Aria's POV
The pain is everywhere.
My bones snap like dry branches. My skin burns. My muscles tear apart and rebuild themselves wrong or maybe right for the first time ever.
I can't scream anymore. My throat is raw from screaming.
The silver runes on my hands spread up my arms, burning their way across my skin. They're writing something, telling a story in a language I've never learned but somehow understand.
You are awakening.
The voice comes from inside my head. Not my voice. Something ancient and powerful that's been sleeping in my blood.
Let go. Stop fighting. Become what you were always meant to be.
I don't know how! I sob, curled on the forest floor. My blood pools beneath me, soaking into the hungry earth.
Yes, you do. You've always known. You were just told you were broken so many times you believed it.
More bones crack. My spine arches impossibly. I feel my face changing, stretching, and reforming.
Then suddenly silence.
The pain stops.
I'm standing on four legs instead of two.
I look down at paws that are pure white, glowing faintly in the darkness. My fur ripples with colors I don't have names for like someone trapped starlight underneath my skin.
I have a wolf.
After twenty-three years of being called broken, defective, worthless I have a wolf.
I throw my head back and howl. The sound that comes out isn't normal. Its power made into music, ancient and wild and mine.
The Veil responds. Trees bend toward me like they're bowing. The purple mist swirls at my feet, eager and curious. Even the red-eyed creatures watching from the shadows drop to their bellies, whimpering.
Knowledge floods my mind in a rush that makes me dizzy. I see wolves from thousands of years ago, massive and glowing with power. The Primordial Wolves the first ones, the parents of every pack that exists now.
I see their Luna, beautiful and terrible, commanding armies with just her voice.
I see her die, betrayed by those who feared her power.
I see centuries pass. See True Lunas hunted and killed before they could awaken. See the bloodlines get weaker and weaker as the ancient magic faded.
Until me.
You are the first in three thousand years, the voice says. The last daughter of the Primordial. You were never weak, little one. You were waiting. Growing. Preparing for this moment.
But why me? I ask, my wolf's voice rough and strange. Why now?
Because the world needs you. Because darkness is rising. Because your mates are calling, and you must answer.
My what
Before I can finish, power explodes from my body in a wave that shakes the entire forest.
My scent which never existed before bursts outward like a bomb going off. It carries something that makes every supernatural being for hundreds of miles freeze and turn their head.
The scent of the Primordial. Ancient. Undeniable. Irresistible.
And somewhere far away, three wolves catch that scent and go absolutely crazy.
Zane's POV - Nightshade Territory, 300 miles north
The quarterly reports show a fifteen percent increase
The scent hits me mid-sentence.
My wolf explodes inside my mind, howling one word over and over: MINE. MINE. MINE.
Alpha? My Beta's voice sounds far away. Are you
The windows shatter. All of them. Glass rains down as my power surges out of control for the first time in thirteen years.
I'm on my feet, shifting before I can think. My clothes tear. The conference table cracks under my claws.
Alpha Blackthorn, what's happening? Someone shouts.
I don't answer. Can't answer. My wolf is in complete control, and he has only one thought: find her. Find our mate. Now.
I crash through the wall instead of using the door. My pack members scatter as I hit the ground running.
She's south. Far south. In the Veil where nothing should be able to survive.
I run faster.
Darius's POV - Bloodmoon Territory, 250 miles east
The vision has me by the throat.
I see a thousand futures at once burning cities, dead wolves, the end of everything. My usual nightmare.
Then suddenly, they all disappear.
There's only one future now. One image, crystal clear:
A white wolf with eyes like rainbows, standing in the Veil. Power radiates from her in waves. She's looking right at me, and I know she's what I've been searching for.
The vision releases me. I gasp, falling out of my chair.
Lord Ashwood! My assistant runs over. Should I call the healer
Her scent reaches me. Even through a closed window, even across hundreds of miles, I smell her.
My wolf roars to life. Our mate. Finally. OURS.
Cancel everything, I order, already moving toward the door. Cancel it all. I have to I need to
I don't finish. I'm already running, shifting, following that impossible scent to its source.
For the first time in twenty years, my mind is quiet. No competing futures. No death visions.
Just her. Just the certainty that everything in my life has been leading to this moment.
Cael's POV - Seattle, 200 miles west
Mr. Silver crest, if you'll just sign here, the deal is
The scent drifts through my office window, and my entire world stops.
My wolf carefully controlled, perfectly leashed for twenty-eight years shatters every chain I've ever put on him.
MATE, he snarls. OUR MATE. FIND HER NOW.
I need to go, I hear myself say.
But sir, this contract is worth fifty million
I don't care. I'm already at the window, opening it wider, breathing in that scent like oxygen after drowning. The deal is off. Everything is off.
Mr. Silvercrest, you can't just
I jump out the window. We're twenty stories up, but I shift before I hit the ground, landing on four silver paws.
Car alarms blare. Humans scream. I don't care.
She's real. The mate my wolf has been howling for since I became Alpha. The one I thought I'd never find.
She's in the Veil. She's in danger. And I'm going to reach her before anyone else does.
I run through Seattle's streets, leaving chaos in my wake.
Nothing matters except getting to her.
Aria's POV
I'm still trying to understand what just happened when I hear it.
Something massive crashing through the forest. Trees snapping. The ground shaking with heavy footfalls.
Coming straight toward me.
My wolf's ears swivel. Not one thing. Three.
Three some things, each one enormous, each one moving fast.
Fear spikes through me. I just became a wolf five minutes ago. I don't know how to fight. Don't know how to run properly on four legs.
The first one bursts into the clearing from the north a black wolf the size of a bear, covered in scars, with red eyes that glow like fire.
He should be terrifying. And he is. But when those red eyes lock on me, they fill with something that looks like wonder.
The second wolf appears from the east dark grey with silver streaks, moving like a shadow made solid. His eyes are knowing, like he's been waiting for this moment.
The third comes from the west sleek silver fur and ice-blue eyes that see straight through me.
Three massive Alpha wolves, surrounding me.
Their power presses against me like a physical weight. Any normal wolf would submit automatically.
But I'm not normal anymore.
My wolf stands tall, meeting each of their gazes without flinching. Power ripples under my starlight fur.
The three wolves stop, staring.
Then, slowly, the black wolf lowers himself to his belly. Submitting. To me.
The grey wolf follows. Then the silver one.
Three Alphas on their stomachs, looking at me like I'm the most precious thing in the world.
Your mates, the ancient voice whispers. The ones who will stand beside you in the darkness to come.
No, I whisper. I just got rejected. I can't I don't want
The black wolf whimpers softly, crawling closer.
Something in my chest pulls tight. The broken mate bond with Kade is still there, jagged and painful. But something new is forming. Three golden threads, reaching toward these strange wolves.
One of them shifts the grey wolf becoming a man. Handsome, with silver-streaked dark hair and eyes that have seen too much.
Please don't be afraid, he says, his voice gentle. We won't hurt you. We could never hurt you.
What are you? I ask, my wolf's voice strange in my own ears.
We're yours, he says simply. We've been waiting for you our whole lives.
The other two shift as well. The scarred black wolf becomes a huge man with dark hair and dangerous eyes. The silver wolf becomes someone beautiful and sharp.
All three stare at me like I'm a miracle.
I don't understand, I say.
You're the True Luna, the beautiful one says. The first in three thousand years. And you're our fated mate. All three of us.
That's impossible.
So is a white wolf glowing with ancient power, the scarred one says? Yet here you are.
Before I can respond, the red-eyed creatures from before emerge from the shadows. Dozens of them. But they're not looking at me anymore.
They're looking past me, into the deeper parts of the Veil.
Where something much worse is waking up.
A voice echoes through the forest, cold and ancient:
A True Luna awakens. How delicious. The Covenant has waited three millennia for this feast.
The three men move instantly, positioning themselves between me and the darkness.
Stay behind us, the scarred one orders.
But I can feel it whatever's coming is stronger than all of us combined.
And it's hungry.