POV: Kairo
By the time I returned to the pack, I could smell her fire in the wind.
It clung to the walls. Hung in the trees. Saturated the very air with a pulse I didn't recognize — a signature that wasn't fully hers.
Not yet.
She was changing.
And I wasn't sure if I was helping her evolve… or lose herself.
The guards at the gate looked tense. One of them avoided my eyes. The other nodded and mumbled, "She's been with Rhea all day. Didn't even stop to eat."
That made something clench in my chest.
Not just because I hated Rhea's voice in her ear — but because I knew exactly how far Rhea would push someone she didn't trust.
I found them in the upper field.
Lyra's shirt was torn at the shoulder. Her braid had come loose. She was bleeding from a shallow cut across her arm — one that hadn't even been dressed. But she was smiling. Or maybe baring her teeth.
Rhea stood opposite her with her arms crossed.
"Impressive," Rhea said, watching as Lyra held a burning dagger steady in her palm. "Controlled burn. Finally."
"She doesn't need to be cut open to prove she can control her power," I said sharply, stepping into the field.
Lyra's smile dropped. Rhea turned slowly, eyes cool.
"She came to me to train," Rhea said, voice calm. "I'm training her."
"With a blade in her ribs?"
"With restraint."
"I don't trust your version of restraint."
Lyra stepped between us, voice quieter than usual. "Kairo, it's okay. I wanted this."
"You wanted blood?"
"I wanted control. And I got closer today than I ever have."
Her words should've comforted me. Instead, they lit something dark in my chest.
Because she wasn't wrong.
But neither was I.
"You didn't need her for that."
She glanced away. Just for a second. But it said enough.
And that second of silence told me what I had feared all day:
She wasn't coming to me anymore.
Not with questions.
Not with fear.
Not even with her pain.
Rhea brushed past me, whispering low as she passed. "You waited too long to tell her the truth. She's building her own now."
I turned back to Lyra, who knelt to retrieve her dagger.
She didn't look at me.
Not like she used to.
"Come with me," I said finally.
She hesitated. Then nodded.
I didn't take her back to the tower.
I took her to the war room.
Because if we were going to make it through this, she needed to know what we were really up against.
I shut the doors and activated the rune that sealed the room from any eavesdropping. She looked around like she'd never seen it before — because she hadn't.
Maps of old bloodlines, Emberborn sigils, council strategies. A web of secrets only the Alphas had access to.
"This is what the Council is hiding," I said. "And it's about you."
She turned to me slowly. "Then show me."
I did.
All of it.
The surveillance of her flares. The prophecy fragments about a firebound heir. The fact that her birthmark matched the description in the Emberborn scrolls.
And the worst part?
That some believed the firebound heir's rise would end the reign of the Alpha bloodlines completely.
She looked at the files in silence.
"Do you think it's true?" she asked.
"I don't care if it is," I said. "I care if they believe it. Because if they do… they won't wait for proof."
Her voice broke just slightly. "They'll kill me."
I stepped close. Closer than I should have. And I let the words fall like a vow between us.
"Not while I breathe."
But the truth I didn't say?
Was that the Council had already started counting my breaths.