POV: Aphrodite
Power floods outward from my core, answering Kade's claim with primal denial.
I don't shift fully. Don't need to. Instead, I let my Direwolf presence bleed through, ancient and undeniable. The air around me thickens immediately, pressure building like a storm about to break. The ground beneath my feet trembles faintly, responding to something older than pack law or Alpha authority. Older than Nightfang itself.
This is what I am. What they tried to suppress with years of abuse and isolation. What they feared enough to break a child rather than acknowledge.
The effect is immediate and devastating.
Three of the lesser wolves in Kade's patrol drop to their knees immediately, submission instinctive and involuntary. Their wolves recognize mine, understand at a bone-deep level that they're facing something that predates their hierarchy. Something that exists outside the rules they've built their entire lives around.
