The lagoon tasted like salt and diesel and secrets.
Elara stood ankle-deep at the edge of the mangroves, water lapping at her calves, the night thick around her. The hunt's blood still clung to her skin—dried in thin streaks across her arms and throat—but the wolf inside her was quiet now, sated and watchful. Behind her, the fire drum glowed low in the scrapyard. Jude, Tayo, and Chidi had retreated to their containers, leaving her alone with the dark and the pull.
Not the mate bond this time.
Something else.
It came from across the water, faint but insistent, like a drumbeat under the waves. Old. Heavy. Familiar in a way that made the fine hairs on her neck rise.
She closed her eyes and breathed it in: wet earth after rain, palm wine left too long in the sun, smoke from ancient fires that no longer burned. And beneath it—wolf. Not one wolf. Many. Layered. Echoing through generations.
Her wolf stirred. Listen. Remember.
Elara didn't know what she was remembering. She'd grown up in Surulere flats, concrete and generators and church bells, not stories of forest guardians or river orishas who walked on four legs. But the bite had cracked something open inside her. Something that knew things her human mind had never learned.
She waded deeper until the water reached her waist. The current tugged gently, urging her forward. She let it.
Halfway across a narrow channel, where the mangroves thinned into open lagoon, she stopped. Moonlight shattered on the surface like broken glass. She tilted her head back and howled—low at first, testing, then fuller. The sound rolled across the water, swallowed by the night, then answered.
Not from the city side.
From the islands.
A chorus rose—distant, layered, mournful. Not Ironfang's disciplined howls. These were wilder, older, carrying the weight of things that had watched Lagos rise from swamp and fishing villages.
Elara's chest tightened. The frayed golden thread of the rejected bond gave a sudden, sharp tug—not pain exactly, but awareness. Kael had felt that howl. Wherever he was, he'd heard it.
Good.
Let him wonder.
She turned back toward shore, but movement caught her eye on the far bank—a shadow detaching from the trees. Too far to scent clearly, but the posture was unmistakable: tall, watchful, shoulders set like he owned the horizon.
She froze.
The shadow didn't move closer. Just watched.
Then it shifted—fluid, deliberate—and vanished into the undergrowth.
Elara's heart hammered. Not Kael. The build was wrong—leaner, longer-limbed. But the power rolling off it felt… similar. Kin, maybe. Or rival.
She waded back fast, water churning around her legs.
By the time she reached the scrapyard, Jude was waiting at the entrance, arms crossed, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
"You called," he said. Not a question.
"I didn't mean to."
"You did." He jerked his head toward the containers. "Inside. Now."
The others were already gathered around the low fire. Tayo had her machete across her knees. Chidi's leg bounced nervously.
Jude spoke first. "That wasn't a casual howl, Elara. That was a summoning. Old-style. The kind the water packs used to use before the cities ate the mangroves."
"Water packs?" Elara sat on an upturned crate. Her wrapper was soaked, clinging cold.
Tayo answered. "Before Ironfang and Nightclaw and all the concrete alphas, there were the river wolves. Tied to Oshun, to Yemoja. Guardians of the deltas, the lagoons, the places where fresh water meets salt. They don't claim territory like land packs. They claim currents. They move with the tides."
Chidi leaned forward. "Most people think they're gone. Wiped out during the colonial hunts or scattered when Lagos swallowed the creeks. But some say they still live on the islands—Lekki, Ikoyi, even Eko Atlantic now. Hidden. Watching."
Jude's voice dropped. "And they just answered you."
Elara stared into the fire. "I didn't know what I was doing."
"Your blood did." Jude studied her. "That bite wasn't random. Whoever turned you carried something ancient. And now it's waking up in you."
Silence stretched.
Tayo broke it. "If the river wolves are stirring, it means trouble's coming. Big trouble. They don't show themselves for small things."
Chidi swallowed. "Ironfang's been pushing into the eastern creeks lately. Kael's expanding—ports, warehouses, new money. Nightclaw's doing the same from the north. The old boundaries are cracking."
Elara's stomach twisted. "And I just howled across their water."
Jude nodded once. "You did. And someone listened."
Across the lagoon, in the fortified compound on Victoria Island, Kael Okafor stood on the roof terrace, shirt open to the night wind, fists clenched on the railing.
The howl had hit him like a physical blow.
Not just any howl.
Hers.
He'd felt it ripple through the bond—faint, frayed, but unmistakable. Elara's voice, stronger now, carrying power he hadn't expected. And then the answer from the water. Multiple voices. Old ones.
His wolf surged, claws pricking under his nails. He forced it down.
Zara stepped out behind him, silk robe whispering against marble. "You're pacing again."
He didn't turn. "Go back inside."
She didn't. "The council meeting is tomorrow. They want to know why our borders are bleeding rogues. Why patrols keep reporting a black-silver wolf ghosting the edges of our territory. Your rejected mate is becoming a problem, Kael."
He spun. Eyes blazing amber. "She's not my problem anymore."
Zara's laugh was soft, cutting. "Tell that to your wolf. You haven't slept properly since the rejection. You flinch every time someone says her name in the pack house. And now she's calling to things even you don't understand."
Kael's jaw tightened. "The river wolves are myth."
"Are they?" Zara stepped closer. "Or are they just inconvenient? Like her."
He looked away, across the dark water. Somewhere out there, Elara was awake. Alive. Growing.
The bond pulsed—once, hard, like a heartbeat he couldn't ignore.
He closed his eyes. "I did what was best for the pack."
Zara touched his arm lightly. "Then why does it feel like you're dying?"
He shook her off. "Enough."
But when she left, he stayed on the roof until dawn.
Back at the scrapyard, Elara couldn't sleep.
She slipped out again, climbing to the top of a stacked container. The city lights glittered—endless, indifferent. She sat cross-legged, staring toward Victoria Island.
The golden thread between them tugged again. Not painful this time. Curious. Almost questioning.
She whispered into the night, knowing he'd feel it somehow.
"I'm not disappearing, Kael Okafor. You don't get to erase me."
Then she shifted—smooth now, almost effortless—and curled up on the warm metal, tail over nose, eyes fixed on the distant glow of his world.
Let him feel her watch.
Let him feel her wait.
Because the girl he'd rejected was no longer begging for scraps.
She was learning how to take.