Epilogue
UNKNOWN
Darkness isn’t quiet.
You assume that creatures of the night are silent. Dangerous. Calm.
But I’ve always found that the night hums. It has its own frequency—one you need to learn how to recognise.
It breathes around me, seeping beneath my skin, settling into my bones.
I don’t remember what silence sounds like anymore.
My head is never quiet.
It hasn’t been since survival became automatic.
The stone floor is cold, my ass numb even through the haze of pain. Every breath drags, like my lungs are coated in ash.
He knows exactly what he’s doing. How to keep me weak.
I don’t know how long it’s been since anyone last visited.
But I do know it’s been long enough for my blood to feel thin. Long enough for my heart to stutter when it shouldn’t.
And long enough for my wolf to start gaining power once more.
Boots scrape along the floor, and I grimace. I should’ve fucking known.
“Brother,” the madman calls, his high-pitched voice echoing off the walls.
His steps fall in uneven rhythms, his voice frayed at the edges. Nothing about him moves smoothly anymore.
Not like it used to.
For that, he’d need to be sane.
I don’t open my eyes, even when his shadow falls over my face. I don’t give him the satisfaction.
The chains are tighter since the last blood draw, and they dig in with every breath. New ones, maybe. Thicker, as if the extra metal is going to make a difference when I’m still stuck here.
“Wake up!”
Pain explodes across my face as he slaps me. I jerk back, my head slamming into the wall as my eyes fly open.
My vision swims until his feral grin snaps into focus.
Today isn’t going to be a good visit.
He’s stolen another one of my suits. The cut hangs wrong on his frame, the design never meant for his skin. It’s something he won’t notice, though. Not in his current state.
Something has taken hold of him. Rotting him from the inside out.
“We’re going on a little trip upstairs,” he says, and I’m so fucking glad for his insanity.
He doesn’t notice the hope that sparks inside me. The small, satisfied purr my wolf can’t quite suppress.
“But you need to wear this.”
He pulls a blindfold from his back pocket, and I bite back a laugh. Blindfolds are meant to hide something.
We’re in the basement of my home.
I know him better than anyone else ever could. I know the lands better than even he does.
What does he think he’s hiding from me?
The blindfold is silver-threaded, etched with sigils—half invented, half meaningless.
He thinks blood is power. That my blood—his blood—is the key to his rebirth into something mythical.
Power has rotted him hollow.
“I followed the texts,” he says, voice rising. “Every step. Every instruction. I did it right. But then it didn’t work.”
Because it’s an impossible plan. And even if it weren’t, he didn’t actually follow the ritual he invented.
Most of the blood he spent all this time collecting from me went to waste.
Except one glass.
I don’t argue. Not if I want to survive the single chance I might get to escape.
My blood pulses sluggishly as he drags me to my feet. My legs tremble, my heart thudding from exertion it hasn’t known in far too long.
My wolf is preparing now. Gathering himself, building the will to fight for survival.
He doesn’t care as he drags me by my chains after him, laughing and singing while I stumble blind.
He doesn’t notice the shift in my energy. Doesn’t care about anything beyond his own delusions.
At the stairs, my strength finally gives out, and I collapse to my knees. He half drags me upward as I crawl.
“So slow,” he mocks without pausing.
Psychotic man.
I know this house by instinct alone. The left turn. The corridor skirting the kitchen.
There used to be warmth here. Baking. Our mother humming as she cooked.
She’s the cook of the family, but she’s not been here in months.
Thankfully.
She’d never forgive him for this. Never understand what he’s done, how his inane pursuit of the impossible has warped him.
It would break her.
And I’d rather let him try to break me instead. I can take it. She shouldn’t have to.
Instead of turning right, towards the living space, he opens the door and drags me into the freezing cold.
Wind lashes my skin. Icy rain bites deep. But, fuck, does the air smell fresh, so clean.
Alive.
My eyes are struggling to adjust to the bright light—even underneath the blindfold—too overwhelmed with the sun after so long underground in mostly darkness.
My canthros drinks it in eagerly, soaking in the change of location. His connection to the land strengthens him faster than it strengthens me.
“Don’t stand around like a fool,” he snaps.
He shoves me. I hit my knees hard, pain flaring then fading just as quickly.
I’m drained. Exhausted. Malnourished.
But I’m not yet dead.
And that’s important.
The blindfold is yanked away. Sunlight sears my eyes, the harsh spring glare pounding through my skull, but I force myself to focus.
We’re in the garden, as I suspected, but there’s nothing around that indicates why he dragged us here.
Instead, my brother is crouched down next to the pond, his eyes desperately locked onto his reflection in the icy water.
I don’t know what the fuck he’s searching for. Knowing him, he probably sees some water deity who is communing with him.
Poor, broken man.
“It’s going to happen today,” he says calmly.
My gaze flicks to him, sensing some sanity in his words for once.
But there’s nothing more than madness there. He’s not sane—it’s confirmation bias, reflected back at him by water and madness.
“You feel it, too, right?” he asks. “You know it’s coming?”
I nod carefully. My teeth chatter—not from cold, but heat.
Something burns inside my chest, spreading outward from my heart. It hurts—but my wolf isn’t afraid.
Whatever this is, my body recognises it as survival.
And the canthros is eager to accept it.
“Do you feel that?” my brother shouts suddenly, leaping to his feet.
He throws his arms wide, spinning in place. I drop forward, my hands digging into the muddy grass, no longer strong enough to hold itself upright.
“The heat!” he roars. “Oh, it’s glorious. She’s changing me, Brother!”
His voice fades into static background noise as the shift burns its way through me. My nerves scream. My muscles stretch.
My heart stutters under the strain of the power pulsing through me.
My brother is still talking. Still thanking her.
Maeve.
The girl he’s obsessed with. The poor, unfortunate soul that he’s latched onto.
“The heat!” he shouts again. “Can you feel it? Can you?”
I almost laugh.
The heat he’s feeling isn’t his. It’s not coming from him.
It’s coming from me.
It coils deep in my chest, low and steady, a white hot presence that refuses to be extinguished no matter how much I try to fight it.
My canthros is relaxed, accepting whatever is happening to us, trying to ground me, but I can’t stop resisting.
I won’t.
If I let this take me—if I accept defeat—she pays the price. My family owes her more than that.
We owe her safety.
Protection.
Shelter from our insanity.
I can’t let Maeve Quinn suffer because of my weakness.
It doesn’t burn me—it holds me. Anchors me. Reminds me who I am when everything else is stripped away.
My brother thought he was draining me dry. That he was winning, that he could overpower me.
He has no idea what he’s done.
“This will make us even,” he says eagerly. “Brothers again. Equals. Me and you and her.”
My jaw tightens as I lock down the howl clawing up my throat.
He doesn’t say her name.
He doesn’t want to share her with me. No part of Maeve Quinn will ever be mine—and he wants me to know it.
Because I’ve clearly tried to steal her.
He’s so possessive, so desperate to keep her to himself, that he’s already given me more information about her than I could ever need.
“She was frightened,” he murmurs, almost tender. “I could smell it on her clothes. I kept them, you know? Made a section in my bed for her.”
My stomach turns.
“Her fear fills the air when I close my eyes,” he continues. “When I touch myself with her underthings. Coat myself in her. So sweet. So feminine. So pure.”
He exhales, reverent.
“But sharp,” he adds softly. “Like honey just before it burns.”
My vision flashes white.
Not pain.
Rage.
The chains groan as something inside me shifts.
“She called to me, and I can’t deny what she needs,” he says, my body beginning to shudder in earnest. “I know she wants me. She always does. She just doesn’t realise it yet.”
A pull tightens around my ribs that sinks claws into my heart.
It’s faint at first. Barely more than a vibration beneath the agony—but it’s there.
My breath comes harsher now. I can’t control it, and unfortunately, he notices.
His head snaps up.
“There,” he whispers. “That’s it. That’s the reaction I needed.”
He steps closer, crowding into my space, fingers slick with blood—where did he get blood from?—as he presses his palm to my chest.
“As you start dying,” he murmurs, “your power will come to me as it rightfully should.”
Is this what death feels like? If it is, then it’s quieter than I expected.
“You’re burning up,” he says, eyes alight. “Yes. It’s burning you away. It’s working. You’re finally giving it back.”
He’s trembling with desperation now. If he were in his wolf form, the brown beast would be slobbering all over.
He grabs my hair and wrenches my head back, nearly snapping my neck as he forces me to look up at him.
His steel-blue eyes are gleaming in the sunlight. His face devoid of any sane emotion—of anything human.
“See?” he breathes. “It’s working. You are a good brother.”
“It’s not working, Brother,” I growl out, unable to stop myself. This is the strongest I’ve ever felt, and with the end near, I won’t stop fighting him. “You can’t steal what was never yours.”
He can’t steal my canthros. He can’t steal my life.
And he sure as fuck can’t steal her.
Maeve’s not a belonging to be collected. She deserves a life that isn’t built from someone else’s damage.
She’s not a prize or something disposable he can play with until he grows tired of her.
It’s not her job to be something he can break just to make himself feel whole.
He’s tried so fucking hard to get to her, but it won’t work. I won’t allow it.
His smile falters. Just for a second. Then it curdles.
“You don’t get to decide that,” he snarls, slamming my head down into the ground. My headache has faded, the move nothing more than childish now. “Everything you are should have been mine. Your power. Your place. Your life.”
He leans in close, breath sour with obsession. “I’m fixing that mistake, and it’s working.”
The heat surges again, brighter now, sharper. I feel my power ripple outward.
My head snaps back as a howl rips free, tearing through the air like a promise.
I can feel the change in the sound, no longer a call to the pack, but instead, it’s a warning.
A promise.
Not of destruction.
But of vengeance. Of safety. Of protection.
He stiffens, and his eyes widen.
“What did you do?” he whispers.
I smile through the pain.
It hurts. Everything hurts. But for the first time in longer than I can remember, hope outweighs it all.
“I’ve done what you never could.”
The chains at my wrist shatter under the pressure of my power, and the shift tears through me, no longer bound by constraints.
I howl again, now in my wolf form. White paws.
White paws? Mine have always been midnight blue.
It’s wrong. Impossible, even.
And yet, my canthros accepts it instantly, settles into our new form as if we’ve always been this way.
I stride towards the pond, eager to understand the shift, but rather than getting to see my reflection, I scare my brother into stumbling backwards.
He slips into the pond with a giant splash.
Rather than stopping—or helping—I keep running. I don’t stop when I leave the boundaries of my land.
I can’t.
My canthros is in control now, and he doesn’t hesitate.
We’re free.
Finally fucking free from him.
And I know exactly where he’s taking us.
To her.
To Maeve.
Not to claim her.
Not to cage her.
But to stand between her and the thing that’s been hunting her in the dark.
This doesn’t end with him.
It begins with me.
THE END…