🦋ALTHEA
The baleful sound perated the air, vibrating in my marrow. I stood frozen as the transformation began all around ; the grueso, rhythmic symphony of snapping bones and tearing fabric.
Even the infants seed to hear the sound and recognise it. They did not fuss, nor did they cry. They simply clung to the fur of whoever carried them, as if knowing to brace for what was coming for them.
A force t my back, pushing forward with a buck.
I still knew exactly who it was. "You cannot shift," he said, his head dipping lower, slowly, like he had all the ti in the world. I gasped involuntarily; even now, my body reacted before . His breath fanned across my ear from behind, caressing my cheek. "Do not let the song settle in your bones. If you hear a voice you rember, it’s a lie—"
The howling in the dark wood went on, louder, rising higher, a crescendo.
His hand ca around my waist, and I sucked in a sharp breath at the forbidden contact. But after the scene, I lacked the bravery to turn and look him in the eye and ask him what he thought he was doing.
All around us, the others moved into specific spaces, all pieces on a chessboard before the ga was played. So didn’t shift; they held weapons—spears, daggers, sticks, and pitchforks. They moved to the back of the others.
My throat tightened when I felt it—sothing cold pressed against , its coolness slipping past my dress and into my skin. Was that a—
"If you feel a hand." His hold on tightened just enough to sear his words into my mind. "That you recognise, it is a claw."
And then he pulled away, but my body still tingled at his presence. It told he was not far from . I let out the breath trapped in my lungs slowly and dared to look down. A blade’s polished surface glinted at .
He had left a dagger in the belt of my tunic. So I could defend myself.
I turned sharply, my instinct screaming at to thank him—but then a howl rang out. Air flew out of my chest as my neck snapped back. That howl had been too close for comfort—not like there was even a sliver of comfort in this situation.
And just then, the first nightmare broke through a copse of still trees.
The thing that burst from the trees barely resembled any creature I had ever known. It was dread and death given flesh and form.
It stumbled into the clearing on all fours, too thin, too long, its limbs bent at angles that made my stomach lurch. Patches of fur clung to raw, stretched skin as if the transformation had been interrupted halfway through, leaving it caught between states. Its eyes were bright, fevered, almost luminous white—snapped up the mont it saw us.
And then it ran.
Devoid of hesitation and caution. It broke into a sprint like sothing that had been wandering for lifetis and had finally, impossibly, found its way ho. Its gait was frantic, uncoordinated, yet driven by a certainty so fierce it bordered on devotion. Dirt sprayed beneath its claws as it howled. There was no challenge in the sound, more of recognition.
The sound struck sothing deep in my chest I turned in a slow, horrified circle.
All around , the clan had finished shifting.
They stood as soldiers in fur and bone—massive, bristling forms packed shoulder to shoulder, eyes burning with hard discipline even as their bodies bore the mark of the beast. This was not chaos. This was formation. A living wall of teeth and muscle.
Then the answering howl ca.
It rolled out of the woods like a wound tearing open.
More nightmares erged, one after another, slipping from between the trees, their shapes wrong in different ways—too many joints, spines bowed unnaturally, muzzles split by scars that never healed properly. Their howls answered the clan’s call, but the sound was twisted, distorted, as if grief and rage had been fed into it and left to rot.
It was communication and sohow also mourning all laced with fury that reverberated everyti the eerie howling cleaved through the stifled air.
The air vibrated with it, the clash of voices rising until I could no longer tell which belonged to the clan and which to the things that should never have existed. The sound pressed in from all sides, crawling under my skin, making my breath co short and sharp.
Then the woods erupted.
They did not trickle out, they ca in a flood.
Bodies poured from the trees in a relentless surge—dozens, then more, then so many my eyes could no longer count them. They crashed through undergrowth, leapt over fallen logs, spilled into the clearing like a broken dam finally giving way. The ground trembled beneath their charge, the sheer weight of them shaking sothing loose inside .
Fear—true fear—took hold.
It was not the sharp, manageable kind. This was vast and smothering, a suffocating certainty that if those lines broke, nothing would remain. My fingers trembled around the dagger at my waist, the tal suddenly feeling far too small, far too light.
Shouts rang out.
Orders.
The clan moved as one, shifting from stillness into motion with terrifying flow. So moved forward, others peeled back, creating corridors, drawing lines in the earth with their bodies.
Thorne’s order rang out the loudest, impactful with every urgent syllable.
The people around began to run.
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Everyone began to spread out as they poured in, the carefully maintained formation splintering into chaos as nightmares and wolves collided in a brutal, snarling mass. The sound of it—flesh tearing, bone cracking, howls cut short—was worse than anything I’d imagined.
I turned sharply, my breath catching.
Thorne stood at the center of a tight cluster of wolves—smaller than the warriors, their forms leaner, less scarred. The ogas. Including .
His masked gaze swept over us, assessing, calculating.
"Aim for the chest," he commanded, his voice cutting through the cacophony with the force of an Alpha’s will. "The heart. Nothing else will stop them. Stay together. Stay moving."
And then he shifted.
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