Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Darkness.
Death isn’t the cold, empty void I expected. This darkness pulses with warmth. The silence is filled with memory, with the whisper of countless voices that came before.
I’m floating, weightless, in a space between spaces. And I’m not alone.
“Child.” The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, familiar yet strange. “You carry our gift well.”
I turn—or think I turn, movement means nothing here—and see her. An elderly woman with silver hair that seems to hold starlight. Her eyes shift between colors like an aurora. She wears robes that appear to be cut from the night sky itself.
“Cheyenne.” I know her name instantly.
“Welcome, Kitara.” She approaches with a smile both sad and proud. “I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”
“Am I dead?” The question comes without fear, only curiosity.
“Not dead. But not alive, either. You stand at the threshold, dear one. The silver poison burns through your gift, severing the pathways that make you what you are.” Her expression grows grave. “Soon, there will be nothing left but silence.”
Pain flickers through me—physical, but deeper still. It is the agony of losing part of my soul.
“Why?”
Cheyenne extends her hand and I take it, gasping as power flows between us, racing up my arm like lightning.
“You follow in my footsteps, walking the path between what is and what could be.” She drops my hand. “That is my final gift to you.”
She turns but I catch her cloak, halting her. “I don’t understand. Why am I broken? Why can’t I shift? Why am I here?”
She glances over her shoulder, her gaze locking with mine. “You were never broken, child. You were crafted. Shaped by forces older than the packs themselves. And when the moment comes—when all seems lost—remember this, love is the strongest magic of all.”
“I don’t—”
“You will.” She begins to fade, her form dissolving like mist through my fingers. “Soon.”
The vision fractures, reality bleeding through the cracks.
“Until we meet again, dear one.”
And then—
Silence.