Wren wasn't sure what pulled her out of bed that night—the wind whispering through the cracked windowpane, or the familiar thrum of something ancient summoning her from the edge of sleep. The shadows in her room curled like tendrils reaching for her ankles, soft, coaxing. Not a threat. A call.
She slipped into her cloak without lighting a candle. No spell for protection. No warding charm. Just instinct, and something far more dangerous than faith—curiosity. It burned behind her ribs as she stepped out into the midnight fog, each breath colder than the last.
The forest greeted her like an old friend. The trees didn't creak. The owls didn't hoot. Everything held its breath.
Until he came.
Veylan appeared the way storm clouds roll over mountaintops—silent, slow, inevitable. The space around him folded in on itself, light dimming as though the world dared not outshine him. His antlers were more solid tonight, arching like a crown of twilight. The sight should have terrified her. Instead, it made something inside her settle.
"You came," he said, voice brushing her skin like velvet ash.
"You summoned," she replied.
His smile was not warm, but it was real. "And you answered. That makes us both guilty."
She wanted to be angry with him—for his calm certainty, for knowing how lost she felt—but she couldn't be. Not when her magic hummed like it recognized his presence. Not when he looked at her like she was a puzzle he had already started solving.
"I shouldn't be here," she said.
"And yet, you are. Like all great disasters," he murmured, "you arrive when no one is ready, and you reshape the land around you."
He offered her a hand. She hesitated for half a heartbeat before taking it.
The grove he led her to was older than the bones beneath it. The trees were too tall. The air too thick. No birds sang. And in the middle, a still pool reflected not the sky above, but a void that seemed to stretch down forever.
"This is where the Shadow Court once stood," Veylan said. "Before the wolves drove us underground."
She stared into the pool. "Why bring me here?"
"Because," he said, turning to her fully, "your magic is cracking at the seams. The spells you were taught are too small. You need to grow. Or you'll break."
"And you think you can teach me?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he pressed his thumb against her forehead, and the world shattered.
Not pain—something worse. Memory. Thousands of them. Blood soaked in snow. Witches burned for power. Wolves howling in despair as shadows consumed the moon. And beneath it all, a figure with glowing eyes and a crown of antlers, walking untouched through the wreckage.
When she blinked again, she was on her knees.
"You're… you're not just a shadow being," she gasped.
"I was once a prince," he said. "Before the wolves slaughtered my court. Before your kind forgot our name."
Her voice was hoarse. "And now?"
"Now I'm the only thing standing between you and the monsters both sides pretend don't exist."
She looked up at him. Her fingers ached with leftover magic, humming, scorched black at the tips. And yet, she didn't feel broken.
She felt awake.
"Teach me."
He didn't smile. "It'll hurt."
"I don't care."
And so he did.
The training was brutal.
Magic wasn't just chants and potions anymore. He taught her to listen—to the way darkness breathed, to the way her heartbeat shifted when truth was near. He made her hold fire in her palm until her skin blistered, then made her do it again. He had her stand in the rain for hours, unmoving, until she could bend the wind around her without even raising her hand.
Every night, she left bleeding. Every morning, she woke stronger.
And through it all, Veylan never touched her more than necessary. His fingers brushed hers when correcting her stance, but his gaze never wandered. His voice never dipped into seduction. He wasn't charming. He wasn't kind.
But he believed in her.
And after so long being seen as a mistake, a cursed girl in a world that had no place for her, that felt like intimacy.
Meanwhile, Cassian unraveled.
He watched from the trees some nights, cloaked in silence, unseen by even the wind. What he saw made his blood boil. Wren—his Wren—smiling in the dark, eyes lit with magic she never showed the Pack. Laughing with a man who didn't flinch at her power. Who encouraged it.
Cassian's wolf clawed at the inside of his skin, restless and furious.
He had rejected her to protect the Pack. That's what he told himself. He'd thought she would stay the quiet witch in the background—grieving, maybe, but safe.
Not this. Not glowing.
He wanted to march into that grove and rip the shadow being apart. He wanted to shake Wren until she remembered who they had once been. But instead, he watched. Every night, a little longer.
Every night, a little more broken.
The Pack Council noticed. They summoned him.
"She's consorting with ancient evil," Elder Korin spat. "We've seen the magic in the woods. It reeks of the old ways."
"She's not harming us," Cassian said through clenched teeth.
"She's growing stronger. Too strong. You rejected her, Alpha. She has no place here anymore."
Cassian stood, fists trembling. "She's still bound to me. The Bonefire chose her. She carries half my soul."
"She carries death," someone whispered.
He left the chamber in silence.
Wren didn't know about the council meeting. She didn't know about the jealous eyes watching her every move, or the war brewing under the surface of the Pack. She only knew that for the first time, her magic wasn't a burden.
She wasn't the outsider.
Veylan tested her limits. He taught her to weave spells that could bend light and hide truth. He showed her the names of shadows and the stars they answered to. He whispered old magic into her ear that made her blood thrum with power.
But it wasn't until the night of the Hollow Moon that everything changed.
They stood at the edge of the world—or it felt that way. On a cliff high above the forest, the moon blackened behind clouds, the stars too still. Wren held out her hand, and the wind bent toward her like a servant.
"You've grown," Veylan said. "But now you must choose."
She looked at him, heart pounding. "Choose what?"
"Whether you're going to keep hiding your power in that village of wolves. Or if you're ready to become something they fear."
She was silent.
Then, quietly: "I don't want them to fear me. I want them to see me."
He nodded. "Then make them look."
He took her hand, and for the first time, she didn't flinch.
Cassian dreamed that night.
In it, Wren stood with black wings unfolding from her back, hair blazing like fire, eyes not gold like wolves, not green like witches—but silver, like the stars she now commanded.
At her side, the shadow being stood proud.
And Cassian was alone.
Screaming.