Kai's POV

I lied.

I actually did see something in those woods.

Something I couldn’t explain and decipher,something I couldn’t shake off.

And now, it was following me ghostlike through the Sanctum’s underground halls.

I kept my hood up as I passed through the iron-reinforced checkpoint. Facial scans buzzed faintly. Motion detectors tracked my every step. This place never slept. No one here trusted anyone,at least not fully.

Me most especially.

“Kai Ashbourne,” the security AI intoned. “Cleared for Level 2 access. Mission log update required.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, stepping into the elevator.

The walls were made of steel. My reflection stared back at me with tired eyes, sharper jawline than I remembered, a bruise forming near my temple from last week's training drill. I looked like one of them.

But I didn’t feel like one of them tonight.

The girl from the woods had burned herself into my head.

Aria.

She never said her name, but I knew it now all thanks to a stolen file I shouldn’t have accessed.

Aria Silverclaw.

Daughter of Alpha Dhiran.

One of the “twins of prophecy,” if the old reports were to be believed.

The daughter of the monster who killed my parents.

Except... she hadn’t looked like a monster.

She looked like someone who didn’t fit in her own skin.

Who’d rather paint the forest than prowl through it.

Someone who didn’t shift when she was supposed to.

And that terrified me more than anything.

The elevator dinged. Level 3.

I stepped out and headed down the hall to the Command Room. Every second tightened the knot in my stomach.

Commander Harlan Greaves was waiting for me.

He stood like a statue in front of the war table holograms of territories, heat maps, and intel flickering beneath his gloved hands. He didn’t look up when I entered.

“You’re late.”

“Got held up.”

“By?”

“A deer.”

He looked at me then. Hard. Cold.

“You had eyes on the ridge, didn’t you?”

I hesitated. “Yeah. But it was locked down tight. No activity I could see.”

Another lie.

Harlan narrowed his eyes. “Nothing? Not even a glimpse of the Alpha’s daughters?”

“No, sir.”

He stared at me, silent for too long. My pulse tapped nervously against my throat.

Then he nodded. “You’ll get another chance. The twins are the key, Kai. Especially the younger one.”

My hands clenched.

“Aria?” I said before I could stop myself.

His gaze flicked to me, sharp and assessing. “You’ve read the files.”

It wasn’t a question.

“She doesn’t seem like a threat,” I said slowly. “If anything, she’s… unstable.”

“She’s dangerous because of what she represents,” he snapped. “That entire bloodline is an infection. You know this.”

Do I?

“Understood,” I said.

“Good. Because you’re going back in. As of tomorrow, you’ll be enrolled at Thorne Hollow Prep. Your cover as a ‘transfer student’ still holds. We need proximity. Access. We need her.”

I stiffened. “What about Selene?”

“Selene is exactly what we expect. Trained. Brutal. Obvious. Aria? She’s an anomaly.”

He walked toward me, voice lowering. “You’ve been useful, Kai. A perfect weapon. But don’t let emotions get in the way.”

Something in his tone chilled me.

“She’s just a girl,” I said.

He smiled without warmth. “That’s exactly what makes her dangerous.”

Later that night, I lay on the cot in my quarters, staring at the cracked ceiling.

The moonlight slanted through the barred window. I didn’t sleep.

Instead, I kept seeing her curled against that tree, dirt on her knees, eyes wide and filled with something I couldn’t name. Something raw.

She hadn’t flinched when she saw me.

Hadn’t threatened me.

Hadn’t even asked the obvious questions.

She just stood there, trembling and wild, like the world had shifted under her feet and she didn’t know where to land.

And I felt that strange pull. Like we were standing on the edge of something ancient.

I remembered her scent. Wildflowers and rain. And something beneath that something that didn’t read as entirely wolf or entirely human.

And for the first time since I was a kid, I wasn’t sure whose side I was on.

Aria's POV

The thing about being the Alpha’s daughter is this:

When you fail, everyone sees it.

When you run, everyone whispers.

And when you come back?

They all expect you to apologize for existing.

I spent the next two days buried in my room, painting.

Not wolves.

Not forests.

Not anything that felt real.

Just color, blurred, streaked, chaotic color that didn’t have to mean anything. I didn’t eat much and I barely slept. I ignored Selene’s knocks at the door, my mother’s cautious questions, and even Marek’s attempt to “talk things out” like I was some kind of broken weapon.

My wolf still hadn’t come to the surface.

She was quiet,dormant,sleeping or hiding from the weight of expectation.

“You’re not ready,” Father had said.

He hadn’t raised his voice as that wasn’t his style. But the disappointment was evident in his eyes. It was way worse than anything he could’ve shouted.

Maybe I wasn’t ready or maybe I wasn’t meant to shift at all.

Maybe I was a mistake written in moonlight and bad timing.

On the third day, I got dressed and walked into town like nothing had happened.

Thorne Hollow High, also called Prep because we were “elite” (aka wolves in plaid uniforms) was a private school built near the valley edge. Most of the pack kids attended, along with a few oblivious humans who had no idea their classmates could sprout fangs during full moons.

I kept my head down as I passed through the gates.

Some kids just stared while some didn’t bother hiding it.

“Did you hear?”

“She didn’t even shift, she just stood there like a statue.”

“Bet her wolf’s a bunny.”

I ignored them all, I had to. I couldn't let them get a reaction out of me as there was no point indulging them.

At least until I walked into first period Modern Mythology and froze.

There, in the seat by the window he was seated quietly.

Kai.

Same hoodie, same shadowed eyes. That same exact pull I couldn’t seem to understand or explain.

I blinked.

What the hell?

He looked up and met my gaze.

Something flickered across his face. Whether it was surprise or recognition... I couldn't quite tell. And then he smoothed it away like nothing.

“New transfer,” the teacher announced. “Kai Ashbourne. Welcome to hell.”

A few people laughed but I didn’t find it funny at least not with the current circumstances.

Kai didn’t look at me again.

But I felt it his awareness. Like he knew where I was at all times, even when his eyes were on his notebook.

I sat down three rows behind him and spent the entire class pretending not to care. But my senses betrayed me,I could feel his heartbeat and the rhythm of his breathing. I could sense his focus too. All of it pulled on me like a tether I hadn’t chosen.

And something about him still felt... wrong.

Not dangerous, exactly. Just… different.

As if he wore his human scent like a coat,a second skin not a truth.

Later, in the hallway between classes, I cornered him.

“You.”

He turned, eyebrows raised. “Me?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I live here.”

“Then I guess we’re neighbors,” he said, all innocence.

I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t play dumb. You saw me in the woods.”

“Did I?”

“You said you wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I haven’t,” he said easily. “Not a word.”

I stepped closer. “Then why are you here?”

He tilted his head, lips quirking. “Maybe I was curious.”

My stomach flipped.

“Or maybe,” he added, voice softer now, “I just wanted to see you again.”

And I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Because despite everything my humiliation, the danger, the rules my heart reacted.

Like it knew him.

Like it had always known him.

The bell rang and I jerked back, with my pulse pounding.

He smiled, then turned and walked off, hands in his pockets, like he hadn’t just tilted my whole world sideways.

That night, I dreamed of him.

Except it wasn’t a dream.

It felt more like a memory I didn’t own,like it was from another lifetime.

We stood beneath the blood moon.

Both of us in our wolf form.

Not fighting,not fleeing. Just… standing still.

He looked at me. And I felt it again,

The tether,the echo,the pull.

When I woke up, gasping and drenched in sweat, my wolf stirred.

Just once. A flicker beneath my skin.

But this time, she whispered something I could actually understand.

“He’s one of us.”

I lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling as my breath slowed. The moonlight filtering through my window seemed to pulse with something alive, something watching.

I pulled the covers tighter, but the cold settled in my bones anyway.

I wasn’t sure what scared me more

That my wolf had spoken…

Or that she was right.

The words echoed long after I got up and walked to the mirror. My eyes looked the same dark, too serious but something behind them shimmered.

Not quite human,not quite a wolf but something else entirely.

Was that what Kai saw?

Was that what pulled him here?

Selene knocked again that morning, but softer this time. “Aria,” she whispered through the door. “I know you’re hurting. But you don’t have to go through it alone.”

For once, I wanted to open it. To let her in.

But something in me whispered: Not yet.

I wasn’t ready until I understood what I was becoming.

Not until I knew why my wolf had waited.

Why she’d chosen now to speak.

Because I had a feeling that whatever this bond was,whatever connected me to Kai…it wasn't just fate.

It was a warning.

And it had already begun.

Aria's POV

I didn’t tell anyone about the dream I didn’t tell Selene,didn’t even tell Mom.

Sure as hell didn’t tell Kai.

Because if I admitted what I felt,that strange, soul-deep recognition then I’d have to admit something else:

I was changing,I was no longer the same person although it was out of my control.

Not in the way I was supposed to not in the cracked-bone, fur-skin, howl-at-the-moon way.

No, this was quieter, more deeper.

Like something inside me had finally awakened… and it had his voice.

By the end of the week, the bond started to grow stronger.

I didn’t see Kai often. But when I did, I felt his presence before I saw him. It can be in the form of a low thrum under my ribs or like a string being plucked in the dark.

I started hearing echoes,it was not voices exactly, just abstract emotions.

When he was anxious, I tasted iron.

When he was angry, the air around me felt too tight.

Once, during History of Pack Law, I caught a fleeting image of his memory, not mine. He was standing in a hallway I didn’t recognize, staring at a door with a silver cross burned into the wood.

My breath got caught in my throat.

What was this?

One night, I decided to test it.

I sat in my room, lit a candle, and closed my eyes.

I focused on the space where I felt him, focused on the tether…I held my focus.

And then suddenly he saw me.

Only it wasn’t like before.

This time, I was in his memory.

No, someone else’s.

A room I’d never seen.

A voice I didn’t know not recognize and a name I hadn’t heard in years

“Aradia.” he called out

The name slammed into me like a thunderclap.

My real name,my complete name.

A name I’d buried the day I was told it was too “old-world,” too “cursed.”

No one used it.

No one even knew about it.

Except the voice that whispered it just now, a voice I hadn’t heard in this lifetime.

I jolted awake, gasping.

And that’s when I realized… I wasn’t alone.

There was something in my room.

At first I thought it was Kai.

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t him.

The figure stood in the corner, cloaked in shadow. Too tall. Too still. And completely silent.

I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t respond.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

The figure didn’t answer.

Didn’t step forward.

But I felt it.

It was inside the bond.

It was not Kai,neither was it me.

But something ancient.

Something…that has been watching and observing us.

Its presence pressed against my thoughts like cold water through a crack in the wall.

Then it spoke.

Not aloud.

Inside me.

“The bond is awakening too soon.”

“The curse is waking with it.”

“You are not the first, Aradia….and you will not be the last.”

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream, I just stood there static

And then,it vanished.

The room was empty while my heart was beating like a war drum.

My wolf was clawing at the inside of my chest.

I could barely sleep.

The next morning, I woke up to find Selene sitting at the edge of my bed, arms crossed.

“You’re dreaming loud,” she said.

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I could feel it halfway across the den. Whatever it is that you’re doing, you need to stop it.”

I sat up slowly while I called her name calmly “Selene”

“Don’t ‘Selene’ me. Something’s happening to you, and it’s not just about shifting anymore.”

I opened my mouth to lie but she cut me off.

“You’re bonded to him, aren’t you?”

I froze,how did she know I wondered to myself

“How?”

She shook her head. “You think I don’t know what a psychic imprint feels like? It’s like you’ve both got flashing neon signs over your heads. And you know what's worse? Something else is riding the bond.”

She looked pale. Genuinely shaken.

“What do you mean?” I whispered.

She stood, pacing. “I don’t know what it is but it is old and pissed. And it’s not Kai just so you know”

I swallowed hard.

Then Selene turned to me, her voice cold as winter steel.

“You need to break the bond, Aria. Before it breaks you.”

I didn’t respond. I just couldn’t bring myself to.Her words echoed in my head as she stormed out of my room, leaving the air heavy and charged.

The idea of breaking the bond…..It felt like trying to carve out a part of my soul which was impossible.

Later that evening, I stood at the edge of the woods, the moon rising like a silent witness above me. I wanted answers,no.more like I needed them.

I reached for the tether again.

But this time, I didn't find Kai.

I found a door.

It was not physical, didn't seem real either

It was just a massive obsidian door carved with sigils I didn’t understand, floating in the void behind my closed eyes.

And behind it I could sense them. The others' past lives? Memories? Spirits?

I didn’t know.

But I knew this: whoever had spoken my name in that dream…

They were waiting on the other side.

And they weren't done with me yet.