The child's teeth burned like brands.
Selene gasped as visions erupted behind her eyes...centuries compressed into seconds. A young woman with Cyrus's smile carving symbols into her own flesh. A shadow wolf howling at a normal moon. A knife plunged into an altar not to imprison, but to commune.
"You see?" The First Shadow's voice echoed through the memories, but softer now, frayed at the edges. "We were never meant to be enemies."
Then...
Pain.
Kael wrenched the child away, his shadows wrapping around Selene's bleeding hand. The markings on her arm flared gold where the girl's teeth had pierced skin, the wound glowing like embers.
The child hissed, wiping her mouth. "She tastes like him!"
Selene's voice came out raw. "Like who?"
The girl's mismatched eyes filled with tears. "The brother who left me in the dark!"
The ground tilted. That voice...too ancient for a child's face...was the same one that had whispered from the altar. But the rage... the betrayal...
This wasn't the First Shadow.
Not entirely.
Kael's claws hovered at the girl's throat. "Explain. Now."
A shudder ran through the child's small frame. When she spoke again, her voice fractured between innocence and eternity: "He promised to come back."
The Forgotten Truth
The keep's survivors found them at dawn.
Dazed but uncorrupted, they clustered at the broken gates like startled deer. Their eyes kept skipping over the child, as if some instinct warned them not to look directly at her.
Selene cradled her bitten hand. The wound hadn't healed, but it hadn't spread either...just pulsed faintly, a second heartbeat beneath her skin. "You remember the stories," she said to the nearest warrior. "The first shadow wolf. The one who built the altar."
The man flinched. "A legend."
"His name was Alaric," the child interrupted. She sat cross-legged in the dirt, drawing symbols in the ash that matched Selene's scars. "My twin."
Kael's breath caught. "The first Alpha."
The girl bared her teeth. "The first traitor."
Selene's markings burned in response. Because now she remembered...not just the visions the bite had given her, but the truth behind them.
The altar had never been a prison.
It had been a cradle.
The Broken Pact
They built the fire where the great hall once stood.
The child...Lirya, she'd whispered when no one was listening...refused to enter the circle of stones, clinging to the shadows instead. Selene studied her between glances at the survivors. The way she wrinkled her nose at roasted meat. How she traced patterns only Selene could see in the dirt.
Kael kept between them, his shadows restless. "If she's really the First Shadow..."
"Then why is she six years old?" Selene flexed her wounded hand. The bite had shown her the answer, but speaking it aloud felt dangerous. "Because Cyrus didn't destroy her. He reset her."
The child's head snapped up.
"He stole my memories!" Her voice shook with the weight of centuries. "All but the worst ones. The dark ones."
A log collapsed in the fire, sending up sparks. One landed on Lirya's knee...she stared at it, entranced, as it burned out without marking her skin.
Selene's scars itched. "You were never meant to be locked away. Alaric built the altar to..."
"Share," the child whispered. "The power. The visions. The becoming." Her tiny hands clenched. "But he got scared. Said I was changing too fast."
Kael's eyes met Selene's across the flames. The unspoken truth hung between them:
The markings weren't a curse.
They were an inheritance.
The Alpha's Decision
The survivors voted at midnight.
Kael stood before them...no longer fully Alpha, but something new...as they debated the child's fate. Some wanted her bound. Others, banished. One voice in the back hissed "Kill it."
Selene waited for the rage. For the shadows to rise.
Instead, Lirya began to sing.
A wordless lullaby, older than the keep, older than the pack. The fire dimmed. The arguing ceased. Even the wind stilled as if listening.
When the last note faded, the oldest warrior...a woman with scars matching Selene's...knelt in the dirt. "Moon's breath," she whispered. "That's... that's her song."
Selene's stomach dropped. "Whose song?"
"The one the shadow wolves sing to their pups." The woman's eyes shone with tears. "Before the altars. Before the Blood Moons. Before... all of this."
Lirya's smile held too much wisdom for a child's face. "You remember."
Kael's decision came at dawn.
"We keep her." His voice brooked no argument. "But she stays with us. Always."
The child's reaction was startlingly human...she launched herself at Kael, burying her face in his tunic. His shadows recoiled, then slowly, warily, curled around her small form.
Selene's bite mark pulsed in time with the child's heartbeat.
And somewhere deep beneath the ruins...
The altar's remains shivered.