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.

Kai's POV

Being back in Thorne Hollow was like stepping into a dream you didn’t remember having, yet somehow always knew you’d wake up from changed.

The streets were too quiet. The air too charged. And Aria Silverclaw was more than just a name now she was a question I couldn’t stop asking.

Even as I blended into the school halls, pretending to be another transfer with a tragic backstory and a fake record, I felt eyes on me. Not just hers.

Selene.

The twin.

The one whose gaze cut like a blade.

She didn’t trust me and she wasn’t hiding it.

In Modern Mythology, she sat two rows to my right, one seat up. I could feel her stare the entire time, the weight of suspicion like iron on my neck. She hadn’t said a word, but I knew what her silence meant: if I slipped, she’d be the first to make sure I didn’t get back up.

After class, I was pulled into another mandatory check-in with the Sanctum.

I found an abandoned alley, checked the perimeter, and tapped the comm chip behind my ear.

It buzzed, then activated. "Ashbourne. Report."

"In," I said. "No threats,No contact."

Another lie.

Commander Greaves’ voice crackled. “And the Silverclaw girl?”

I hesitated.

Aria’s face flashed in my mind stormy eyes, the way she looked at me like she knew me even though she didn’t. Couldn’t.

“She’s... unstable,” I said.

“Good. Makes her easier to manipulate. Keep it up. The bond will anchor soon.”

Bond. They said it like it was a trap. A hook.

But I wasn’t so sure anymore.

That night, I dreamed again. Not my dream, not entirely. I was in the forest, but not as myself. I moved on four legs. Felt the ground differently. The moon wasn’t just light it was a pulse.

And beside me was white fur and blue eyes.

Aria.

Then her voice, whispering through my mind like a secret: "You’re not just human. Not anymore."

I jolted awake, drenched in sweat, my hands trembling.

Something was changing in me. Shifting.

And I didn’t know how much longer I could hide it.

I stared at the ceiling of my small rented room above a garage on the town’s edge, surrounded by iron runes and a constant hum of electromagnetic pulses to keep my blood still.

None of it worked anymore.

The truth kept bleeding through.

The worst part? I didn’t want to stop it.

Aria's POV

The next week blurred by in half-silences and long glances.

I avoided Kai. Not because I wanted to but because I didn’t know who I was when I was near him. Everything about him tugged at my skin. My soul. My wolf.

She was awake now. Half-aware. Pacing the edges of me like a caged thing that had tasted air for the first time.

And then came the whispers.

Not from students.

From the tether.

The bond between us pulsed stronger each night. I could feel it through my spine when he entered a room. I could sense his moods like tides against my ribs. Once, I swore I felt his heartbeat like it was mine.

It scared me.

Because if this was real if he really was the one I couldn’t explain it. Not to Selene. Not to anyone.

One afternoon, I caught him in the greenhouse, sketching.

That threw me.

“Didn’t take you for the artistic type,” I said, leaning on the doorframe.

Kai looked up, not startled. “Didn’t take you for the type to sneak up on people.”

“You’re avoiding me.”

He paused. “You’re avoiding me.”

I couldn’t argue.

He looked at the sketchpad, then back at me. “I dream of you. You know that?”

My breath caught.

“Me too,” I admitted.

He closed the sketchbook. “Something’s happening to us and it’s not just coincidence.”

I stepped closer. “It’s a bond.”

He looked confused.

I explained quietly, “Some wolves form them. Soul-deep connections. They’re rare. Ancient.”

Kai’s brow furrowed. “But I’m not”

“You’re not just human.”

He froze.

I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did. The way my wolf responded to him. The way the bond threaded between us like lightning through glass.

He wasn’t just a stranger.

He was part of whatever I was becoming.

And that terrified me more than anything else.

The silence stretched between us, too heavy to fill with words. So I turned and left, heart racing, the tether thrumming behind me like a second heartbeat.

Kai's POV

The next day, I walked the perimeter of the town as part of my "routine check."

In truth, I needed to clear my head.

I passed the old church, the burned-out motel, the forest’s edge. Everything felt... charged. Like the air before a storm.

That’s when I saw it.

An old stone marker half-buried in moss, carved with a sigil I hadn’t seen in years. Not since I was a kid. Not since my parents died.

A memory surfaced, unwanted and sharp:

My mother’s voice. “If you ever see this mark, run. It means they’ve found us.”

The same mark was etched on the door in that memory Aria glimpsed.

They weren’t just watching me.

They were watching us.

The Sanctum had known about her long before I arrived. I was never meant to observe. I was meant to trigger something.

But what?

And more importantly... why her?

Aria's POV

That night, I sat on the roof of the den, sketchbook on my lap, trying to draw something that made sense.

I sketched a wolf mine, I think but its eyes weren’t mine. They were his.

Blue-green, storm-lit. Watching and observing.

Below, Selene paced the courtyard, her phone glued to her ear. Probably updating the patrols. Probably watching me from the corner of her eye.

I wanted to trust her. She was my sister, my other half. But part of me knew she’d never understand this bond. Not truly.

Because the wolf she trusted was trained to lead.

Mine? Mine was waking up to love, to war, to a curse I still didn’t understand.

But I could feel it.

Something ancient had stirred.

And it was coming for us both.