SYLRA’S POV
“Again,” I growled, planting my feet and pivoting hard.
Steel rang as my blade clashed against the royal guard’s.
The courtyard lit with moonlight and the smell of sweat and pine echoed with the sounds of training, metal against metal, boots scuffing stone, breath drawn tight. The royal wolves were fast, strong, and sharpened by years of elite discipline.
But I was faster.
I ducked a swing and drove my shoulder into my opponent’s gut, knocking him back.
Darian barked from the sidelines. “Good form. But don’t admire your work. Follow through!”
I did.
Spinning, I brought the flat of my blade to the guard’s ribs with a solid smack. He grunted and dropped to one knee, acknowledging defeat.
I stepped back, chest heaving.
The other wolves circled me, not with disdain but something close to respect. That still felt strange.
A slow clap echoed across the courtyard.
I turned.
King Maelric leaned against one of the stone pillars, arms crossed, a quiet grin tugging at his mouth.
“You fight like your mother,” he said.
I sheathed my blade and arched an eyebrow. “That supposed to be a compliment?”
He chuckled. “It’s the highest one I’ve got.”
Darian stepped forward, offering me a cloth. I took it, wiping sweat from my brow as the King motioned for me to follow.
“I take it I passed the physical trial?” I asked as we walked along the garden’s stone path.
“With distinction,” he replied. “Now it’s time you learned to use the sharper weapon.”
“What, sarcasm?”
“Politics,” he said with a grin. “Same thing.”
I laughed, but it faded quickly. “You mean alliances. Treaties. Manipulation.”
“Influence,” he corrected. “The court is full of wolves wearing human skins. Knowing how to read them, how to move them—that’s how you rule without lifting a sword.”
I fell silent for a moment, glancing at the high moon glowing above the palace towers.
“You’ll be expected to meet with certain alphas soon. Negotiate. Charm. Command.”
I exhaled. “Let me guess. Including Blackmaw?”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “You already saw Rovan in the court.”
“Yeah. I saw the look on his face when I walked in,” I said, voice low. “He looked like a man who just realized he tossed away a crown.”
Maelric chuckled. “He did. Literally.”
“Did you know?” I asked, stopping under a vine-laced archway. “That he was my husband?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation.
“And you still let him kneel in front of you like nothing happened?”
Maelric turned to face me fully. “Do you think power lies in public punishment? No, Sylra. Power is in letting a man realize what he’s lost, and letting the world watch him lose it.”
I blinked. “That’s… darker than I expected.”
He shrugged. “That’s the game.”
I looked away. “And what about me? Do you know where I’ve been? What I went through?”
His expression softened. “Every step. I knew the moment your bond broke. I felt it in my own bones. I’ve had watchers in Blackmaw since the day you were placed there. I saw everything. I let you go through it.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because had I pulled you out too soon,” he said gently, “you’d have never awakened. You needed to be forged. To learn what weakness feels like before you could understand your strength.”
“That’s cruel.”
“It’s survival,” he said. “It’s the way of the throne.”
We stood in silence, the wind brushing through the trees around us. The scent of night blooms floated between us.
“I wanted to hate you when those werewolves came for me but it came at the right time, when I had nowhere else to go,” I admitted quietly.
“I expected you to.”
We walked again. A rustle in the trees above told me the guards were still nearby, ever-present, watching from the shadows.
“When your mother died giving birth to you,” he said softly, “the prophecy was clear. Your power would awaken under a blood moon, and with it, the fate of the fractured packs would change forever.”
“And what does that even mean?”
“That your very existence threatens the hierarchy. That your wolf—your lineage—is unlike any seen in a thousand years.”
I paused.
Something warm pulsed deep in my chest.
“Do you feel it?” he asked, his voice now low, reverent.
“Yes.”
The moon overhead—once silver—was shifting.
Bleeding red.
“The blood moon,” I breathed.
He nodded. “It’s time.”
My breath caught as a strange heat swept through me, rising from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. My skin tingled. My wolf, silent for days, suddenly surged forward, howling in my soul.
I fell to one knee.
“Sylra,” Maelric said, stepping back, giving me space. “Let it happen.”
My fingers curled into the soil beneath me as my back arched, pain and fire tearing through every joint. My bones cracked, not breaking, but rebuilding. My vision blurred as fur spilled across my skin, radiant and golden, glowing like sunlight trapped in muscle.
I was struggling with the shift. I figured it was because it was no ordinary shift.
My paws slammed into the earth and gasps echoed from the ramparts above expectantly, waiting to see my transformation. The guards watching dropped to one knee.
A howl sound tore from my chest, rising up through wind and stone, echoing off the mountainside, but I wasn’t shifting.
I glanced up at my Father to see him shaking his head and it hits.
I didn’t shift.
