Darkness.
It was the first thing I knew. A heavy, suffocating blanket that smelled of damp earth, crushed pine needles, and the metallic tang of my own blood. My lungs felt like they were filled with lead; every time I tried to draw a breath, a jagged pain flared in my ribs, sharp enough to steal my vision all over again.
Wake up.
The voice was back. It wasn't my own. It was colder, more regal, sounding as if it came from the bottom of a deep, frozen lake. It was a voice that didn't ask; it commanded.
Wake up, Elara. The water is rising. If you die here, they die with you.
My eyes snapped open. The world was sideways, blurred by a veil of rain and smoke. I was suspended by my tangled clothing against the crumpled remains of the transport cage. The van was a mangled wreck of steel and glass, wedged precariously between two massive boulders at the base of the ravine. Below me, the Blackwater River roared, its icy current already swirling around the floorboards of the van, tugging at the wreckage with greedy, watery fingers.
The silver shackles were gone. It was shattered during the impact or perhaps dissolved by that strange surge of energy I'd felt before the world went black. My wrists were a mess of blackened skin and raw meat, but strangely, the silver didn't burn anymore. The agonizing hum of the pack bond was gone, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like being deaf.
"The babies..." I wheezed, my voice barely a ghost in the roar of the storm.
I forced my hands down to my stomach, my fingers trembling so violently I could barely feel my own skin. I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. One second. Two. Then, a tiny, faint flutter. Then another.
They were alive. My little warriors. They had survived the fall that was meant to be our grave.
The surge of adrenaline that followed was like a lightning strike to my nervous system. I ignored the screaming protest of my shattered shoulder and began to claw my way through the jagged opening where the door used to be. The metal sliced into my palms, adding fresh blood to the oil and river water, but I didn't feel it. I was a mother, and my children were trapped in a tomb.
I tumbled out of the wreck just as a massive surge of river water slammed into the van, shifting it further into the depths. I hit the water, and the cold was so absolute it felt like being set on fire. The current was a beast, slamming me against rocks and trying to pull me under. I fought, my fingers digging into the silt and mud of the riverbank until I finally hauled myself onto the dark, mossy earth of the Forbidden Forest.
I lay there for a long time, gasping for air, my face pressed into the wet dirt.
I looked back at the ravine. High above, through the sheets of rain, I could see the flickering yellow lights of the pack's border patrol. They would be looking down, seeing the twisted metal and the raging river, and assuming no one and especially not a "wolf-less" omega could have survived. To Killian, to Sienna, and to the Black Mountain Pack, Elara Vance was a memory.
Good, I thought, a bitter chill settling in my chest that had nothing to do with the weather. Let her be dead. She was too weak for this world anyway.
I turned my head to look the other way, deeper into the Forbidden Forest. The trees here were different, it were ancient, their bark as black as charcoal and their leaves a deep, bruised purple. This was the land of the rogues, the place where the "pure" packs sent their trash to die.
I tried to stand, but my legs gave out instantly, my knees buckling into the mud. I began to crawl, dragging my broken body toward the shelter of a massive, hollowed-out cedar tree. My body was failing. The rejection had stripped my spirit, and the crash had broken my frame.
"You are not failing," the voice echoed again. It was closer now, vibrating in the very center of my skull. "You are shedding."
I felt a strange sensation in my bones. It felt like they were vibrating, turning into something denser, stronger. The wound on my shoulder and the place where the branding iron had nearly touched, began to itch with an intense, freezing heat.
I leaned my head back against the rough bark of the cedar, my strength finally spent. The forest was alive around me. I could hear the skittering of claws on bark and the low, hungry panting of things that had never known the light of the Moon Mother.
A pair of glowing red eyes appeared in the bushes twenty feet away. Then another. And another.
Rogues. They could smell the blood. They could smell a lone female, broken and unmated. They were the vultures of the wolf world, and they had found their feast.
"Well, well," a voice rasped. It sounded like sandpaper on bone.
The largest rogue, a mangy, scarred beast with matted grey fur and a missing ear, stepped into the small clearing. He shifted halfway, his face a grotesque mask of human and wolf, his yellowed fangs dripping with saliva.
"A little runaway from the high-and-mighty Black Mountain," he sneered, his eyes roaming over my torn dress and bruised skin. "You smell like an Alpha's plaything, girl. But your bond is broken. You're nothing but meat and a few hours of fun now."
He stepped closer, his yellow teeth bared in a cruel grin. The other rogues circled, four of them in total, their eyes filled with a predatory hunger that made my skin crack.
"Stay back," I whispered, my hand clutching a jagged piece of wood I had found on the ground. My voice was weak, but my eyes never left his.
"Or what?" the rogue laughed, the sound ending in a wet growl. "You're going to bark at me? You don't even have a wolf, little omega. I can feel the void in your soul from here."
He lunged, a blur of grey fur and muscle.
Time didn't just slow down; it stopped.
I felt a surge of that silver light again, but this time, it didn't explode outward. It stayed within me, wrapping around my muscles like a suit of armor made of ice. My vision shifted, the dark forest becoming as bright as day, every leaf and every raindrop rendered in high-definition silver.
My hand moved before I could even think. I didn't swing the wood; I caught the rogue's throat in mid-air. The sound of his windpipe snapping under my grip was sickeningly clear in the quiet of the forest. I tossed him aside as if he weighed nothing more than a pup. He hit a tree with a sickening thud and didn't move again.
The other rogues froze. Their confusion turned to raw terror as the air around me began to drop in temperature. My breath hitched, turning into a white mist.
I looked down at my hands. They weren't changing into paws, but my nails had lengthened into silver-black talons, sharp enough to cut through steel. My skin was glowing with a soft, ethereal light that seemed to push back the darkness of the trees.
"Kill them," the wolf in my head commanded. Her voice was no longer a whisper; it was a roar. "They threaten the heirs. Show them the price of touching a Queen."
One of the rogues, a smaller, younger male, let out a whimper and turned to run. But the other two, driven by a desperate, starving madness, snarled and attacked all at once from both sides.
I didn't feel like Elara the healer anymore. I felt like a storm.
I moved with a speed that defied physics, a blur of silver light in the dark. I met the first rogue's claws with my own, the sound of clashing talons ringing like metal on metal. I spun, my heel connecting with his jaw, sending him spiraling into the dirt. The second rogue leaped for my back, but I pivoted, catching him by the scruff of his neck.
I felt a cold power flow from my fingertips into his skin. He didn't even have time to howl before he was encased in a flash-frost so deep his heart simply stopped. I let him fall, his frozen body shattering like glass against the rocks.
In seconds, the clearing was silent.
I stood in the center of the carnage, my chest heaving, the silver light slowly receding into my skin. The silence of the forest returned, but it was different now. The creatures of the night were no longer watching a victim; they were hiding from a predator.
I sank to my knees, the adrenaline leaving me as quickly as it had arrived. The reality of what I had just done and what I was becoming, it crashed down on me. I looked at the broken rogues, then at my own glowing hands.
"Who... what am I?" I whispered to the empty trees.
"You are the end of an era," a voice answered from the shadows.
I spun around, my claws extending instinctively, a low growl vibrating in my throat. Standing at the edge of the clearing was a man. He was tall, dressed in tattered black robes that seemed to swallow the moonlight. His hair was as white as the snow I had just created, falling over eyes that were a startling, vibrant violet.
He didn't look like a wolf. He didn't smell like one, either. He smelled like ancient earth, ozone, and old, forgotten magic.
"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice trembling despite the power still humming in my veins. "Are you here to finish what Killian started?"
"Killian Nightshade is a child playing with matches," the man said, stepping into the moonlight. He didn't look threatened by my claws. If anything, he looked amused. "And I am a gardener of secrets, Elara Vance. I have been waiting a very long time for a seed like you to finally break through the soil."
He looked at my stomach, his violet eyes softening with a look of profound respect. "And those two... they are the reason the stars have been weeping. They are the keys to a throne that hasn't been sat upon since the first moon rose. You carry the Ancient Lineage, girl. The blood that predates the packs."
I tried to stand, to keep my guard up, but the exhaustion finally won. The world began to tilt, the black trees of the Forbidden Forest turning into a blur of shadows and silver light.
"Don't... hurt them..." I gasped, my hand falling to my womb as I felt the darkness reaching for me again.
"Hurt them?" The man caught me as I fell, his touch surprisingly warm, like sunlight on a winter day. "My dear, I am the only one who can teach you how to sharpen them and yourself into the weapons you need to be."
As my consciousness faded, I felt him lift me with an effortless strength. For the first time in my life, I wasn't being hunted. I was being hidden.