Sylvia lay on the thin mattress, the room heavy with shadows that refused to recede.
Every sound every creak of wood, every rustle of leaves outside felt magnified, taunting her exhaustion.
Sleep should have come, but it didn't. Not tonight.
When it did, it came wrong.
It wasn't Aiden who haunted her first not the man she had grown used to, not the ghost she feared she loved.
It was the wolf.
The pulse beneath her skin flared her mark burning, alive and she felt it like a tether being tugged from somewhere far away. Somewhere desperate.
A voice whispered not human, not fully curling around her mind like smoke.
Sylvia... please...
Her breath caught. "Who's there?"
A low growl answered, vibrating through the floor, through the walls, through her bones.
Then a form emerged half in moonlight, half in shadow a massive wolf, its fur streaked with ash and light, eyes gold and bleeding.
His body dragging his chains .
Her heart stilled.
It was him.
No. not him entirely.
"Sylvia... save me."
Her lips trembled. "Ashael?"
The growl fractured into words, jagged and desperate — a voice caught between man and beast.
"I... can't... the other can't see. Can't feel. I..."
And then it hit her the visions flashed the split. The fracture. The two sides of him.
The human trapped in illusion, enslaved to a false bond believing he was serving someone he loved.
Blinded by the illusion of duty.
But the wolf... the wolf remembered.
Every bond. Every promise. Every night carved from blood and moonlight.
Her pulse faltered. "She's fucking hurting him," Sylvia whispered. "Whoever she is — she's hurting him."
The wolf lowered its head, trembling, pressing closer like a wounded animal seeking warmth.
"She controls him," he rasped. "He doesn't hear me anymore. He can't feel you only the suffering you went through. He's blind to it all. Please, Sylvia... save him. Save us."
Her throat burned. "How? How do I save someone who can't even see the truth?"
The wolf's eyes flared fierce, pleading, divine. One claw scraped the floor, sparks scattering in the moonlight.
"Break the chains of the spell. He is just an empty shell.Reach him or he'll die serving her. The human side thinks it's love... protection... but it's slavery. It's killing him. It's killing me. It's killing us."
Sylvia's tears fell silently.
"Ashael," she whispered, voice breaking. "I'll find you. Even if I have to walk into the moon itself."
The wolf's form flickered, light bleeding through fur and shadow, until only its eyes remained ancient, sorrowful, burning.
"Then hurry..." he breathed. "Before the only salvation left is death."