Thessa's POV
I run until my lungs burn.
The forest swallows me whole. Branches claw at my face. Roots try to trip me. I don't care. I just need to get away from the lights, the music, the cheering crowd celebrating my destruction.
My sister's words echo in my head with every step.
I've been sleeping with Cadeirin for three months.
My foot catches on something and I slam into the ground hard. Pain explodes through my palms where they scrape against rocks. Blood drips dark and hot.
I lie there in the dirt, gasping, and finally let myself cry.
Great, ugly sobs that shake my whole body. I press my bleeding hands against my mouth to muffle the sound. Even now, even alone in the forest, I'm scared someone will hear me. Will find me weak and pathetic and confirm everything they already think.
Moonless. Cursed. Broken.
Maybe they're right.
"Get up," I whisper to myself through tears. "Get up, Thessa."
But I can't. My body won't move. It's like all the strength has leaked out through my scraped palms.
I close my eyes and see Maren's triumphant smile. See Cadeirin's disgusted face when he ripped his hand from mine. See my parents standing silent in the crowd, not saying a single word in my defense.
Not one word.
A sound makes me freeze.
Footsteps. Multiple sets. Coming fast through the forest behind me.
I push myself up, ignoring the screaming pain in my hands and knees. Through the trees, I see torch lights bobbing. Five—no, six torches. Moving in formation like trained hunters.
"Fan out!" a male voice shouts. "The Alpha wants her found before she reaches the border!"
They're hunting me.
But dawn is hours away. Cadeirin said I had until dawn.
Unless he lied. Unless he never planned to let me leave at all.
I run again, harder this time. My heart hammers against my ribs. The footsteps behind me get louder, closer. They're faster than me. Stronger. I've spent my life gathering herbs, not training for combat.
"I smell blood!" another voice yells. "She's injured! She can't have gone far!"
My bleeding hands. They're tracking my blood.
Stupid. So stupid.
The ground slopes upward. I'm climbing now, grabbing onto tree trunks to pull myself forward. My muscles scream. My vision blurs with tears and exhaustion.
"There!" someone shouts.
I look back. A torch is close—too close. I can see the wolf carrying it. Marcus, one of Cadeirin's best warriors. His eyes lock onto mine.
"Found her!" he yells.
I push harder, scrambling up the slope. My foot slips and I nearly fall again but catch myself on a low branch. The bark cuts into my already wounded palms but I hold on.
Just a little farther. If I can reach the ridge, maybe—
Strong hands grab my ankle and yank.
I scream as I'm dragged backward down the slope. I claw at the dirt, at roots, at anything. My fingernails break. Pain shoots up my arms.
Marcus flips me over roughly. His knee pins my chest, crushing the air from my lungs. Four other warriors surround us, their torches turning the night orange and smoky.
"Please," I gasp. "Please, I just need until dawn—"
"Change of plans," Marcus says. His breath smells like alcohol. They've been drinking at the ceremony. "Alpha says you don't get until dawn. Says you're too dangerous to let wander free."
"Dangerous?" I almost laugh but it comes out as a sob. "I'm Moonless. I'm nothing. How could I be dangerous?"
"Not my job to question the Alpha." Marcus pulls out a knife. The blade glints in the torchlight.
My blood turns to ice.
"Wait," I say, trying to sound calm even though I'm shaking so hard my teeth chatter. "You can't kill me. That's against pack law. Banishment doesn't mean execution—"
"You're not pack anymore," one of the other warriors says. "The second you were declared Moonless, you stopped being pack. You're nothing now. No one will care if you disappear."
"My parents—"
"Already agreed," Marcus says casually, like he's discussing the weather. "The Alpha asked for their permission. They gave it. Said it was... what were the words?" He pretends to think. "Oh right. 'A mercy.' Better you die quick than slowly in the Frostlands."
My parents agreed to this.
My own parents signed my death warrant.
Something inside me breaks. Not my heart—that already shattered on the ceremony platform. Something deeper. Something that believed, despite everything, that I mattered to someone.
I was wrong.
"Any last words?" Marcus asks, raising the knife.
I close my eyes. "I hope the Moon forgives you for this."
"The Moon doesn't care about Moonless wolves," he says. "That's the whole point."
The knife comes down.
A roar splits the night.
Not a human sound. Not a wolf sound. Something ancient and terrible that makes every hair on my body stand straight up.
Marcus's weight disappears from my chest. I open my eyes just in time to see him fly backward through the air like he weighs nothing. He crashes into a tree trunk with a sickening crack.
The other warriors spin around, weapons raised.
A massive shape moves through the shadows between the trees. It's huge—bigger than any wolf I've ever seen. Black fur that seems to swallow the torchlight. And eyes that glow silver like captured stars.
"What is that?" one warrior whispers, terrified.
The creature steps into the torch light.
It's a wolf. But wrong. Too big. Too powerful. Ancient magic radiates from it in waves that make my skin prickle.
One warrior shifts into his wolf form and charges. Brave. Stupid.
The black wolf moves faster than my eyes can track. One moment the warrior is charging. The next he's on the ground, throat torn out, bleeding into the dirt.
"Run!" someone screams.
They scatter. Dropping their torches. Tripping over roots in their panic. The black wolf doesn't chase them. It watches them flee with those eerie silver eyes, then turns to look at me.
I should run too. I should be terrified.
But I'm too broken to care anymore.
"Go ahead," I say quietly. "Kill me. Everyone else wants me dead. Why not you too?"
The wolf tilts its head, studying me. Then it does something impossible.
It shifts.
But not into a normal human form. The shift is smooth, effortless, like water changing shape. One second it's a massive beast. The next it's a tall man with silver-white hair that falls past his shoulders. He's pale as moonlight. Beautiful in a sharp, dangerous way that makes him look like he's carved from ice and shadows.
And his eyes—those silver eyes—they pin me in place.
"You're dying," he says. His voice is deep and cold as winter. No emotion at all.
I look down. Blood soaks my shirt from cuts I didn't know I had. My hands are shredded. I'm shaking from shock and cold.
"Good," I whisper.
Something flickers in those silver eyes. Surprise, maybe. "You want to die?"
"I want to stop hurting."
He's silent for a long moment, just staring at me. Then he crouches down, bringing his face level with mine. Up close, I can see he's not young. Not old either. Ageless. Like time doesn't touch him the same way it touches normal wolves.
"What's your name?" he asks.
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
I don't know why I answer. Maybe because his voice has this command in it that makes me want to obey. "Thessa. Thessa Rowan."
"Well, Thessa Rowan." He reaches out and touches my cheek with cold fingers. "You're not dying today."
"Why do you care?"
His silver eyes narrow, studying my face like he's searching for something. "Because you're not Moonless."
I laugh. It sounds broken. "Everyone keeps saying that. But the bond didn't work. The Priestess called me Moonless. The whole pack saw—"
"They're wrong." He says it with absolute certainty. "You're not Moonless. You're something else. Something I haven't seen in three thousand years."
Three thousand years.
That's impossible. No wolf lives that long.
Unless...
"What are you?" I whisper.
He smiles. It's not a kind smile. "The better question is: what are you, Thessa Rowan? Because whatever tried to hide your true nature did a very, very good job." He lifts me effortlessly into his arms. "But curses always break eventually. And yours is already cracking."
I try to struggle but my body won't cooperate. I'm too weak, too hurt, too broken.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Somewhere safe. Somewhere you can heal." He starts walking north, deeper into the forest, toward the Frostlands that no wolf survives. "Somewhere you can discover what you really are."
"I don't want to discover anything," I say. My eyes are getting heavy. "I just want to disappear."
"Too late." His voice sounds far away now. Darkness creeps in at the edges of my vision. "You've already been found."
The last thing I see before unconsciousness takes me is his silver eyes, glowing in the dark like twin moons.
And I hear him whisper, so quiet I almost miss it: "After all these centuries... she sent me a broken goddess."