The air in the hidden wing of Valerius Manor thickened like fog before a storm heavy, cold, tense. After Lyra's eyes flared amber in the moonstone, something in the house shifted. Not visibly, not loudly but the quiet rhythm of their isolated world fractured beneath it.
Lyra changed.
Her energy, once wide and wild and joyous, tightened like a coiled spring. She paced now. Always pacing. The tapestries she used to trace with curious fingers held no magic anymore. She stalked the stone floor in circles, small bare feet thudding heavier than they should've like each step echoed a little too loud in the hush of the manor.
She flinched at the slightest sounds.
Beetles skittering behind the walls.
An owl hooting far off in the woods.
Things Valerius had long since learned to ignore.
Now they made her cry out. Clamp her hands over her ears.
"Too loud, Papa! Make it stop!"
Smells, too smells that shouldn't have mattered.
The faint bite of old iron in the pipes.
The herbal remnants of Anya's latest remedies.
The dusty comfort of old parchment on the desk.
"Bad smells!" she'd yell, shrinking back, nose wrinkled, sneezing like it hurt. Panic edged her voice more each time.
Valerius watched it all, still and quiet, but behind that calm, his dread spiraled. The moon outside grew fat and luminous, dragging the tide of something ancient from within his daughter. He felt it like pressure in the walls. Something swelling. Something breaking.
He spent hours just… standing. A frozen statue guarding something volatile. His thoughts ran circles in his mind. He pored over every half-remembered myth, every passage of vampiric text, every cryptic werewolf tale Selene had once whispered but nothing prepared him for this. There was no map for what Lyra was becoming.
He started snapping quills in his hand. Silencing her pacing with a single look sharp enough to cut only to recoil with guilt when she flinched. That guilt lingered like frost in his chest. New. Unfamiliar. Human.
Anya began coming every night.
Her face was tighter now. The worry she once masked showed in every crease around her mouth, every flick of her eyes toward the windows.
She brought more remedies stronger now.
Valerian steeped into bitter teas Lyra refused to drink.
Chamomile and calendula salves for her nerves.
But she also brought other things.
Thick coils of hemp rope.
Padded leather straps, softened with oil.
Iron rings. Heavy. Cold.
One afternoon, Lyra finally fell asleep twitching, whimpering, but asleep.
Valerius and Anya stood in the hall.
The bindings lay between them on a stone bench.
Ugly. Necessary.
"We'll have to bind her," Anya said, her voice low, raw. The words clearly hurt to say.
"The first change it's chaos. Painful. Confusing. She won't know her own strength. She could break her own bones trying to escape it… or tear straight through the door and into the woods. Borak's scouts are too close for chances."
Valerius stared at the straps. His expression didn't shift but inside, something revolted.
To chain his child. Like an animal. Like a monster.
It scraped against everything in him.
He remembered how Selene described it the first time. Wild, yes. Overwhelming, yes. But also sacred. Bones singing. Senses exploding to life. And she wasn't alone, she'd had the Pack, Elders. The howl to guide her.
Lyra had none of that.
She had walls. Restraints. Him.
"It feels like desecration," he said, voice empty, but cold enough to crack stone.
"It's preservation," Anya answered firmly, meeting his gaze without blinking.
"Think of it as… swaddling. For a soul inside a hurricane. We keep her here. Safe. Protected. From herself. From the world. Only for the first moons until she understands what's happening."
She laid her hand on the leather.
"It's not cruelty. It's control. Padded. Meant to hold, not to harm."
Then came the cry.
Not a whimper.
Not a murmur.
A sharp, gasping yelp of pain.
Valerius vanished from the bench like a wraith.
He reached her just as her small body arched off the pallet. She was stiff, soaked in sweat, her curls plastered to her forehead.
"Hurts, Papa!" she sobbed, voice raw.
"Back! Legs! Feels like… breaking!"
He scooped her up. Her skin burned. His arms, always cool, now trembled from the contrast.
He rocked her awkwardly mimicking comfort, but unsure it would help.
The child shook in his grip like a struck string.
"The moon," he whispered, voice husky.
"It stirs the wolf. It'll pass, little star. It'll pass."
A lie. He hated how it tasted.
"Wolf?" Lyra gasped.
"Like Gamma's stories? Big? With teeth?"
She shook as another jolt hit her.
Valerius nodded. Slowly.
"Yes. Like Gamma's wolves. Strong. Fierce. It's part of your mother's gift."
He hesitated, words catching like thorns.
"If the change comes… I'll be here. Gamma too. You won't be alone."
He didn't say anything about the ropes.
Lyra buried her head against him, mumbling half asleep, half in pain:
"Safe with Papa. No wolf hurts Lyra if Papa's here."
The words cut him deeper than they should've.
She trusted him. Completely.
And he was about to shackle her like a prisoner.
Kaelen's words returned, cold and brutal:
Abomination. Chaos. A mistake.
Valerius felt like he was building her cage with his own hands.
Anya came in quietly.
She placed her hand on his arm. It lingered.
"You prepare the ground, Nightwalker," she said softly.
"That's all we can do."
Night fell in full.
The windows were nothing but panes of ink now. The fire was low. Lyra's breathing had steadied, shallow and fast, but no longer wracked with pain.
Valerius tucked her beneath the furs, then turned to look again at the bindings.
They hadn't moved but they seemed alive.
Waiting.
The full moon was climbing fast.
The manor, once a sanctuary, felt like a powder keg. Too much pressure in the stone. Too much storm in the girl.
Valerius could feel it now not in theory, not in memory but physically.
The moon was calling something ancient inside his child.
And there was nothing in the world strong enough to stop it.