The air beneath the Moon-Pool didn't smell like mountains or ancient stone. It smelled of ozone, antiseptic, and something metallic that made my stomach churn. The staircase was a narrow throat of cold steel, descending so deep that the sound of the waterfall above faded into a ghostly hum.
At the bottom, I stepped into a hallway bathed in a flickering, clinical blue light. There were no torches here only glowing panels and humming wires that pulsed like the veins of a mechanical beast.
"Is anyone there?" I whispered, my voice sounding small in the vast, sterile silence.
I walked past heavy glass doors. Behind them, I saw things that made the White Wolf inside me howl in grief. Large tanks filled with a shimmering, milky fluid the same fluid I had seen being drained from my mother in the vision. Suspended in the liquid were wolf pelts, strange glowing organs, and vials labeled with dates that went back decades.
One door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar. Above it, a sign in elegant, silver script read: PROJECT WHITE ORIGIN: SPECIMEN 001.
I pushed it open.
The room was a nightmare of velvet and steel. In the center stood a high-backed chair with silver restraints, surrounded by monitors that displayed a DNA helix. But it was the wall that broke my heart.
Pinned to the corkboard were hundreds of photographs.
There was a photo of me as a five-year-old, playing in the mud behind the pack house. A photo of me at ten, crying after Tanya had torn my favorite doll. A photo of me at eighteen, staring longingly at Silas during a training session.
Every moment of my "private" pain had been captured. I hadn't been living a life; I had been a specimen under a microscope.
"They never looked away, did they?"
I spun around, my hands igniting with white fire. But it wasn't Professor Lang or Malachi.
It was Kael.
He was standing in the doorway, his friendly face replaced by a look of profound exhaustion. He wasn't wearing his servant's tunic anymore. He wore the black tactical vest of a University Guardian.
"Kael?" I breathed, my heart shattering a little more. "You... you're one of them?"
"I'm a Tracker, Elara," he said softly, refusing to look at the photos on the wall. "The University found me after I was exiled. They gave me a purpose. My job was to ensure you stayed 'broken' enough to never shift. I was the one who suggested Silas should ignore you. I was the one who told Tanya which rumors would hurt you the most."
"Why?" I screamed, the white light from my hands scorching the floor. "I thought you were my friend!"
"I am your friend!" Kael shouted back, finally meeting my eyes. There were tears in his. "That's why I'm here. Malachi is coming, Elara. He's right behind me, and he's not coming to save you. He's coming to secure the 'Specimen' before the University moves you to the offshore facility."
He stepped forward, reaching into his vest and pulling out a small, glass vial filled with a dark violet liquid.
"The vision you saw in the pool... Lang manipulated it," Kael whispered. "Malachi was there when your mother died, yes. But he wasn't the one harvesting her. He was trying to stop them. He failed, Elara. He's been obsessed with you for two hundred years because he's trying to atone for failing her."
"I don't believe you," I spat. "Everyone in this world lies."
"Then believe your own blood," Kael said. He smashed the vial on the floor between us.
A thick, purple vapor erupted. Unlike the silver mist, this didn't hurt. It felt... familiar. As I inhaled it, my mind exploded with a new set of memories. These weren't curated by the University. They were raw.
I saw a younger Malachi, his armor charred and broken, screaming as he tried to break through a silver shield to reach a dying woman. I saw him taking a secret vow to the Moon Goddess to protect the next 'White Origin' with his life, even if it meant she hated him.
The weight of the truth was too much. Malachi wasn't a hero, but he wasn't the monster I thought he was. He was a man drowning in a centuries-old guilt, trying to play a game of chess against a University that owned the board.
"The King is here," Kael whispered, his ears twitching.
The heavy steel door at the end of the hall was ripped off its hinges with a scream of tortured metal.
Malachi stood there, his eyes glowing like dying stars. He looked at Kael, then at me, then at the laboratory equipment.
"Kael, step away from her," Malachi commanded, his voice a low, lethal vibration.
"I'm not the one she's afraid of, Malachi," Kael said, standing his ground.
I looked between the two of them the man who lied to protect me and the man who lied to keep me broken.
"Both of you, stop!" I yelled.
But I wasn't just yelling. The White Wolf inside me had finally had enough. My body began to stretch, my bones snapping and reforming with the sound of breaking ice. My white dress tore away as fur pure, brilliant, blinding white erupted from my skin.
I wasn't an Omega anymore. I wasn't a Specimen.
I was the Origin.
I shifted into a wolf as large as Malachi's Lycan form, my eyes glowing a terrifying, crystalline blue. I let out a howl that shattered every glass tank in the room, releasing the milky fluid in a tidal wave of light.
The laboratory alarms began to blare. Self-Destruct Initiated. Five Minutes to Impact.
"Elara!" Malachi cried out, his voice filled with a mixture of terror and awe.
I bared my teeth at him, a low growl vibrating in my chest. I didn't care about his guilt. I didn't care about Kael's excuses.
I turned and smashed my way through the reinforced glass window of the lab, leaping into the dark, underground river that fed the Moon-Pool.
I was done being the prize. If the King and the University wanted the White Wolf,
they would have to find her in the wild.