Cassian POV
Two weeks after the council challenge, Cassian still hadn't received word on who would fight him for leadership.
He was trying not to think about what that meant. Trying not to imagine Kael in her room while unknown wolves plotted to take everything from him. Trying not to let doubt creep in.
What if Thom was right? What if choosing her really did make him unfit to lead?
He was standing in the compound hallway, staring at nothing, when Ronan found him.
"Stop," his beta said simply.
"Stop what?"
"Doubting yourself. I can see it all over your face." Ronan crossed his arms. "You made the right choice, Cass. The pack will understand that eventually."
Cassian wanted to believe him.
Instead, he turned and walked toward Lyra's healing room. The pack healer was waiting for him, a bundle of soft cloth in her hands. Her mate Ronan had told her everything. About the mate bond. About the council challenge. About the girl in the stone room who couldn't speak.
"Is she ready?" Lyra asked gently.
"I don't know if ready is the right word," Cassian said. "But she needs help. She can't live in there forever."
They entered Kael's room together. She was standing at the window, watching the sky change colors. She'd been doing that more. Watching. Learning. Slowly coming back to something that looked almost human.
The moment she caught Lyra's scent, she tensed. Her wolf rose up, ready to fight.
Cassian put his hand on her shoulder and she stilled, looking between them. Her silver eyes were less wild now. More aware.
"Safe," he said quietly. "This is Lyra. She helps us heal."
Kael made a low sound in her throat but didn't attack.
Lyra moved slowly, making herself small and unthreatening. She set the cloth down and spoke in the softest voice Cassian had ever heard. "You're doing so well. I can see how strong you are. I just want to help you feel better."
It took hours.
Lyra showed Kael water. Showed her how to wash away the dirt and blood that had caked her skin for so long. Cassian waited outside the bathing room, his wolf restless, but Kael allowed the touch. Allowed the care.
When she emerged, she looked almost human.
The scars covering her body told stories. Ritual markings, Lyra whispered to Cassian. Not random damage. Intentional. Beautiful in a strange way, like a map of survival written into her skin.
Kael put on the soft clothes Lyra brought and sank into a chair like she might disappear if she let go of it. But her eyes were clearer now. More present.
"Can you tell us your name?" Lyra asked gently.
Kael looked at Cassian. He nodded.
"Kael," she said. The word was still rough but it was a word. A real word. Not an animal sound.
Something inside Cassian's chest loosened.
"Kael," Lyra repeated, smiling. "That's beautiful. Kael, do you remember where you came from?"
For a long moment, Kael didn't respond. Her eyes went distant, like she was looking at something very far away.
"Mountains," she finally said. "High mountains."
"Mountains are cold," Lyra said. "Did you live there?"
Kael's hands trembled. "Before. Village. Tribe."
Cassian leaned forward. "What was it called?"
"Moonshadow." The word came out like prayer and curse mixed together. "Moonshadow Tribe. They... they took me. When my pack..." She stopped, her breathing getting heavy.
"It's okay," Lyra said. "You don't have to say anymore."
But Kael pushed forward like she needed the words out or they would poison her from inside.
"I was ten. Hunters came. Fire. Blood." Her eyes were glowing faintly silver now. "The elders found me. Brought me to mountains. Taught me. Taught me everything."
"Taught you what?" Cassian asked.
"Hunt. Fight. Speak to..." She struggled for the word. "To nature. To wolves. To trees. The old magic."
Over the next week, Cassian sat in the library until midnight, digging through pack records that nobody had looked at in decades. Ancient histories. Records of old conflicts.
He found them. References to the Moonshadow Tribe buried in footnotes and damaged pages. Wolves who lived in the forbidden mountains. Wolves with abilities that modern packs had forgotten about. Wolves who could do things that seemed impossible.
The records said they were extinct. Wiped out twenty years ago. No explanation. No details. Just a blank space where their history should have been.
Kael had been twelve when her tribe was slaughtered.
That meant she'd survived alone in the mountains for a decade. Survived as a feral wolf. Survived on instinct when she had no pack, no home, no one.
Cassian looked at his fragile mate sitting in the healing room, relearning how to be human, and felt something break inside him.
The gifts started appearing.
First, a carved wooden wolf left outside her door. Then flowers, pressed carefully between cloth. A soft brush. Things that said the pack was starting to accept her. Small offerings from wolves who saw her humanity instead of her feral nature.
But the whispers continued too.
Cursed. Possessed. Dangerous. The words drifted through the compound like poison.
Cassian heard them and his wolf wanted to hunt down whoever was spreading the doubt. But challenging every dissenting voice would only prove Thom right about him being unfit to lead.
Instead, he focused on Kael.
She was making progress. She could speak now, though the words came slowly and sometimes in the wrong order. She told them about the Moonshadow elders. About learning to hunt in ways that seemed like magic. About being marked with ritual blessings that made her stronger than normal wolves.
She told them about the day the hunters came with silver weapons and fire.
And then one night, three weeks after Cassian brought her to the compound, everything changed.
He was lying beside her, their bodies close but not touching yet. She was still learning to trust physical contact. Still healing from twelve years of being alone.
Her body went rigid beside him.
She started making sounds.
Not the broken words she'd been learning. Not the animal noises from before. This was something else. Words in a language that Cassian's wolf recognized even though his human mind couldn't understand them.
Ancient language. First wolf language. Language that hadn't been spoken in generations.
Kael's eyes snapped open and she was screaming. Not from pain. From memory.
From loss.
The ancient words poured out of her mouth, guttural and sharp and full of a grief so deep it made Cassian's entire body hurt. She was seeing something. Living something. Her wolf was trapped in a nightmare that no modern wolf should be able to access.
Cassian grabbed her shoulders, trying to pull her back to the present.
But her eyes were ancient. They were full of dying elders and burning villages and the weight of being the last of her kind.
She was speaking to spirits.
And they were answering.