The first wave hit before we could form ranks.
Shadows poured from the darkening sky like inverse lightning—not streaking down but reaching up, hungry tendrils that grabbed wolves and pulled. Traditional and rejected alike screamed as shadows tried to force merger through violence.
"Defensive positions!" Marcus roared, but our mixed forces had no unified training. Traditional wolves tried to fight with claw and fang. The rejected used their broken gifts desperately. Echo's twelve bodies became a whirling shield around the youngest wolves. The storm-shifter called lightning without a cloud in sight.
Chaos. Beautiful, terrible chaos.
"This won't work," the Winter Alpha observed calmly as shadows crashed around her, unable to penetrate her frozen aura. "You fight the symptoms, not the disease."
"Then help us!" I snarled, shielding Luna while trying to coordinate through my gift. But there were too many emotions, too much terror and rage and—
Hunger. Not from our wolves. From the shadows.
The realization hit like ice water. They weren't just attacking—they were starving. Each failed merger left them weaker, more desperate. They were dying.
"STOP!" Luna's voice carried impossible authority for a three-year-old. "EVERYONE STOP!"
For a heartbeat, the battle paused. Even shadows hesitated.
"You're dying," she announced to the shadows. "The severing is killing you. Years and years of hungry, and now you're almost empty." Tears streamed down her small face. "And you—" she turned to the wolves, "—you're dying too. Just slower. Pretending half a soul is enough."
"Luna, get back!" Marcus moved to grab her, but she danced away, moving into the space between shadow and wolf.
"No! Someone has to say it!" Power radiated from her—not attacking, just... revealing. "Look at them! Really look!"
And we did. Through her gift, we saw the shadows truly. Not monsters. Not enemies. The severed halves of ourselves, twisted by centuries of starvation into barely recognizable forms. Some were just wisps now, final moments before dissolution.
"By the moon," someone whispered. "They're us."
That's when Declan made his choice. The traditional Alpha, faced with proof of what prejudice had wrought, raised his claws. "Then we end their misery. Kill the shadows, maintain the natural—"
Marcus moved faster than I'd ever seen him. His claws met Declan's throat, stopping just short of killing. "Touch one shadow—ANY shadow—and I'll show you what a real monster looks like."
The field went still. An Alpha defending shadows? The world had gone mad.
"That's our daughter out there," Marcus continued, voice deadly quiet. "Trying to save both sides. And if you'd rather maintain your 'pure' traditions than protect a child..." He pressed claws deeper, drawing blood. "Then you're the real abomination here."
"Marcus," I breathed. He was choosing. Finally, truly choosing.
"Some things matter more than tradition," he said, eyes never leaving Declan's. "I learned that too late. But I learned."
The Winter Alpha laughed—soft, surprised. "Well. Perhaps there's hope after all." She stepped forward, power unfurling. "Shadows! Wolves! Hear me—eldest of the rejected, first to survive the severing!"
Everything stopped. Even the dying shadows turned to her.
"I offer a third path," she announced. "Not forced merger. Not continued separation. But what I learned in centuries of exile—controlled coexistence."
She demonstrated. From within her frozen aura, shadows emerged. But they weren't merged with her—they existed alongside, preserved in eternal winter. Neither consuming nor consumed.
"It's not perfect," she admitted. "The cold numbs both joy and sorrow. But it keeps both sides alive while we seek a better answer."
"That's not living," Luna protested. "That's just... pausing."
"Yes, child. But sometimes a pause is all we can manage." The Winter Alpha looked at me. "Your daughter shows the ideal—gentle partnership. But that takes time. Trust. Things we don't have with the horde dying around us."
She was right. All around, shadows were beginning to dissolve. And as they died, I felt something in the watching wolves die too. Some essential piece, withering.
"Then we save who we can," I decided. "Volunteers only. Shadows and wolves who choose the Winter Alpha's path until we can find Luna's way."
"Are you insane?" Declan sputtered, Marcus finally releasing him. "You want us to take shadows into ourselves?"
"I want us to survive," I shot back. "All of us. Even the parts we've been taught to hate."
What followed was the strangest battlefield triage in history. Wolves stepping forward, offering to carry shadows in winter stasis. Not all—many on both sides were too afraid or proud. But enough.
Thomas went first, opening himself to a shadow that had once been his own sorrow. The Winter Alpha's power wrapped them both, creating a small bubble of controlled coexistence.
Then Echo's twelve, taking in twelve shadows without hesitation. The storm-shifter. The prophetic elder. One by one, the rejected offered sanctuary to the dying.
And then, impossibly, some traditional wolves stepped forward too. Young ones mostly, those who'd felt the wrongness of the severing their whole lives.
But for every success, shadows still dissolved. Wolves still chose isolation. The price of centuries of fear couldn't be paid in minutes.
Luna watched it all, tears freezing on her cheeks from the Winter Alpha's proximity. "It's not enough. We're still losing too many."
That's when the Ancient Shadow from before materialized. But it was fading, form barely holding.
"Child," it whispered. "You showed us the dream of reunion. Let us show you the price of division."
It touched Luna's forehead, and through her gift, every wolf and shadow present experienced the First Severing. Not as story, but as lived memory.
The agony of being torn in half. The moment when completeness became foreign. The first Alpha's decree that some emotions were unworthy, that control mattered more than wholeness.
We felt the shadows' first moments of hunger. The wolves' first moments of emptiness. The birth of the lie that breaking ourselves made us stronger.
When the vision ended, wolves were weeping. Shadows keened with remembered loss.
"This is what we defend?" Marcus asked, voice broken. "This mutilation of our very souls?"
"Never again," someone whispered. Then louder, "NEVER AGAIN!"
The cry took up across the field. Traditional and rejected, wolf and shadow,