The night sky blazed with silver fire.
The full moon rose high over NightWalker Pack's grounds, a perfect orb of pale light, its radiance so sharp it painted the world in shades of bone-white and shadow. The air itself seemed alive, humming with the primal energy that only wolves could truly feel.
The courtyard below Lyra's narrow window was filled with noise and movement. Warriors and maidens, elders and children — all gathered for the sacred night of the full moon, when the pack shed its human skin and embraced the wild truth of what they were.
The Alpha stood tall at the front, his voice a low thunder rolling across the gathering.
"Tonight, we honor the bond of blood and the blessing of the Moon! Tonight, we run as one!"
The cheers rose, echoing against the stone walls. Then came the shift.
Bones cracked. Flesh twisted. Muscles tore and reformed. The sound was grotesque yet reverent, the very song of their kind. Lyra pressed herself against the cold bars of her window, watching wide-eyed as bodies melted into fur, as claws scraped against stone, as howls split the night.
Where moments ago there had been men and women, now wolves prowled the courtyard, their coats gleaming like fire, smoke, and midnight under the moonlight.
The unity of it struck her hardest. Wolves circling, brushing against one another, nuzzling, growling in play — one breath, one pulse, one rhythm. They were bound to each other in ways she could never touch.
And she was not among them.
Lyra's cell was a narrow alcove beneath the east tower. The bars across her window were rusted, yet unbreakable. The stones around her smelled of mildew and dust. She was dressed in her plain servant's dress, bare feet cold against the floor, her wrists still sore from the buckets she'd carried earlier.
She pressed her hands to the iron and leaned forward, watching with aching hunger.
How she yearned to be part of that circle, to feel the raw power coursing through her veins, to run under the moon as her body answered the call of the wild.
Her chest hurt with it. A sharp, tearing pain, as though longing itself might break her ribs apart.
The wolves threw back their heads and howled in unison. The sound rose and fell, a living thing that filled the night with power. Lyra's throat burned, an ache to join them, but no sound left her lips. Only silence.
Her fingers curled tightly around the bars, and she pressed her forehead against the cold iron.
*Why wasn't I made like them? Why am I so wrong?*
The question had haunted her since she was a child. Each full moon it returned with renewed cruelty. Each howl was another reminder that she was not part of this family, not part of this world.
Her tears blurred the courtyard, silver shapes melting into one another. She wiped them angrily, refusing to let herself cry again. Not here, not now.
Instead, she lifted one hand and pressed it to her chest. She could feel her heart hammering beneath her ribs, fast, desperate, as though it too wanted to leap free and run with the wolves.
The moonlight poured through the bars, soft and unrelenting. It caught in her hair, turning the pale strands almost silver-white.
She closed her eyes, imagining.
Imagining herself breaking free of the cell, her body twisting, her skin burning away, her bones reshaping. Imagining fur erupting from her flesh, claws carving into stone, a howl tearing from her throat as she leapt down into the courtyard.
She could almost *feel* it. The phantom ache of a transformation she had never known.
But when she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. Only a frail, human girl staring through iron at a world that had no place for her.
Her fingers shook against the bars.
And yet… something flickered.
The moonlight shifted, brighter for a heartbeat, and her reflection in the iron caught her gaze. Her eyes — usually dull, golden— glowed faintly gold. Not the warm gold of firelight, but something richer, deeper, as if molten metal lived beneath her irises.
Lyra blinked, startled. She rubbed her eyes with her fists, and when she looked again, the glow was gone.
She hadn't even noticed.
But someone else had.
Down in the shadows of the courtyard, away from the circle of wolves, an old woman crouched with a wooden bucket in her hands. Her clothes were threadbare, her back bent, her hair thin and white. She was a slave, too old to run, too broken to be freed, forgotten like dust in the corner of a room.
Her clouded eyes had lifted to the tower, to the girl framed by moonlight. She saw the glimmer in Lyra's gaze, saw the way the silver light clung to her skin.
Her lips parted, and in a rasp that only the night heard, she whispered:
"The moon watches her…"
The wind carried her words away, lost beneath the thunder of the pack's howls.
Lyra pressed her face to the bars, watching until the wolves began their run, vanishing into the forest, the ground trembling beneath their paws.
Only when silence fell over the empty courtyard did she sink to her knees, her hand still pressed against her chest, her heart still racing as though it belonged to something not quite human.
She didn't know what she was.
But the moon did.
---