The forbidden territory doesn't feel cursed.
It feels watchful.
I've been walking for hours through forest that's different from pack lands, older and more deliberate in the way it grows. The trees here tower overhead with roots as thick as my waist, and moss hangs from branches like curtains that brush against my face as I pass. Everything is silent except for my footsteps and the occasional rustle of wind through leaves.
The ache in my bones has spread until it pulses in rhythm with my heartbeat. My skin feels too tight, stretched over a frame that wants to be something else entirely.
I push forward through the darkness.
The temple appears suddenly, as if the forest simply decided to reveal what it had been hiding all along.
It rises from the earth like something that grew rather than was built, white stone columns wrapped in vines that climb toward the canopy. Steps lead up to a circular platform open to the sky, and at the center stands an altar that's smooth and dark, carved with symbols I recognize from the grimoire.
Moonlight falls directly onto the altar and nowhere else, as if the sky itself is pointing the way.
I stop at the base of the steps.
My hands shake as I pull the grimoire from my pack, the pages flipping open to the ritual section even though I've memorized every word. I read it again anyway, needing the confirmation that I'm doing this right.
Blessed be the blood that knows the moon.
Blessed be the soul that seeks severance.
Blessed be the one who stands alone.
I close the book and set it aside on the bottom step.
The knife is cold in my hand as I climb toward the altar, each step feeling heavier than the last. Not physically heavy, but something else, like the temple itself is weighing me and judging whether I deserve to stand on sacred ground.
I reach the platform.
The altar is larger up close, its surface covered in symbols that seem to move in the moonlight, shifting and rearranging themselves into patterns I can almost understand. I trace one with my finger and the stone is warm beneath my touch, alive with something I can't name.
The moon hangs directly overhead now, full and bright enough to cast sharp shadows. My bones scream with that pulling sensation, demanding something I don't understand.
I can't wait any longer.
I stand before the altar and take a deep breath of night air that tastes like stone and old magic.
"Blessed be the blood that knows the moon."
My voice sounds small in the vast silence that surrounds this place.
I raise the knife and watch the blade catch moonlight until it glows silver in my hand. For a moment, I hesitate with the metal pressed against my palm. This could kill me, the grimoire warned me clearly, only those with true lunar blood survive the severance.
But staying in Nightfang would kill me slower and more painfully than any ritual.
I press the blade to my palm and drag it across in one deliberate motion.
The pain is sharp and immediate as blood wells up, looking almost black in the moonlight. I turn my hand over the altar and let the blood drip onto the ancient stone.
The first drop hits the carved surface.
Everything stops.
The wind dies completely. The forest goes silent as if every living thing is holding its breath. Even my heartbeat seems to pause between one thump and the next.
Then the altar flares with light.
The symbols ignite in white and silver flames that spread across the platform, racing along lines I didn't see before. The entire temple comes alive around me, every stone glowing with power that makes my teeth ache.
I stumble back a step, clutching my bleeding hand against my chest.
The moonlight intensifies until it feels like standing under a spotlight. I can't look away from the sky even though I want to, even though the moon burns brighter and more impossibly bright until I have to shield my eyes with my uninjured hand.
Thunder cracks overhead.
No clouds. No storm. Just thunder rolling across the sky like the world is tearing open at the seams.
The pain hits.
It's not like the ache I've felt before during previous full moons. This is something else entirely, something that reaches into my core and tears at the foundations of what I am. Something inside me breaks and shatters, and my bones feel like they're splitting apart and reforming all at once.
I collapse to my knees on the glowing platform.
The altar burns brighter until the light is so intense I can see it through my closed eyelids, white and silver and overwhelming.
"Blessed be the soul that seeks severance."
The words tear out of me without my permission. I don't remember deciding to speak them, but they come anyway, pulled from somewhere deep inside.
My spine arches backward. Another wave of pain crashes through me like a physical force, and I can feel every bone in my body, every nerve, every cell being rewritten into something new.
Something is waking up inside me.
"Blessed be the one who stands alone."
The moon darkens overhead.
The light vanishes completely. The world plunges into shadow so deep I can't see my own hands pressed against the stone, can't see anything at all.
Then it flares back with devastating force.
White light explodes across the sky. The moon burns like a star pulled too close to earth. The temple shakes beneath me, columns cracking as stone dust rains down around my kneeling form.
I try to scream, but no sound comes out of my constricted throat.
A voice speaks, not out loud but deeper than that, like it's coming from inside my skull and from the marrow of my bones simultaneously.
"Daughter of fang and desire."
It's not cruel. Not kind. Just absolute and undeniable.
"Awaken."
My body breaks.
That's the only way to describe what happens next. Everything I am shatters and reforms in the span of a single heartbeat that feels like an eternity.
My hands twist under me. Bones crack and reshape with sounds I can hear too clearly. My fingers elongate as nails sharpen into claws. Fur erupts across my skin in a wave of white that gleams in the returning moonlight.
I feel my face change, my jaw extending as teeth sharpen into fangs. My senses explode outward in every direction until I'm drowning in sensation.
I can smell everything. The age of the stone beneath me. The sap running through the trees beyond the clearing. The blood on the altar, my blood, still warm. My own fear, sharp and metallic.
I can hear the forest breathing around me. Every leaf rustling. Every insect moving through the underbrush. Every heartbeat for miles in every direction.
The pain reaches a crescendo that should kill me and then vanishes as if it never existed.
I'm on all fours. The platform feels different under my hands, no, under my paws that are massive and white-furred and impossible.
I try to stand and nearly fall, my body refusing to move the way it should. I'm bigger than I was. Stronger. Different in ways I can't begin to process.
I look down and see white fur covering powerful limbs. Massive paws tipped with claws. A body that isn't mine but somehow is.
I'm a wolf.
Impossible.
I was human. I've always been human, the only human in a pack of wolves. I don't have wolf blood. I can't shift, everyone said so, everyone knew it.
But I'm standing here on four legs with the moon singing in my veins, and I can feel power thrumming through me like nothing I've ever known or imagined.
Movement catches my eye.
I spin, clumsy in this new body that doesn't respond the way I expect.
Behind me, cast in moonlight against the temple columns, is a silhouette that makes my breath catch.
A wolf. Massive. Easily twice my already considerable size. White fur that glows like captured starlight. Eyes that burn with ancient knowledge that predates the stones around us.
It stands perfectly still, watching me with an intensity that should terrify me.
No.
Not watching.
Waiting.
I take a step back on unfamiliar paws. My foot catches on the edge of the platform. I stumble and nearly fall.
The silhouette doesn't move. Doesn't advance or retreat. Just stands there, patient and eternal and impossibly still.
Then I realize the truth.
It's not behind me.
It is me.
My shadow. My reflection cast in moonlight. What I've become.
The realization hits like a physical blow to my chest.
I'm not human.
I never was.
The scream tears out of me, not human and not entirely wolf, something between the two. Something raw and terrified and utterly lost in what I've just discovered about myself.
The sound echoes through the forest, through the temple, through the night itself like a declaration.
And as I scream, the massive white wolf silhouette behind me throws back its head and howls with me.