The air in the room didn't just grow cold; it turned heavy, pressing against Mary's lungs until every breath felt like swallowing shards of glass. Her world didn't just tilt—it fractured.
"Myles? What is she talking about?" Mary's voice was a thin wire, vibrating with the onset of a panic attack.
Myles looked as though his soul were being slowly torn out.
He ignored the low, predatory snarls of the three Alphas flanking them and dropped to one knee. The gesture was so formal, so archaic, that it made Mary's stomach turn.
"I am so sorry, Mary," he whispered, his eyes fixed on the floor.
"I was sent to be your shadow. To watch the girl who was never supposed to know she was a queen. Your parents... the people you think of as 'family' back in the city... they aren't who you think. You are the true-blood daughter of the King and Queen of Aethelgard. You are Valkyrie-born—the first hybrid of Wolf and Wing in a thousand years."
"That's impossible," Mary stammered, backing away until her spine hit the cold stone wall.
"Marvin is my dad. He's a History teacher. He spends his nights grading essays and complaining about the school board. He—he taught me how to cite sources and analyze poetry. He's a scholar, Myles, not some warrior!"
"Marvin was the greatest Captain of the Guard Aethelgard ever produced," Myles corrected gently, though his words felt like blows.
"But he doesn't know that. When the King sent you away for your own safety, he couldn't risk the Captain being interrogated or breaking under torture. Marvin was subjected to a total Lethe-wipe. His memories of the palace, the wars, and his own rank were erased and replaced with the life of an academic. He loves you because he was programmed to believe you were his flesh and blood. To him, the books and the classroom are the only reality he has ever known."
Mary felt a sob catch in her throat. The man who had raised her, who had comforted her after nightmares with quotes from literature, was living a life that was nothing more than a high-stakes witness protection program.
He was a teacher who didn't even know his own history.
"Why?" she choked out. "Why all the lies?"
"Because of the Fourth Alpha," Myles said, his voice dropping to a somber register.
The room went deathly silent at the mention of the Fourth.
"Before you were born, Alpha Silas ruled the Northern Reaches," Myles explained.
"He was the strongest of the four, but he was also a Seer. He received a prophecy:
A child of two worlds shall rise; she will either knit the realms into one or burn them until only ash remains. The Council feared that 'burning' more than they hoped for the 'uniting.' Someone—we still don't know who—arranged Silas's 'accident' during a hunt to ensure the prophecy died with him. They had him killed to stop you from ever being born. But the prophecy didn't die. You were born months later. Your parents sealed your powers at birth to hide you from the same people who murdered Silas."
"But the seal is breaking," Vale snapped, stepping into Mary's line of sight.
"On your nineteenth birthday, the Valkyrie wakes. And judging by the scent of ozone coming off you, she's already hitting the snooze button."
Suddenly, Mary's phone vibrated violently in her pocket. With trembling fingers, she pulled it out. A text from Marvin.
Marvin: The birds are circling the house, Mary. Dozens of them. Just sitting there, watching. The dreams are getting louder. Check your back. If the skin starts to itch, run. Don't look back. I love you, kid.
The phone slipped from Mary's hand, clattering onto the floor. Her back didn't just itch. It felt as though someone had pressed a branding iron between her shoulder blades. A searing, rhythmic heat pulsed under her skin, tracing the lines of where wings should—but couldn't—be.
"We don't have time for a crisis of identity," Vale said, her eyes hardening with a mixture of pity and pragmatism.
"The Moon Trials begin in forty-eight hours. It's a survival gauntlet in the Forbidden Woods.
It was designed centuries ago to trigger a transformation under extreme duress.
The Council wants to see what you are, Mary. They want to know if they're hosting a god... or a monster they need to put down."
Vale stepped closer, her alpha aura flaring. "You will tell no one. Not a single student, not a teacher.
If the wrong ears hear that a Valkyrie-Wolf hybrid is walking these halls, they will kill you before you even see the moon. Promise me."
Mary looked at the floor, at the glowing screen of her phone and the message from the teacher who wasn't her father.