Kael's POV
Luna's scent hit me like a punch to the face. Sweet like flowers, warm like sunshine, mixed with the sharp smell of fear and fresh blood. My heart stopped beating for a second.
She was here, In the Shadowlands and she was hurt.
I forgot all about the red eyes chasing me. I forgot about being scared. All I could think about was finding her before it was too late.
I crashed through the bushes, following her scent like my life depended on it. Branches scratched my face and rocks cut my feet, but I didn't care. Luna needed help.
That's when I heard the screaming.
Not human screaming. Wolf screaming. The kind of sound that meant someone was dying.
I burst through a wall of thick trees and saw them. Five creatures that looked like wolves but wrong. Their fur was black as midnight, and their eyes burned red like coals from a fire. They were bigger than any normal wolf, with teeth that glowed white in the darkness.
Void Walkers, The monsters from Elder Raven's old stories. The ones that were supposed to be dead for a thousand years.
But they weren't dead. They were right here, and they were hunting.
Three regular wolves were trapped against a fallen tree. One was already down, whimpering and bleeding. The other two were trying to protect him, but I could see they were losing. These weren't trained fighters. They were just regular pack members who had wandered too far from home.
And one of them was Luna.
She looked different than I remembered. Older. Her brown hair was longer, and her face was sharper. But her green eyes were exactly the same. Right now, those eyes were wide with terror as she tried to use her healing magic to help the wounded wolf.
"Get away from him!" she shouted at the Void Walkers. Her hands glowed with soft blue light as she pressed them against her packmate's wounds. "I won't let you hurt him!"
The biggest Void Walker laughed. The sound was like glass breaking. "Little healer thinks she can save everyone. How sweet."
Another one circled around behind them. "Should we kill the males first? Or save them for last so they can watch?"
Luna's magic flickered and went out. She was too scared to focus. The wounded wolf cried out as his injuries started bleeding again.
"Please," Luna whispered. "We didn't do anything wrong. We were just patrolling the border."
"Wrong place, wrong time," the leader said, showing his glowing teeth. "But don't worry. It will be over soon."
He lunged forward with his claws out, aiming straight for Luna's throat.
Something exploded inside my chest. Not pain this time. Something else. Something hot and bright and furious.
"NO!" I screamed, and my voice echoed through the forest like thunder.
Everyone stopped. The Void Walkers. Luna. Even the wounded wolf stopped whimpering. They all turned to stare at me standing there in the trees like some crazy person.
"Well, well," the leader said, his red eyes finding me in the shadows. "What do we have here? A little human boy come to play hero?"
I stepped into the clearing, and I felt something I had never felt before. Power. Real power flowing through my body like lightning in my veins. My skin started to glow with silver light that got brighter every second.
"Let them go," I said, and my voice sounded different. Deeper. Stronger. Like it was coming from someone else.
The Void Walkers laughed, but it sounded nervous now. "Or what, little boy? You'll cry at us?"
Luna was staring at me with her mouth open. "Kael? But how... you're supposed to be..."
"Dead?" I finished. "Yeah, well, I'm full of surprises."
The power inside me was growing stronger. My bones felt like they were stretching. My muscles burned like they were on fire, but good fire. Fire that made me feel alive for the first time in three years.
"This is impossible," one of the smaller Void Walkers whispered. "The bloodline was broken. The prophecy said..."
"The prophecy said a lot of things," I growled. The silver light around me was so bright now that it hurt to look at. "But maybe you got it wrong."
That's when it happened.
My body exploded with light. Everything I was stretched and changed and became something completely different. My human skin melted away like snow in summer. My bones grew longer and stronger. My muscles doubled in size.
When the light finally faded, I wasn't human anymore.
I was a wolf. But not just any wolf.
I was massive. Bigger than any wolf that had ever lived. My fur was deep black like the night sky, but silver lines ran through it like lightning. When I moved, the silver marks glowed and pulsed with their own light. My eyes burned with silver fire that made the Void Walkers step backward.
This was what I was supposed to be. This was who I had always been inside.
The clearing went completely silent. Even the wind stopped blowing.
Luna made a tiny sound like a baby bird. "Kael?"
I looked at her with my new wolf eyes, and she gasped. I knew she could see the truth now. This wasn't some random transformation. This was ancient power. Power that came from the very first wolves who ever walked the earth.
The wounded wolf behind her whispered something that made my new heart skip a beat.
"The First Alpha. The legends were true."
But I didn't have time to think about legends or prophecies. The Void Walkers were recovering from their shock, and their leader's red eyes were blazing with something that looked like excitement.
"Well, well, well," he said, his voice full of dangerous joy. "Look what we found hiding in the shadows. The lost prince finally shows his true face."
He threw back his head and howled, but it wasn't a normal howl. It was a signal. A call for more of his kind.
In the distance, other howls answered. Lots of them.
"Did you really think you could hide forever?" the leader asked, circling around me like I was prey. "Did you think we didn't know you were here?"
My new wolf instincts screamed that I was in terrible danger. But I didn't care. Luna was behind me, and I would die before I let these monsters hurt her.
"I don't know what you want," I snarled, and my wolf voice was like rolling thunder. "But you can't have it."
The leader smiled, showing teeth like white daggers. "Oh, but we can. You see, our master has been waiting a very long time for you to wake up. He has such wonderful plans for you."
"Your master can go to hell."
"He's already been there," the Void Walker laughed. "That's where we met him."
More red eyes appeared in the trees around us. Lots more. We were completely surrounded.
The leader's smile got wider and scarier. "The First Alpha lives," he called out to his pack. "Master will be so very pleased."
That's when I realized the horrible truth. This wasn't a random attack. These monsters hadn't just stumbled across Luna and her patrol.
They had been waiting for me to show myself. This was all a trap and I had walked right into it.