Chapter 35, The Night-Stalker’s Soul
Torin
The medical bay felt like a tomb with the air sucked out of it. The lights did not shatter, but they hummed with a low, jagged frequency that set my teeth on edge. The real damage was in the atmosphere; a thick, suffocating weight that made every breath a struggle.
Saga backed away from the table, her tablet slipping from her fingers and clattering to the floor. She dropped to her knees, her eyes wide as she stared at the girl.
“It is a shift,” Saga whispered, her voice trembling. “It is a shift, Skarde... but I have never felt anything like this. She is not just changing her shape. She is pulling the energy from the air. She is pulling it from you.”
Wren’s body arched off the table, and suddenly, the room was flooded with it: the scent. It was impossibly sweet, a mix of wild honey and rain-drenched pine, so potent it made my head swim and my pulse roar in my ears. Underneath that sweetness was the raw, copper tang of ancient power.
My own wolf, Jarn, was slamming against my ribs, desperate to answer whatever was waking up inside her. Let me out! Let me see!
“She will take the whole medical wing down with her if we do not move,” Skarde rasped. His own eyes were already bleeding into that fractured mercury-silver, his dominance buckling under the sheer weight of Varg’s presence. “The pressure is too much for a confined space. Let’s go!”
Skarde lifted Wren into his arms, and we ran.
We hit the stairs, three levels down into the heart of the mountain, our boots thundering against the concrete. Every second we spent inside, the pull got stronger, making my skin itch and my bones ache to change.
“Open the door!” Skarde bellowed.
I threw my weight against the emergency lever of the back tunnel. The heavy iron door hissed open, and the freezing mountain air rushed in, but it did not do a damn thing to cool the fever rolling off Wren.
We practically tumbled out onto the dirt and jagged rock of the mountain trail. Skarde carried her a few yards away from the tunnel mouth and laid her down on the frozen earth. The second her back hit the ground, the internal pressure in my chest snapped.
It was like a vacuum being filled.
“FINALLY FREE!”
The voice did not come from her throat. It slammed into our minds, a telepathic shout so loud and joyful it made my vision blur. It was her. It was her wolf.
Then, the world turned fluid.
I felt my humanity dissolve in one continuous, effortless motion as the link pulled the wolf out of me. My charcoal-slate fur rippled into existence as Jarn’s paws hit the dirt with a heavy, muffled thud.
To my left, Rhys did not shift so much as melt. One second he was a man; the next Skuggi, a lean, smoke-gray shadow, was standing in his place.
Beside us, Varg emerged, a massive, soul-black beast that seemed to grow out of the very darkness of the mountain. His shift was a silent explosion of muscle and shadow, his mercury-silver eyes locking onto the center of the clearing.
Jarn’s eyes were locked on the path.
The girl was gone. In her place, a creature of myth was uncoiling from the dirt. She was Midnight Blue: a coat so dark it looked like the deep ocean, shimmering with a spectral silver light that danced under her fur with every breath.
She rose, her frame long and lethal. She stood nearly as tall as Varg, but she carried an elegance that made our movements look like clumsy brawling. The sweet scent of her was overwhelming now, pouring off her in waves that demanded total submission.
But when she turned her head, the shock of it hit me harder than the shift.
Her eyes were Molten Gold. They were not glowing; they were two heavy, liquid pools of burning ore that looked like they had been poured directly into her skull.
There was no pupil to fix on, no iris to read, just a pair of brilliant, metallic mirrors that reflected the world in a terrifying, high-contrast amber.
They were predatory. They were ancient. They looked like they had been waiting a thousand years to open.
She looked at Varg, and for the first time in his life, the Alpha did not just meet a gaze; he felt the weight of one.
“HUNT,” she commanded, the link vibrating with her exhilaration.
She did not run; she vanished. She leaped into the treeline, a streak of midnight blue and liquid gold. Varg let out a roar that shook the pines and plunged after her. Jarn and Skuggi followed, our paws tearing up the earth as we moved with a grace that felt entirely new.