Aria's POV
The golden light fades, and I'm still standing.
I shouldn't be. The Burning Wastes kill everyone who enters—that's what I've been told my entire life. But here I am, alive, breathing air so hot it should be melting my lungs.
Except it's not.
The heat that should be killing me feels like a warm bath. Like coming home after being lost in the cold for too long. The black volcanic glass that was cutting my feet now seems to smooth itself beneath each step I take.
Come deeper, daughter. Come home.
The voice pulls at something deep in my blood, and I can't resist even if I wanted to. My feet move on their own, carrying me forward into the wasteland while behind me, I hear the guards screaming.
"She's glowing! The cursed girl is glowing!"
"We need to tell the Alpha!"
Let them run. Let them tell Caspian whatever they want. I don't care anymore.
I walk for what feels like hours. The sun climbs higher, turning the black glass into a field of mirrors that should blind me, but my eyes adjust somehow. My vision becomes sharper, clearer, like I'm seeing the world for the first time.
The weakness that's been eating me alive since the rejection is fading with each step. My legs grow stronger. My chest stops aching. Even the black rejection marks covering my skin start to tingle and burn—but it's not a bad burn. It feels like something is waking up underneath.
Closer. You're so close now.
"Close to what?" I whisper, my voice strange in the empty wasteland.
The answer comes not in words, but in vision. Through the shimmering heat ahead, I see something rising from the ground.
Ruins.
My breath catches as I get closer. These aren't just any ruins—they're ancient, older than anything I've ever seen. Black stone walls reach toward the sky, covered in symbols that make my eyes water when I try to focus on them. But as I approach, the symbols begin to glow, one by one, burning with golden fire.
They're responding to me.
The temple—because that's clearly what it is—has no roof. The walls form a circle, and at the center, I see something that makes me stop dead in my tracks.
A pyre. A massive pile of wood and stone that should have burned to ash centuries ago. But this pyre is wrapped in chains—thick, heavy chains that look like they're made of frozen flames. They shimmer blue and white, cold fire that somehow exists in this burning heat.
Every instinct screams at me to turn back. This is wrong. This is dangerous. This is—
This is your birthright.
My feet carry me forward. I can't stop them. Don't want to stop them.
As I step through the temple entrance, the symbols on the walls flare brighter. They're telling a story—I can almost read it. Pictures of people with wings made of fire. Creatures being born from flames and ash. Wolves rising from a great pyre, created by hands that wielded power older than time itself.
"What is this place?" My voice echoes off the ancient stones.
The beginning. The end. The truth.
I reach the pyre and stare at the frozen flame chains. They're beautiful and terrible, humming with power that makes my teeth ache. Up close, I can see something beneath the chains—a heart of fire still burning after all these years, waiting.
Waiting for me.
My hand lifts on its own. I try to pull it back, try to stop myself, but my body won't obey. My fingers stretch toward the chains, and somewhere in my mind, I know that touching them will change everything.
"Please," I whisper, though I don't know who I'm begging. "I'm scared."
Fear is for those who have something to lose. You have already lost everything. Now gain everything.
My fingers brush the frozen flames.
The world explodes.
Light and fire and power crash into me like an ocean wave, drowning me, filling me, tearing me apart and rebuilding me all at once. I scream but can't hear my own voice over the roar of flames. The chains shatter into a million pieces of frozen fire that melt in the heat and disappear like they never existed.
The pyre ignites.
But it's not the wood that's burning—it's me.
Fire erupts from my chest where the rejection marks have been killing me. The black cracks across my skin burn away, consumed by flames that don't hurt. Instead, they feel like power, like life, like everything I should have been.
My back explodes in agony and ecstasy as something tears through my shoulder blades. I scream again as wings—actual wings made of living fire—burst from my back and spread wide. They're enormous, beautiful, terrifying, and completely mine.
My copper hair catches fire, but instead of burning away, it becomes fire itself, flames dancing around my face in shades of gold and red. When I look down at my hands, they're glowing, my skin radiating light like I've swallowed the sun.
And then the memories hit.
Not my memories. Older ones. Ancient ones.
I see the first Phoenix Ancients, beings of pure fire who existed before wolves, before packs, before any of this. I see them creating the first shifters from ash and flame and magic, giving birth to an entire race. I see my family—generations of Emberlys—wielding fire like it's part of their soul.
Because it is.
We aren't wolves, I realize with stunning clarity. We never were.
The Emberly family descends from the Phoenix Ancients. We're fire-wielders, fire-keepers, fire itself wearing skin. My grandmother sealed my power when I was a baby to protect me from those who hunt phoenix blood. She locked away what I truly am.
But Caspian's rejection didn't break me.
It broke the seal.
The visions keep flooding my mind. I see my parents' deaths—not random violence, but murder by people who feared our power. I see the lies spread about dark magic and blood curses. I see Elder Thaddeus's face in the crowd, watching my family burn, and his eyes are cold with satisfaction, not grief.
He killed them. He killed my family and blamed them for crimes they never committed.
Rage explodes through me, and the temple shakes. The symbols on the walls burn brighter, feeding on my fury.
Yes, the ancient voice purrs. Now you see. Now you understand. You were never meant to be an omega. You were never meant to kneel. You are phoenix. You are fire. You are vengeance and rebirth and everything they feared.
The flames surrounding me pulse with each heartbeat. My wings spread wider, and I realize I'm floating above the ground, held aloft by pure power.
"What am I?" I ask the voice.
You are what comes after rejection. You are what rises from ashes. You are the Phoenix Heir, and your awakening will shake the foundations of this world.
A new sensation crashes through me—a connection I thought was severed. The mate bond. Except it's changed. It's not pulling me toward Caspian anymore. It's pulling from him, drinking his strength like I'm a black hole and he's light being devoured.
Through the twisted bond, I feel his pain. Feel wounds opening on his skin. Feel his power draining away.
The blood curse. The rejection didn't just free me—it chained him to my fate.
A smile curves my burning lips.
"Good."
And in that moment, hundreds of miles away in the Obsidian Court, Alpha Caspian Blackthorn wakes up screaming as his body erupts in flames he cannot see, burning from the inside out.