Sienna's POV
I couldn't stop shaking.
My dad backed away from me so fast he tripped over his own feet and fell down the last three stairs. He was staring at me like I was a ghost. Like I was a monster. Like I was something that shouldn't exist in his world.
"Stay away from me," he gasped, scrambling backward. "Stay away. What did you do? What are you?"
I opened my mouth to answer but nothing came out. The dark voice was too loud. It was screaming at me to reach out and touch him, to drain him, to make him understand what it felt like to be destroyed by someone you trusted. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely see them through the glow.
My mom appeared behind him in the hallway, her face completely white. She took one look at me and made a sound like an animal that had been cornered. Then she grabbed my dad and they both ran into the living room.
I heard them lock the door. Then I heard furniture scraping across the floor as they pushed things in front of it. They were barricading themselves in their own house from their own daughter.
The dark voice inside me found that funny.
I was moving toward the living room door when I heard a voice behind me. A voice that cut through the hunger and rage like a knife cutting through water.
"Sienna."
I spun around and there was Jade in my doorway. My only friend. The only person in the entire pack who'd ever treated me like I mattered. She was dressed for running. Dark clothes. A backpack already on her shoulders. She looked calm. She looked like she'd been waiting for this exact moment.
She looked at me with my glowing eyes and my dark veins spreading across every inch of skin and my body crackling with power that was destroying everything I'd been. And she didn't scream. She didn't run. She didn't look scared.
She just looked at me like I was still Sienna. Like I was still her friend.
"We're leaving," Jade said. It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a suggestion. It was a statement of fact, spoken like she'd already decided for both of us. "Now. Right now."
"Jade, I can't..." I tried to say, but my voice was wrong. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep underground. Like it belonged to the thing that was taking over my body. "I can't control it. I can feel them. I can feel their heartbeats. I need to..."
"I know what you need," Jade interrupted. She stepped forward and grabbed my wrist. The moment her skin touched mine, I felt the darkness recoil. Not in fear. In recognition. In some ancient part of my brain that understood this girl had never been cruel to me. Never dismissed me. Never made me feel like I was less than human. "But you're not going to do it. Because if you do, you lose yourself. And I won't let that happen."
The curse recognized her as something it shouldn't consume. I could feel it in my bones. There was something about Jade's steady heartbeat, her calm presence, her unwavering loyalty that made the darkness pull back just enough for me to think clearly.
Just enough for me to choose not to destroy her.
"Get what you need," Jade said, and her voice was steady. Calm. Like we were just going on a normal trip instead of running for our lives. "Five minutes, Sienna. Just five minutes. We run or you lose yourself."
I nodded because I couldn't trust my voice anymore. I couldn't trust anything about myself except that Jade was right. If I stayed here, if I let this power consume me completely, I wouldn't be Sienna Graves anymore. I'd be something else entirely. Something that hunted. Something that fed. Something that didn't remember what it felt like to be human.
I grabbed a backpack from my closet and threw things into it without thinking. Clothes. Water. Money. The small silver pendant my grandmother had given me years ago before she died, the one my parents always told me to hide. I didn't know why I grabbed it. Just knew that it was important.
Downstairs, I could hear my parents still moving furniture. Still barricading themselves in. They weren't coming to help me. They weren't coming to stop me. They were just hiding.
Just like they'd always hidden from their own shame.
Jade was already at the back door when I came downstairs. She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the night. The cold air hit my face and the darkness seemed to settle around me like a cloak. My eyes were still glowing. My veins were still visible in the moonlight. I was still completely wrong, completely broken, completely dangerous.
But I was running.
We made it maybe twenty feet from the house when I heard my parents lock the front door. Then the back door. Then I heard my mom crying from somewhere inside the locked house. Not crying for me. Crying for herself. Crying because her shame had finally shown up in a way she couldn't hide.
The forest stretched out in front of us, dark and deep and full of things that wanted to hunt us. I could feel everything in those woods now. Every animal. Every heartbeat. Every living thing that existed. It was overwhelming and terrifying and intoxicating all at once.
"Run," Jade said, and we ran.
We ran through the trees and over rocks and through streams. My body moved faster than it had ever moved before. The power inside me was making me stronger. Faster. Better. The curse was spreading through me and instead of destroying me, it was transforming me into something that could survive in the wilderness.
Behind us, I could hear the pack compound getting smaller. Getting quieter. The bond that had been tearing me apart for three weeks suddenly shifted. It was still there, still pulling toward Kael, but now it felt different. Now it felt like it was hunting instead of screaming.
We must have run for an hour before Jade finally slowed down. We were deep in the forest now, far enough away that I couldn't sense any pack members nearby. There was just us and the darkness and the ancient curse that was remaking me into something new.
I collapsed against a tree and slid down to the ground. My hands were still glowing. The dark veins were still spreading across my skin. But something had shifted. The hunger was still there, but it was quieter now. Like it was waiting for something.
"What am I?" I asked Jade. My voice was starting to sound more like mine again. Deeper. Colder. But mine.
Jade sat down next to me and she looked exhausted. "I don't know exactly. But my grandmother used to tell stories about blood magic. About curses that ran in families. About power that was supposed to stay hidden forever." She paused. "I think your family's been hiding something, Sienna. And I think it just woke up."
I looked down at my glowing hands and realized she was right. This wasn't something that had just appeared. This was something that had been inside me my whole life, waiting. Sleeping. Waiting for the moment when my pain would be intense enough to force it awake.
The moment when Kael Storm rejected me so completely that I had no choice but to become something that didn't need his acceptance.
Something that didn't need anyone's acceptance.
Far away, somewhere in the Stormdance pack compound, I felt something shift in the mate bond. Felt him feeling me. Felt the connection between us come alive like it had never been alive before.
He was coming.
The Alpha was coming for his cursed mate.
And this time, I wasn't going to run.