I attared at him in the quiet aftermath of battle, the forest still smoldering, our breaths misting in the cold air. The beast lay at our feet—defeated. But the real fight was just beginning.
Lucas’s voice ca low and taut. "I did it to save soone."
I blinked, heart pounding. Save soone? "You..." I shook my head. "You put the entire kingdom—and —at the rcy of a liar just to save soone?"
His hand tightened on the sword hilt, knuckles white. "She is everything to ."
I didn’t know why those words hurt so much. Why the earth seed to tumble under my feet. Why I suddenly felt smaller than I ever had before.
I said a simple, broken, "Okay."
He looked away, raw anguish flickering in his eyes. The distance between us felt like miles—though we stood only heartbeats apart. Silence spread between us, thick and suffocating.
After a while, I finally spoke again, voice soft but unsteady. "So—why pretend to not know ?"
Lucas’s breath hitched. He swallowed. "To protect you."
"Protect from what?"
He closed his eyes as if the answer cost him sothing vital. When he spoke again, his voice trembled. "Athena..."
The single word carried every fragnt of sorrow, regret, and love tangled inside him. I opened my mouth to ask more—but he shook his head.
"Okay," I said softly. "I will stop asking."
But the question was already burning into like fire.
We didn’t speak much after that.
The silence between us wasn’t the comfortable kind anymore—it was the brittle kind, the one you could break with just a whisper, and all the shards would slice deep.
I adjusted the straps on my pack, forcing my gaze forward as we moved. The sll of charred earth mixed with the sharp bite of pine. Sowhere in the distance, crows scread overhead, circling the corpse of the beast we’d left behind.
Lucas walked beside , just close enough that I could feel his warmth, but not close enough to touch. That felt crueler sohow.
Every step felt like walking with a wound I couldn’t reach to heal.
He did it for soone else.
She is everything to .
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood. Why did that matter so much? Why did it sting when I didn’t even want to care?
But I did. Gods, I did.
The path narrowed as we entered thicker woods, the trees closing in like silent sentinels watching two broken things limping through their domain.
"Keep your senses sharp," Lucas said finally, his voice rough from disuse. "There are more things out here than that beast."
I wanted to snap at him, to throw his words back like daggers, but I didn’t. Instead, I just nodded, jaw clenched.
We traveled for hours in near silence, broken only by the sound of our boots crunching over fallen leaves and the occasional bird startled from its perch.
The trees thinned as we moved deeper into the Eastern ranges, the world around us shifting from dense forest to sharp ridges and looming rock faces. The mountains ahead were jagged shadows against the pale sky, their peaks lost in curling mist. The path was narrow and uneven, winding along steep drops and sharp inclines.
The silence between us was thick, broken only by the crunch of boots on gravel and the distant calls of unknown creatures. The last conversation still echoed in my mind like a bruise I couldn’t stop pressing on.
She is everything to .
Lucas kept pace easily, moving like a shadow behind . Even though he said he wasn’t as strong as before, he still carried himself like soone who could break the world if he wanted to.
"I don’t like the quiet," I finally muttered. My voice sounded small here, swallowed by the vastness of the mountains. "It feels like sothing’s waiting."
"I feel it too," Lucas answered grimly.
That wasn’t exactly comforting.
A low growl vibrated through the ground beneath us, faint but steady, like thunder rumbling in the earth’s chest. We both stopped at the sa ti, our bodies tensing in unison.
"What is that?" I whispered.
"Sothing that’s been following us since we left the forest," he replied. "My wolf senses have picked them up since."
I swallowed hard, scanning the jagged cliffs and dense patches of undergrowth along the rocky trail. And then I saw it—two glowing amber eyes reflecting faint light from behind a cluster of broken boulders. No... not one pair of eyes.
Several.
They moved like shadows, silent but fast, sliding along the rock faces and between the trees with practiced precision. Beasts. Not like the one we’d fought before—these were leaner, faster, built for hunting. Built for the kill.
"Keep your eyes forward," Lucas ordered softly, his hand already sliding to his sword. "We don’t run yet. If we run, they’ll pounce."
"How many?" I asked, dread curling in my stomach.
"I don’t know..."
The first one stepped fully into view—a creature almost wolf-like in shape but monstrous in proportion, muscles rippling beneath sleek black fur, spines jutting from its back, claws curling unnaturally long. Its lips peeled back from jagged teeth, a snarl ripping through its throat as the others crept to flank it.
I gritted my teeth and tried—tried—to pull on the energy deep inside , the wild, electric pulse of my wolf form. But it was slippery, like smoke through my fingers. Still blocked. Still trapped.
"I can’t—" I gasped. "Lucas, I can’t shift."
His eyes cut sharply to mine, fierce and sharp. "Stay behind ."
The creatures moved in a loose circle, testing, waiting for weakness. The leader crouched, its muscles coiling, preparing to launch.
And then Lucas moved.
He lunged forward in a blur of motion, sword slicing through the air with brutal precision.
The lead beast darted in to et him, claws flashing but Lucas was faster. Steel t flesh in a spray of dark blood, the creature letting out a bone-rattling shriek before collapsing at his feet.
The others didn’t hesitate. They surged forward in a wave of snarling fur and glinting claws.
It was chaos.
Lucas was a storm among them, his blade a streak of silver cutting through blackness, but they were fast—too fast. He couldn’t keep them all at bay at once. One lunged past him, aiming straight for .
I reacted on instinct, throwing myself to the side, rolling through the sharp gravel. Claws grazed my shoulder, burning white-hot, but I scrambled back to my feet.
"Shift, Athena!" Lucas shouted, fury and desperation mixing in his voice as he slashed down another beast. "Shift now!"
"I can’t!" My throat burned with the frustration of it. "It’s blocked! Sothing’s wrong—I don’t know why—"
A beast lunged again, and this ti I barely avoided it. My heart slamd against my ribs. I was useless like this. Worse than useless.
Lucas spun, slicing through another attacker, but I saw it then—the way his breath ca ragged, the way his stance faltered for just a heartbeat too long. He was tiring. And there were still too many of them.
The largest of the beasts, almost double the size of the others, stepped forward, lips curling, eyes locked on Lucas.
"No—" I breathed. "Lucas, behind you—"
He pivoted, just in ti, blade eting claw—but the force of the impact knocked him off balance, sending him skidding backwards in the gravel.
The beast lunged again, teeth bared, massive body launching into the air toward him.
Without thinking, without hesitation, I scread and threw myself between them, arms outstretched—not knowing what I was doing, not knowing how, only that I had to do sothing.
And then it happened.
A crack of light burst from beneath my skin, sudden and wild, tearing through my veins like lightning. My body twisted, bones reshaping, muscles stretching and reforming as a blinding heat roared through .
In an instant, my human form shattered, replaced by fur, claws, and sharp senses.
I’d shifted.
Finally.
The beast was midair, coming straight for now, but it was too late. I t its attack with my own. My wolf—sleek, black, fierce—collided with the creature mid-leap, sending us both crashing to the ground in a tangle of fur and claws. I bit down, hard, teeth sinking into its throat, tasting hot copper as it writhed and shrieked beneath .
And then it was over. I stood there in the wreckage, panting, surrounded by broken bodies. Lucas stared at , blood dripping from a cut on his forehead, his sword lowered.
I shifted back, collapsing to my knees, gasping. My limbs trembled from the sudden exhaustion of it.
Lucas walked toward and dropped to one knee. His hand touched my cheek gently, eyes searching mine with sothing like reverence—or fear. "You did it."
I swallowed hard. "I don’t understand why this is happening."
"We’ll face all of this together, I promise," he said softly.
His thumb brushed away a sar of blood from the corner of my mouth. His face was too close, his touch too gentle, the air too heavy with everything we weren’t saying.
Just when we thought it was all over, then a sound split the silence.
A crack, sharp and sudden, like ice shattering underfoot.
I barely had ti to turn before the ground beneath us shifted.
"Move!" Lucas shouted, grabbing my hand and yanking forward as the stone ridge we stood on began to collapse in huge slabs, tumbling into the ravine below.
Dust and debris choked the air. The rumbling was deafening, like the whole mountain had decided to wake up and swallow us whole. My boots slipped on the uneven rock, but Lucas’s grip was iron, hauling behind him as the ledge crumbled away beneath our feet.
We leapt—just in ti.
The place where we had stood only heartbeats ago was gone, falling away into nothingness.
We landed hard on a narrow outcropping, barely wide enough for both of us. I coughed, lungs burning, throat raw from inhaling dust and smoke. Lucas steadied himself with one hand pressed to the rock, the other still holding onto like I might disappear if he let go.
Then I heard it.
Thoom... Thoom...
A new sound, distant at first, but growing steadily louder. A beat. A pulse. Like footsteps—but impossibly heavy, as if a giant was moving through the stone itself.
Lucas’s eyes narrowed. "Stay calm."
"I’m trying my best to." I rasped, dread curling through my gut.
"Mmh..." he murmured, his voice low and cold.
The green vapor from the last beast hadn’t just burned the ground—it had seeped into the cracks.
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure we’d won anything at all.
Lucas t my gaze, all that cool, composed strength wrapped around sothing barely restrained. "We have to go higher. We need the path above the ridge before it cuts us off completely."
I nodded, shoving down my fear. "Let’s move."
We scaled the rocky ledge like fugitives running from the gods themselves. Every rock we touched felt unstable, shifting dangerously beneath our weight, like the mountain was deciding whether or not it wanted us dead.
The beat beneath the ground grew louder. Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
When we finally reached a relatively stable shelf of stone, I collapsed onto my knees, panting. The air slled sharp—ozone, stone dust, sothing tallic.
Lucas stood at the edge, sword still in hand, his profile sharp against the stormy sky. His gaze wasn’t on . It was fixed on sothing in the distance, beyond the curling mist.
I rose slowly, dread making my limbs feel like lead. "What do you see?"
His jaw tightened. "Nothing yet."
Then I felt it.
The shift in the air. The pull of old magic—sothing I hadn’t felt since falling through the portal into this cursed realm. It raised every hair on my body, sharp and electric. My wolf stirred restlessly beneath my skin, but the block that had prevented from shifting before pulsed like a wall.
I clenched my fists. "It’s like it’s pushing out again—I can’t shift when I want to."
Suddenly, the pulsing footsteps stopped.
And then, from within the fog, a shape erged. Bigger than the beast we had fought. Taller than the treetops. Humanoid in shape—but wrong. Its limbs were too long, its torso covered in plates of stone and bone, half-lded with roots and living moss. Its face—if you could call it that—was a hollow skull, and inside the sockets glimred two faint blue flas.
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