Aria's POV
The light from the blood moon crashes through the cottage windows like a tidal wave.
I'm still holding Grandmother's body when the power hits me. It slams into my chest so hard I fly backward, crashing into the wall. Pain explodes through every nerve in my body—white-hot, unbearable, like being set on fire from the inside out.
"ARIA!" Kira and Thorne both rush toward me.
"Don't touch her!" Kira screams, grabbing Thorne's arm. "Look!"
The silver light isn't just glowing from my hands anymore. It's everywhere. Pouring from my eyes, my mouth, my skin. I'm burning with it, drowning in it, becoming it.
And with the light comes knowing.
Memories flood my brain—but they're not mine. They belong to my grandmother. My mother. My great-grandmother. All the Moonshadow women stretching back generations, their knowledge and power flowing into me all at once.
I see the massacre. Feel their terror as the pack turns on them. Hear my great-great-grandmother's final words as she creates the curse with her dying breath:
"Let the betrayed heir choose: forgive and lose everything, destroy and gain everything, or sacrifice what matters most to transform everything."
Three options. Not two.
Magnus left out the third one.
The light fades. I collapse to my knees, gasping. My whole body shakes.
"What did your grandmother tell you?" Thorne asks carefully. "What's the third option?"
I look up at him, and he actually steps back from whatever he sees in my face.
"The curse can be transformed," I say, my voice strange and layered, like multiple people speaking at once. "Not broken. Not completed. Transformed. But the cost..."
Outside, the mob is getting louder. Angrier. I hear Beta Raymond shouting orders. Hear wood breaking as they start building something.
"What are they doing?" Kira runs back to the window. Her face goes pale. "Oh no. Oh, Aria, they're building a pyre. They're going to burn you."
Of course they are. When wolves fear something, they destroy it. That's what they did to my family. That's what they'll try to do to me.
But I'm not afraid anymore.
"The third option," I continue, standing on shaking legs, "requires me to give up what I love most. Sacrifice it willingly to the curse. If I do, the curse transforms from destruction into rebirth. The pack doesn't die—they're reborn. Cleansed of the stolen power. Made new."
"What do you love most?" Thorne asks.
I look at my grandmother's body, still and peaceful on the floor. Then at Kira, my only real friend. Then at Thorne himself—the mate who broke my heart but who I can't seem to stop caring about despite everything.
"I don't know yet," I whisper. "But I have to figure it out fast."
A rock crashes through the window. Then another. The mob is getting braver.
"COME OUT, WITCH!" Raymond screams. "Face your judgment!"
"They're not going to let you think about this," Kira says, grabbing a kitchen knife from the counter. "We need to run. Now."
"I'm done running." Power thrums through me, steady and strong now that I understand what it is. "They want to see what a real Moonshadow can do? Fine. Let's show them."
I walk toward the front door.
"Aria, wait—" Thorne grabs my arm.
The moment he touches me, something incredible happens.
The mate bond—the one he broke, the one that should be dead—suddenly flares to life. Not golden and warm like before. This is different. Silver and electric, crackling with the curse's power.
We both gasp.
"What..." Thorne stares at his hand on my arm. "The bond. I can feel it again."
"It's not the same bond," I realize, understanding flooding through me. "The curse created a new one. Stronger. Darker. Connected to the magic instead of fate."
"Can you feel what I'm feeling?" he asks quietly.
I can. His guilt crashes into me like a wave. His regret. His grief. And underneath it all—buried deep but real—his love. The love he was too afraid to show me when it mattered.
"Yes," I whisper. "I feel everything."
His hand tightens on my arm. "Then you know I'd do anything to fix this. Anything, Aria."
"Anything?"
"Name it."
An idea forms in my mind. Terrible. Impossible. Perfect.
"The third option requires sacrifice," I say slowly. "What I love most. But there's something I love more than any person."
"What?"
"My freedom." The words taste like truth. "My power. My chance to finally be strong instead of weak. To never be helpless again." I meet his eyes. "That's what I love most. And that's what I have to give up."
Understanding dawns on Thorne's face. "No. There has to be another way—"
"There isn't." I pull away from him, squaring my shoulders. "I transform the curse by choosing to sacrifice my power. Return it to the earth willingly. But not by completing our bond—that would just give it back to the pack to abuse again. Instead, I make it so no one can steal it. Lock it away forever."
"You'll be powerless," Kira breathes. "Vulnerable. Human."
"I know."
"They might still kill you!"
"I know that too."
The front door explodes inward.
Beta Raymond stands there, his face twisted with sickness and rage. Behind him, the mob presses close, torches blazing.
"Enough hiding, cursed girl," he snarls. "Time to burn."
I step forward into the doorway, bathed in the blood moon's light. The silver glow makes me look like a ghost. Like a goddess. Like death itself.
The mob stops. Even Raymond hesitates.
"You want to burn me?" I ask, my voice carrying across the silent crowd. "Fine. But first, let me tell you what your precious ancestors did to mine. Let me tell you how your power was bought with innocent blood. Let me tell you the truth about the Moonshadow curse."
"Lies!" Raymond spits. "Witch lies to—"
"SILENCE."
The word comes out as a command backed by ancient power. Every wolf in the mob falls to their knees, forced down by the weight of the curse itself. Even Raymond drops, fighting it but unable to resist.
Only Thorne remains standing behind me.
"You will listen," I continue. "And then you will choose. Save yourselves by letting me sacrifice everything. Or die with your stolen power still poisoning your blood."
The blood moon pulses overhead.
And in its crimson light, I begin to tell the truth that's been buried for seventy years.
But before I finish the first sentence, something moves at the edge of the forest.
Something massive.
Something that makes even the blood moon's light seem to dim in comparison.
A wolf steps into the clearing—but not like any wolf I've ever seen. It's huge, easily twice the size of a normal shifted wolf. Its fur is pure white, glowing with the same silver light as my hands.
And its eyes...
Its eyes are identical to mine.
"Impossible," Magnus gasps from somewhere in the crowd. "The Guardian Wolf died with the last Moonshadow Alpha seventy years ago."
The giant wolf's gaze locks onto me.
Then it speaks—actually speaks—in a voice like thunder and moonlight combined:
"The heir awakens.
The choice approaches. But first, little moon... you must pass the trial."