Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Iwas back inside the Steel Mountain, before the man with the golden glass eyes who stood in an endless white marble palace. The cavernous space around us gleamed—walls of stone veined with soft white luminescence.
He stood in his ancient armor and peered down at me with compassion.
Light pooled at his feet like living mist, stirring as though drawn toward breath.
I glanced down, wiggling my fingers and toes. My body was normal, no skin punctured, no blood from Elia’s bites. I felt weightless, yet whole.
“Am I dead?” I asked the man in shock.
He cocked his head to the side. “Technically, yes.”
No…
It didn’t work. Elia hadn’t bitten me enough times, or maybe she did too many. Panic closed around me like a vise.
I realized in that moment who I stood before, and fell to my knees before the Creator himself.
“I have to go back. My mother, my siblings, Kaelric needs me—his aunt, the people of Lunaria. I beg you, send me back.”
My voice cracked, the words tumbling from me raw and desolate.
“That’s not how it usually works. Coming here is a one-way street,” he announced.
I glanced up at him in shock, my pulse roaring in my ears—though I wasn’t sure I had a heart anymore.
“No.” I stood, suddenly desperate. “I thought this was how I was supposed to be. A wolfkin. Otherwise, why would Kaelric and I be mates?”
He peered down at me, and I was surprised by the compassion in his gaze. A deep knowing sat behind his eyes, ancient, unmovable, but not unkind.
“What if I told you that Kaelric’s soul was not meant to be wolfkin, that he was supposed to be born of Valkaryn when she was human with a different father, and then you were supposed to meet and marry and have children?”
I gasped.
The revelation struck like lightning through still air.
Was Val never supposed to be a wolfkin either?
Somewhere, in another thread of time, would she have met a different man, and Kaelric would have been born of that coupling?
Human born? My mind spun, trying to fit this truth into the world I knew.
None of it made sense, yet it explained everything and nothing all at once.
Maybe Valkaryn and Drake were never supposed to be mates, or maybe the Creator knew what would happen to Val, and so he allowed it.
I didn’t know.
But right now, all that mattered was getting back to Kaelric and the others.
“Please, I beg you to reconsider. Have mercy,” I wept, rushing forward to cling to his arm. My fingers tightened around his armor like I feared he might fade into mist if I didn’t hold on.
He sighed, but rather than get frustrated with me or angry, he reached out and patted my back like a father would a child. His touch was gentle, grounding, and warmth rolled through me in soft waves.
“Human plans make things difficult for me sometimes, but there is always another way.”
I jerked back from him, craning my neck to look up into his eyes. They looked like they held galaxies, sparkling swirls in endless depth.
“Brynn Brighton, you have always had faith in me, and you are correct: I do not make mistakes. I have great plans for you.”
He reached out and placed his hands on my shoulders. Heat bled through my skin, not burning, but warm enough to loosen every knot of fear inside me.
“You never lost faith, and you are so loyal to those you care about. You remind me so much of Valkaryn the night her life was taken and she landed at my feet, begging to be sent back to make things right.”
I nodded, feeling waves of warmth going from his fingertips into my shoulders, spreading down my arms like liquid light.
“Yes, please send me back. I’ll do whatever you want.”
He dipped his chin, looking me square in the eyes to the point that it was hard to hold his gaze. His presence pressed into me like a weight, ancient and overwhelming.
“I love all of my creations, no matter how lost they seem, but some of them get too lost. They are too far off into the call of the darkness to be redeemed.”
I frowned, confused. Who was he talking about?
Then a thought came to me about who he might be talking about.
King Harrow.
“He’s hurting people. Good people. I have to help them. I have to end him,” I told the Creator, my voice steady even as fear crawled up my spine.
He looked sad for a moment, but nodded. “He will have to answer to me for his error. Then Valkaryn will have to fulfill her promise to me, and I would like you to help her. Balance must be restored in my creation.”
I frowned. “What promise?”
“The lost ones, the ones who let the darkness go too far, I was talking about the Elite. I allowed them to have magic so that they could protect and provide for humans.”
I chuckled, unable to help myself. “Well, they failed at that.”
“Yes. That’s why I would like you to help Valkaryn strip the Elite of their magic.”
I gasped.
Wait… what?
“What I give, I can take away,” he boomed, and his voice vibrated in my chest, resonant and unshakable. The ground beneath my feet seemed to tremble, humming with unseen power.
“You deserve a good life, Brynn. You have one of the purest hearts I’ve ever seen.” He smiled like a father would at his daughter, warm and proud.
Then the ground vanished beneath me, and I was falling, air rushing past, my soul hurtling downward like a stone dropped into water.
My soul slammed back into my body, and I gasped, sitting up so hard my head cracked into something solid.
“Ow!” Kaelric shouted, and my eyes popped open.
I realized I’d cracked into his head.
Because he was hovering over me.
I was lying in a bed, my bed at home in Hildreth. The faint smell of wood smoke and linens told me I was safe before my mind caught up.
“Oh, thank the Creator,” Kaelric gasped as he stared at me wide-eyed and then pulled me into his arms.
I winced, pain along my back and arms flaring to life as he loosened his hold. Heat radiated from every bite mark, throbbing like coals beneath my skin.
I looked down at my arms to see crusted bite marks, dried blood, and—
“I died,” I said aloud, remembering my dream or whatever it was with the Creator.
‘Val?’ I called out to her.
‘I’m here, dear.’
‘I met the Creator,’ I told her.
‘Lucky you. Not many come back from a meeting with him. I’m glad you’re okay.’
I reached out to look at my wounds and gasped.
The crusted and bleeding wounds on my arms and legs were…
healing, knitting right before my eyes, skin crawling and tugging as it reshaped itself.
I felt something strange in my body, like my body was a suit, an itchy suit I wanted to take off.
My bones felt too tight, like my skin no longer fit quite right.
‘I feel weird,’ I told Val, panicked.
The words trembled in my mind. My skin prickled as if a thousand ants ran beneath it, and a restless heat built in my spine.
‘Don’t panic,’ Kaelric spoke into my mind. ‘You’re wolfkin now. I can smell it. You’re feeling the separation between your wolf and your body—
“What!” I leaped to my feet on the bed, hyperventilating. The mattress squeaked under me as if startled, too.
Kaelric put his hands out to calm me. “Don’t. Panic. It makes your first shift worse. You’ve already been through a lot.”
Shift? I didn’t want to shift. I hadn’t thought that far when I decided to do this. My heart thrashed at my ribs, too big for my human chest.
‘Calm, child. It’s okay. I can feel the strength of your new form. It’s a much better vessel for my power.’
Val’s voice curled through me like warm smoke, but she sounded farther away.
“I don’t need to shift. I can stay like this forever,” I told Kaelric, eyes wide as I felt the strongest urge to shed my skin. It wasn’t just discomfort, it was instinct, something ancient pressing from beneath my bones, demanding release.
“My love… trust me. You need to calm down or—”
I fell onto the bed on all fours as pain opened up across my back. The force of it knocked the breath from me. Kaelric dropped down beside me, holding my gaze with his orange eyes. I clung to that molten color like it was a lifeline.
‘Brynn, focus on me. Breathe deep.’
His voice was a command deep in my bones, that alpha pull wrapping around me like invisible arms.
I held that orange gaze as I drew slow, deep breaths, even though every inhale scraped like broken glass.
The pain reached fever pitch. Heat rushed down my arms, crawling beneath my skin until my fingers curled like claws.
When I saw black fur flicker along my arms, I screamed.
When the scream ripped too deep, roughening and reshaping, it turned into a howl, startling me enough that I tried to scream again, which only forced another howl from my throat, my voice dissolving into something wild and raw.
Only when Kaelric placed a firm hand on the back of my wolf’s neck did I freeze.
‘Mine.’
The single word pulsed through me, ancient and overpowering, drenched in certainty. I felt it settle in my marrow, binding something inside me that had been coming apart.
It was physical and mental, and it encompassed everything that I was.
‘Alpha. Mate,’ my wolf said, her voice within me deeper, instinct-thick. It was strange to hear her, knowing she was me, yet separate. Like a second heartbeat.
I knew in that moment that Kaelric was claiming me as one of his wolves. And I knew I couldn’t stop this shift. I’d just been through so much pain from Elia biting me so many times that I wasn’t sure I could take the snapping bones, burning flesh, and itchy fur.
But I did.
My spine bowed, every vertebra popping like embers bursting. Heat rushed beneath my ribs, my muscles twisting, stretching, rearranging until I barely recognized the vessel I lived in.
Kaelric crouched next to me on the bed, whispering words of encouragement, telling me to breathe, until I was fully in wolf form.
He grinned, standing.
“Your wolf is beautiful. Go look.”
His voice was awed, softer than I’d ever heard.