for the Council. The emotions coming through were sharp and angry, and each one cut into me like glass.
I needed to leave. Not to escape—I knew I couldn't outrun wolves—but because staying here meant Kael would die with me. If I could get far enough away before the corruption reached my heart, maybe the bond would break. Maybe he'd survive.
It was the least I could do after ruining his life.
I pressed my hands against the stone blocking the entrance. It was heavy, but desperation made me strong. I pushed with everything I had, feeling the rock shift slightly.
Then I heard it—a sound that made me freeze.
A child crying.
It came from outside the cave, weak and frightened. A little voice calling for help that nobody was answering.
Through the bond, I felt Kael's location. He was far away, still arguing. Everyone was far away. Nobody was coming to help whoever was crying out there.
I pushed harder against the stone. It scraped across the ground, opening a gap just big enough for me to squeeze through. The black marks on my arms glowed faintly, and I realized with shock that they'd made me stronger. The corruption was changing me.
Great. Another reason to hate myself.
I slipped through the gap and followed the crying sound through the darkness. The moon was high, casting silver light through the trees. Everything looked scary and beautiful at the same time—like a fairy tale that had gone wrong.
The crying got louder, more desperate.
I found the wolf pup near a fallen tree. It was so small, maybe the size of a normal dog puppy back home. Its silver fur was matted with blood, and black veins crawled across its tiny body. Feral infection.
"Oh no." I dropped to my knees beside it. "Please don't be dying. Please."
The pup whimpered, its blue eyes rolling back. It couldn't have been more than a few weeks old. Someone's baby. Someone's child.
"Help," it whispered in a voice that sounded almost human. "Hurts. Help me."
My heart shattered. This wasn't a monster. This was a scared kid who didn't understand why its body was betraying it.
"I don't know how," I said, tears streaming down my face. "I tried to help before and I made everything worse. I killed that Feral instead of curing it."
"Please." The pup's breathing got shallow. "Don't want to die."
My marks started glowing—not black this time, but gold. The same gold from when I'd accidentally bonded Kael. They pulsed with warmth, spreading up my arms like liquid sunlight.
The vision woman's voice echoed in my memory: "The curse feeds on broken bonds, on isolation. Only connection can cure it."
Connection. Not force. Not desperation.
Love.
"Okay," I whispered, placing my hands on the pup's chest. "I'm going to try again. But this time, I'm not going to take your corruption away. I'm going to share your pain. Deal with it together. Is that okay?"
The pup nodded weakly.
I closed my eyes and thought about connection. About the bond with Kael that I'd forced but that now felt like an anchor keeping me from drowning. About how lonely I'd been back home, always studying dead civilizations instead of building relationships with living people.
I didn't want to be alone anymore. And neither did this dying pup.
"You're not alone," I told it. "I'm here. I'm not leaving."
Golden light poured from my palms, but this time it felt different. Warm instead of burning. Gentle instead of forceful. The light wrapped around both of us, connecting us not through a bond mark but through simple compassion.
The black veins on the pup's body started fading. Not disappearing—they flowed into me instead, joining the corruption I'd already absorbed. More darkness crawling under my skin, more poison threatening to turn me Feral.
But the pup's breathing steadied. Its eyes cleared. The whimpering stopped.
It was working.
I pushed harder, taking more corruption, letting it fill me up like a cup catching poison. My vision blurred. My heart raced. The black marks spread up my neck, across my jaw.
Almost there. Just a little more.
The last trace of corruption left the pup and slammed into me like a truck. I gasped, falling backward, my whole body convulsing as the darkness tried to take over my mind.
Fight it, I told myself. You saved the pup. Don't let the corruption win now.
Slowly, painfully, I pushed the darkness down. Not out—I didn't know how to do that yet—but down deep where it couldn't control me.
When I finally opened my eyes, the pup was standing. Healthy. Healed. Staring at me with wonder in its blue eyes.
"You saved me," it whispered.
"Yeah." I laughed weakly. "I guess I did."
Then I heard voices shouting in the distance. The pack had noticed I was gone. They were coming.
The pup's ears perked up. "Mama's coming! She'll be so happy!" Then it looked at me with sudden fear. "But... you're the bad human. The one they want to kill."
"I know." I struggled to stand, the corruption making me dizzy. "You should go to your mom. Tell her you're okay."
"What about you?"
"Don't worry about me. Just go!"
The pup hesitated, then licked my hand once before running toward the voices calling for it.
I tried to run the opposite direction, but my legs gave out. Too much corruption absorbed too fast. The black marks had spread across half my face now, and I could feel the Feral madness scratching at the edges of my mind.
Footsteps pounded toward me. Multiple wolves, all angry, all ready to kill the human who'd escaped.
I closed my eyes, accepting my fate.
"There!" someone shouted. "The curse-bringer is here!"
But before they reached me, a different voice cut through the chaos. Small and high-pitched and absolutely determined.
"No! Don't hurt her! She saved me!"
I opened my eyes and saw the wolf pup standing between me and the approaching pack, its tiny body spread wide like it could protect me.
The pack skidded to a stop. A massive female wolf pushed to the front—the pup's mother—and she froze when she saw her baby alive and healthy.
"Star?" The mother's voice cracked. "You were dying. The healer said there was no hope. How are you—"
"The human saved me!" Star pointed at me with one tiny paw. "She took my sickness into herself! She's the reason I'm alive!"
The pack stared at me. Then at Star. Then at the black marks now covering most of my body—marks that had clearly come from absorbing corruption.
Kael appeared through the crowd, his face a mask of fury. "You escaped. I should have known you'd—" He stopped when he saw Star. Through the bond, I felt his shock, his confusion, his desperate need to understand what was happening.
Star's mother approached me slowly, carefully. "You saved my daughter?"
"I tried," I whispered. "I'm sorry about the marks. About the corruption. I didn't know where else to put it."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she did something that shocked everyone including me.
She bowed her head. "Thank you. She's all I have left after her father died last winter. You gave me back my world."
Other wolves murmured in confusion. The human was supposed to be evil. Supposed to spread corruption. But here was proof she could heal it instead.
Kael grabbed my shoulders, studying my face where black marks crawled across my cheek. "Are you insane? You absorbed more corruption! Mara said if you take too much—"
"I know what she said." I met his frost-blue eyes. "But I couldn't let a kid die when I could help. Call me crazy, but that's who I am."
Through the bond, I felt something shift in him. The hatred softened. The fear remained. But underneath it all, something new appeared.
Respect.
Before anyone could speak, purple smoke erupted in the center of the clearing.
Lysandra materialized, her jade eyes glowing with rage. But she wasn't alone. Behind her stood a figure that made every wolf present drop to their knees in terror.
A man—no, a beast—with black scales gleaming in the moonlight and violet eyes that saw through souls.
"Zarek Voidtalon," Kael breathed. "The Dragon King."
The most dangerous creature alive had just appeared in our clearing.
And he was staring directly at me.
"So," his voice rumbled like thunder, "you're the little Tamer making so much noise in my world."