The sky was screaming again. It was a sound Ren had known since he was a cub; the high-pitched, mechanical whistle of a Sector 1 atmospheric ripper. To the humans in the stars, it was a "Containment Strike." To the wolves in the ash, it was the sound of the world being erased.
Ren crouched in the shadow of a collapsed highway overpass, his fingers dug deep into the grey silt that coated the bones of the old world. The concrete above him was a jagged ribcage, weeping rusted rebar that hissed as the heat from the sky-fire drew closer. He didn't shift. Not yet. To shift was to surrender to the rage, to let the wolf take the reins and hunt the fire. A suicide mission against an enemy that lived in the vacuum. Right now, he needed to listen. He needed to be the Alpha, the anchor for the ghosts.
The "Static" began as a low hum in the base of his skull. It wasn't the sound of the wind or the crackle of burning brush. It was her.
As the orbital fire hit a distant sector five miles to the north, Ren didn't just hear the explosion; he felt a sharp, cold spike of terror that wasn't his. It was a sterile, clinical fear. The kind that smelled of ozone and recycled air.
Star-Girl.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead pressing against the cold, grit-covered concrete. In his mind's eye, the scorched horizon of the Ashworld flickered and died, replaced by a flash of blinding white light and the sound of a digital chime. For a heartbeat, he wasn't standing in the ruins of a dead city; he was sitting in a high-backed chair, surrounded by the hum of machines. He felt a bead of sweat trail down a spine that wasn't his. He felt the phantom weight of a white coat on his shoulders.
Ren growled, a low vibration in his chest that shook the dust from the rubble. He had lived with this glitch in his head for a decade. He described her to the elders as a "glitch in the moon". A piece of his soul that had been abducted and placed in a glass cage above the clouds. When she was scared in the Orbit, his own heart rate climbed until his ribs felt like they would snap. When she was calm, the murderous rage that defined his existence as an Alpha would cool into a manageable ember.
"Ren."
The voice was gravelly, filtered through a mask. Kael stepped out from the swirling ash, his silhouette tall and lean. His eyes, a piercing, restless blue, scanned the sky with a hatred that could have set the clouds on fire. He was the voice of the pack's hunger. The traditionalist who believed every orbital strike was an invitation to war.
"The pack is restless, Alpha," Kael said, his voice tightening as another ripple of thunder rolled across the plains. "The young ones... they can't breathe the ash much longer. The Lush Zone in the valley is shrinking. The fire-people are closing the circle. They want us to stay in our holes like rats until the soil itself turns to glass."
Ren stood up, towering over Kael. He wiped the grey silt from his palms onto his leather trousers. "They aren't closing a circle, Kael. They are clearing a path. They think there is nothing left down here worth saving but the chemicals in our blood."
"Then let us show them the blood!" Kael barked, his hands curling into claws. "Let us howl until the stars crack. We have the strength to tear their metal birds from the sky if we can just lure them close enough."
Ren looked at his pack-brother. He felt the collective weight of the forty souls currently hiding in the subterranean warrens beneath the highway. He felt their hunger; a physical gnawing in his gut, and their exhaustion. He was the last line of defense for a race that the universe had decided to delete. He was a king of ruins, a guardian of shadows.
"We wait," Ren commanded, the Alpha-tone in his voice making Kael flinch involuntarily. "If we move now, we give their satellites a target. We are the ash, Kael. We don't move until the wind changes."
But as he spoke, the bond flared with a violent, unprecedented intensity. It wasn't just a flicker this time; it was a flood. Ren stumbled, his hand flying to the overpass wall for support.
He saw a flash of a white corridor. A sterile, metallic place he'd never been. He heard the hiss of pressurized doors. He felt a sudden, sickening jolt of artificial gravity.
And then, he saw the ship. A sleek, predatory hull of carbon-fiber and silver.
She's moving.
The Star-Girl wasn't just a voice in the attic of his mind anymore. She was descending. The tether between them, which had been stretched thin across the vacuum for twenty years, was suddenly snapping back, drawing her toward the soil with the force of a falling star.
Ren looked up at the bruised, orange clouds, baring his teeth in a snarl that was half-prayer, half-threat. He could taste her presence on the wind now, a scent of lavender and electricity cutting through the rot of the Ash.
"Come then," he whispered, his voice a jagged promise. "Come and see what's left to burn."