The moon was a relentless, glowing eye in the sky, demanding the debt I had owed for nearly five years.
I had declined Silas's offer to stay in the estate's reinforced shifting chambers. I couldn't bear the thought of being behind iron bars again, even if they were silver-plated. Silas had simply nodded, his gold eyes unreadable, and told me the north woods were mine for the night.
But as I stumbled through the thick undergrowth, the transition took hold with a violence I wasn't prepared for. Because I was shifting so late, my bones felt like they were being crushed and rebuilt in the same breath. I fell to my knees, clawing at the dirt as the silver-black fire turned inward.
I wanted to be independent. I wanted to prove I could stand alone. I fought the pull to leave the thicket, but as the moon reached its zenith, the human logic of "pride" evaporated. My wolf didn't care about politics. She cared about the gravity that held her to the earth.
"Find him," she thrummed. "The storm is calling."
I pushed out of the undergrowth, my silver paws silent. I was massive, my limbs heavy with a density that felt like titanium. My coat was a shimmering, metallic silver that looked like liquid moonlight. I followed the scent of cedar and ozone toward the edge of the forest.
There, in the moonlight, I saw him.
Silas wasn't in his wolf form yet. He stood at the very edge of the tree line, his shirt discarded despite the biting cold. The bandages on his chest were a stark, mocking white against his bronze skin. He was pacing like a caged animal, his jaw set, his fists clenched. He looked like a man standing behind an invisible barrier, fighting every primal instinct to cross into the trees and claim what was his.
I stepped into the light.
Silas froze. His breath ghosted in the air as his eyes tracked me, widening as he took in my form. I wasn't the small, lithe wolf most expected; I was a broad-shouldered, silver predator.
"Seraphina," he whispered, the name a jagged prayer.
I didn't head for the meadows. Instead, I stepped into his personal space, my silver height reaching his chest. I could smell the sharp sting of the antiseptic and the heavy, iron-rich scent of blood that still hadn't healed. My human mind flickered back to the fitting room—how those wounds should have been gone hours ago.
A primal, possessive heat flared in my chest. My wolf didn't care about the laws of High Alphas. She only knew that her mate was marked, and that the marks had come from her own claws.
Before he could shift, before he could retreat, I pressed my weight against his bare skin. Silas stiffened, a sharp hiss escaping his teeth as his hands came up to grip my fur. I reached up, my muzzle brushing against the hot, fevered skin of his torso.
Then, I licked the wounds.
The taste of his blood was like lightning—metallic, ancient, and intoxicatingly sweet. I worked with a slow, rhythmic devotion, my tongue smoothing over the torn, angry flesh.
I felt a violent tremor run through him. His fingers dug into the thick fur of my shoulders, and a low, guttural groan vibrated in his chest. The air between us began to hum with a frequency that drowned out the rustle of the trees.
I pulled back, my silver ears twitching.
To my utter shock, the wounds were gone. Under the moonlight, the jagged gashes had vanished. Not even a faint white line remained on his bronze chest. The "lingering sting" had been silenced the moment my wolf laid claim to the damage I had caused.
Silas looked down at his chest, his face pale. He ran a trembling hand over the smooth, flawless skin, his eyes wide with a realization that seemed to terrify him. He looked at me, and for the first time, there was no Alpha mask. There was only a man looking at the woman who held the literal power of life and death over him.
"You..." he breathed, his voice breaking.
He knew. He knew that if I was the only thing that could break his skin, I was also the only thing that could truly heal him.
The moment stretched, heavy and thick. Then, Silas's eyes flashed a blinding gold. With a roar that was half-surrender, he shifted in a blur of shadow and muscle. The massive black wolf stood before me, his eyes twin dying stars. He let out a commanding bark and headed toward the valley.
He was nudging me toward the pack.
At first, the sheer number of wolves gathered in the high meadows sent a spike of panic through me. But as I ran, I began to see them—not as strangers, but as souls I recognized. A small, energetic russet wolf with a white patch on her nose yipped at me as she streaked by; I knew instinctively it was Poppy. I saw the steady, dark grey forms of Elias and Caleb, moving like twin anchors on the flank of the pack.
The bowing stopped. The deference vanished. In the run, there were no "Ladies" or "guests." There was only the rhythm of the paws and the communal heat of the pack.
As I ran, a sharp, bitter pang of sadness pierced through the wolf-joy. This isn't my pack, I realized. These weren't the people I had grown up with. I tried to imagine doing this with the Silver-Moon—running with Julian, with the females who had whispered behind my back, with the elders who had called me a curse. I couldn't. The thought felt like oil in clear water. There was no world where I could have been this free back there. They would have feared this silver wolf; they would have tried to leash her or break her.
I pushed the sadness down, burying it under the scent of pine and the thrum of the earth. Not tonight, I told myself. Tonight, I am here.
I let go. I stopped thinking about the debt or the silver dress. I was just a silver streak in a sea of black and grey, running under a sky that finally belonged to me.
Silas stayed by my side, his shoulder occasionally brushing mine. He didn't lead me; he ran with me. Every time our fur touched, a wordless acknowledgment passed between us. In the house, we were humans fighting a bond we didn't want to admit to, but here, our wolves moved in a perfect, ancient synchronicity. They knew.
His wolf lowered his head as we reached the crest of a hill, pressing his nose into the fur of my neck. It was a gesture of extreme trust, a claim that went deeper than any contract. I nuzzled into his ruff, breathing in the raw, unmasked scent of the storm.
We weren't just two wolves in a forest. We were two halves of a whole that had finally found their center.
As we reached the highest ridge, the pack slowed, letting out a collective howl that shook the very air in my lungs. I joined them, my voice a clear, ringing bell of silver against the deep bass of the Shadow-Crest. For the first time in my life, I wasn't a girl trying to find her place. I was a wolf who had found her home, even if the man beside me was still too proud to say the word.