Nova
The panthers haven’t moved.
That’s what gets me. A dozen of them at the tree line, wolves across the south road, ravens in every branch above us, and none of them are doing anything. Just standing there. Watching. Like they have all the time in the world and they want us to feel it.
They’re right. That’s the sick part. They do.
Brent’s still moving people toward the bunker. I can hear him behind me — low commands, controlled — and the sound of the Hollow trying to stay quiet while it falls apart. A child crying, cut off fast. Footsteps on gravel.
It’s like we’re all trying to hide while completely surrounded.
It’s not going well.
My wrist is burning.
I don’t know why. I can’t think about it right now.
Silas walks out of the tree line like he planned the whole thing in advance.
Bet he did.
Which is somehow the most infuriating part.
His hands are behind his back. Looking directly at me as he takes his sweet ass time crossing the open ground between the trees and where we’re standing because he wants us to watch him do it. He wants the Hollow behind us to see who has authority here.
Harrick is one step behind him, because of course he is, because Harrick has never once in his life let Silas walk into a room without being the second person through the door.
He stops maybe fifteen feet out.
Harrick nearly runs into him.
“There was a time when all of you would be considered abominations…”
He’s been talking for two minutes and I stopped hearing the words around the thirty-second mark because something else is happening.
Something is wrong with the air.
Like the pressure dropped before a storm, except the sky is clear and whatever’s coming isn’t weather.
I look at Locke.
His jaw is locked. The tendons in his neck are standing out. His hands are flat at his sides and very, very still.
Too still, even for him.
He’s holding himself back from something.
I look at Rane, beside me, and find the same thing. He’s staring at the tree line with his shoulders up and his hands half-open. He’s not even blinking.
Then Silas says something and I catch it this time.
“You will not shift.” Said like a command. Like he has any fucking authority here. “Whatever you believe is happening here, it will not help you. Organic shifting is not permitted in front of anyone without a second mark. Not without authorization.”
He smirks. “Which you do not have.”
Nobody answers him.
That’s when I realize.
They’re not answering him because they can’t.
It’s already happening.
I feel Beckett first.
He’s behind me, slightly left, and there’s heat coming off him that I’ve never felt before. I turn.
He’s trembling.
His face is careful. His eyes are on me.
The smoke comes first.
I gasp.
Just like I saw during testing.
A curl of it from the corner of his mouth, like he breathed something out and it didn’t go away. Then more, from the spaces between his fingers. His exhale is wrong. Too dense. Too dark.
“Beckett—”
He shakes his head. Once. Sharp.
I know.
The smoke pours out of him.
It comes from everywhere at once, from his skin and his mouth and the spaces where his shirt meets his wrists, and it doesn’t dissipate. It moves. It curls against the ground like it’s looking for something and everything in me says run and my feet don’t move because this is Beckett.
My Beckett.
The bones go. I hear it and he almost folds into himself. The smoke closes around him and what comes out of it is wrong and right and ancient all at once, a wolf made of living smoke, bigger than any wolf should be, its outline not quite solid, its eyes glowing gold.
Familiar. Completely, terrifyingly familiar.
Someone in the crowd behind me makes a sound like a prayer or a curse. I can’t tell which.
Silas has stopped walking.
Then gold fractures.
That’s how Vaelor happens — light splitting through him like he swallowed something that got too big to hold.
The sound he makes isn’t human and it isn’t animal, it’s somewhere underneath both.
He goes up. That’s the thing I wasn’t ready for.
He goes up, the bear form rising and rising and not stopping where it should, wings tearing out of his back that catch the morning light and throw it everywhere, and the Hollow residents who hadn’t already moved backward take three steps at once.
Not because he’s terrifying.
Because he’s impossible.
And mine.
The others go fast.
Locke doesn’t build. He arrives — panther, black and low and absolutely controlled, and even shifted his eyes track immediately to where I’m standing and don’t leave. He doesn’t pace. He’s positioned. There’s a difference and I feel it.
Rane’s antlers catch the light. The stag he becomes is massive and still and ancient in a way that makes the air around him feel older, like it was always meant to be.
Trey goes centaur — and it’s strange because I’ve seen it before, from above, when everything was chaos and fire, and seeing it now on the ground is completely different. He reaches for something at his side. Ready before he’s fully himself.
Kyron rises. The snow owl ascends above the road and the ravens in the trees scatter, all of them, every single one, in the same instant — and when the air empties of ravens it fills with the shadow of something enormous and white, and the sky is different. The sky belongs to him.
All of them, these beautiful, mythical creatures… mine.
I don’t choose it.
It just happens.
The mark warms. Then my back. I know what’s coming and I don’t fight it — just brace, and let it happen.
The wings come out slowly. Gold and red, then white bleeding through, and the air pressure around me changes before I’ve fully processed that they’re there. I don’t try to stop it.
Silas has not moved a single inch.
There’s a vein working in his jaw. His hands are still behind his back and I would bet everything I own that they’re fists back there.
Harrick looks like he’s trying to figure out if he’s allowed to be afraid yet.
Silas finds his voice first.
“I said.” Each word sharp. “You will not shift.”
The bear’s wings settle.
The panther sits.
Nobody listens.
Silas takes three steps forward and his composure is cracking at every seam. “You do not have authorization. What you are doing is illegal and a violation of—”
“Look at your army,” I say.
He stops.
I nod toward the tree line. Toward the south road. Toward the ravens in every branch that scattered the second Kyron rose.
“Your shifters. Come from every house within Nightmare Order.” I look back at him. “They’re already shifted. They walked in here that way. Did you authorize that?”
His jaw moves.
“Because you don’t actually work for the Nightmare Order, do you Silas?”
I try to hold back the smile, I really do.
I fail, miserably.
“Of course I…”
“But do you? Self protection is allowed within the Order. Even during military intervention.”
He didn’t. I can see it. How he got this entire army to follow him I have no idea— but I do know he doesn’t work for the Order. Not yet.
“That’s not—”
“The same?” I ask. “Or are the rules different when it’s your army?”
Harrick puts a hand on Silas’s arm. “Silas—”
Silas shakes him off. He’s looking at my guys. At the shadow wolf and the winged bear and the panther and the stag and the centaur and my giant fucking owl. His eyes are moving too fast, trying to figure out how to get the upper hand.
There isn’t one.
Silas looks at Beckett in his wolf form and his lip curls.
That’s what gets me. Not fear. Not shock. Genuine, visceral disgust — like he walked into something rotten and can’t extinguish it fast enough.
“This is what you’ve become,” he says. Quiet. Almost to himself. Then louder, sweeping his gaze across all of them. “This is what you call a bond. This corruption. This—”
“Organic shifting,” I say. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”
His eyes cut to me.
“It’s illegal.”
“It’s real.” I tilt my head. “Which I think is actually the problem.”
“It is an aberration.” His voice is controlled again, which is worse than when it wasn’t. “It is exactly what the Order exists to prevent. Unregulated transformation, unauthorized power, clusters operating outside sanctioned boundaries—”
“Says the guy who showed up with an army he doesn’t actually command.”
Harrick growls. Silas ignores it.
“The system exists for a reason,” he says. “Order. Stability. The protection of—”
The words are out before I decide to say them. “If you believe that,” I say, “shift.”
He stops.
“You have a Shadow mark. You live for the Order. Daddy groomed you for it, right?” I hold his gaze. “So shift. Show me what the system produces. Show me what all of this is actually worth.”
The silence goes long.
His hands are still behind his back. The air around him is still. Completely, perfectly, horribly still.
Nothing happens.
I wait. He knows I’m waiting. The Hollow knows I’m waiting. Every shifted operative surrounding the Hollow knows I’m waiting, which is maybe the worst part for him.
Nothing.
His face turns red, I can’t tell if it’s in anger or embarrassment.
It’s not that he won’t shift.
“You can’t,” I say.
His jaw moves.
One of the Shadow panthers growls.
A second follows. Then the third.
They’re pissed.
I don’t blame them.
Silas turns in place as his army blames him.
Harrick takes a step back. I notice because Harrick has never taken a step back from anything in his life, and now he’s doing it without meaning to, his body answering something his brain is still catching up to.
Silas doesn’t move.
The horror on his face isn’t about power. It’s not even about me. He gave everything to this. And it left him standing here with nothing.
And exposing it to everyone.
Harrick takes a breath and steps forward, eyes filled with hate.
“You’re going to regret that.”