Aria's POV
Beta Raymond lunges at me with a silver knife.
I don't think. My hand shoots out, and power explodes from my palm. The blast catches him mid-leap and throws him backward into the crowd. He crashes into three other wolves, and they all go down in a tangle of limbs.
The mob freezes again—but this time from fear, not magic.
"Anyone else want to try?" I ask, my voice deadly calm.
No one moves. Good.
The Guardian's final words echo in my head: In every path, someone you love dies.
Three choices. Three deaths. Which one can I live with?
"Aria." Thorne moves to stand beside me, and I'm shocked when he doesn't try to restrain me or calm me down. He just... stands there. Backing me up. "Whatever you decide, I'll support it. Even if you choose to let us all die."
I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "You'll support me dying too? Because that's what happens in the third path. I saw it."
His face goes pale. "What?"
"The Guardian showed me all three futures." I look at the mob—some scared, some angry, all desperate. "In the first, I forgive you and complete the mate bond. The curse breaks. Everyone lives. Except me. Selene kills me within a month, and no one stops her because I'm powerless again."
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Selene—who somehow made it here from the forest where I left her—goes white as snow.
"That's a lie!" she shrieks. "I would never—"
"Don't." My voice cuts through her protests like a blade. "I saw it, Selene. Saw you standing over my body with a knife, telling yourself you did it for the pack. For Thorne. For your father."
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Her silence is answer enough.
"The second path," I continue, turning back to Thorne, "I let the curse finish. Everyone dies screaming. I keep all the power. But I go insane from the guilt and loneliness within a year. Kira haunts my dreams. You haunt my dreams. Eventually, I walk into the sun and let it burn me to ash."
Kira makes a choked sound behind me. "Aria, no—"
"And the third path." My voice drops to barely a whisper. "I sacrifice my power to transform the curse. The pack is cleansed and reborn. But the transformation requires a life to anchor it. Someone has to die willingly, giving themselves to the magic so it can complete the change. And that someone..." I swallow hard. "That someone is me."
Dead silence.
Then everyone starts talking at once. Shouting. Arguing. Some begging me to choose the third path—of course they want me to die for them. Others screaming that I'm lying, that this is a trick.
"QUIET!" Thorne's Alpha command booms across the clearing.
Everyone shuts up instantly.
He turns to face me, and his ice-blue eyes are swimming with tears. "There has to be another way. Something the Guardian didn't show you—"
"There isn't." I feel strangely calm now that I've said it out loud. "Three paths. Three deaths. Mine, or mine, or mine."
"Then we die." Thorne says it so simply, like it's obvious. "The pack dies. You live. That's the only acceptable option."
"You can't decide that!" Beta Raymond struggles to his feet, clutching his ribs. "You're condemning hundreds of innocent wolves—"
"My great-grandfather condemned them when he murdered hers!" Thorne rounds on him with such fury that Raymond actually steps back. "My family built our power on genocide! We don't deserve to be saved!"
"The children deserve it," a soft voice says.
I turn to see a woman step forward from the crowd. I recognize her—Maya, one of the pack mothers. She's holding a little girl who can't be more than four years old. The child is unconscious, black veins spreading across her small face.
"My daughter never hurt anyone," Maya says, tears streaming down her cheeks. "She's innocent. They're all innocent." She gestures to the other children scattered through the crowd, all sick, all dying. "Please. I'm not asking you to forgive us. I'm asking you to save them."
My heart cracks. The children. Of course there are children.
In the Guardian's visions, I saw them die. Saw their small bodies going still. Heard their mothers' screams.
"Aria, don't," Kira grabs my arm. "Don't you dare sacrifice yourself for these people. They don't deserve it."
"The children don't deserve to die for their parents' sins either," I whisper back.
"So what? You die instead?" Kira's voice breaks. "That's not fair! That's not justice!"
She's right. It isn't fair.
But nothing about my life has ever been fair.
I look at Thorne one more time. Really look at him. At the mate who rejected me, who destroyed me, who now stands ready to let his entire pack die just to keep me alive.
"I'm sorry," I tell him quietly.
His eyes widen. "No. Aria, no—"
I step away from both him and Kira. Step into the center of the clearing where everyone can see me clearly.
"I choose the third path," I announce. "I sacrifice my power to transform the curse. I give my life so the children—the innocent—can live."
"NO!" Multiple voices scream it. Thorne. Kira. Even some of the pack members who apparently grew a conscience in the last five minutes.
But it's too late.
I press my glowing hands together and whisper the words the Guardian taught me in the vision. Ancient words in a language I shouldn't know but somehow do.
The blood moon explodes with light.
Power surges through me one last time—hot and electric and infinite. I feel it gathering, preparing to leave me forever. Preparing to take my life as payment for the transformation.
This is it. This is how I die.
I close my eyes and wait for the end.
But instead of death, I feel... warmth.
Someone's hand grabs mine. Then another hand grabs my other one.
I open my eyes and gasp.
Thorne stands on my left, his hand gripping mine. Kira stands on my right, holding my other hand. And they're both glowing with the same silver light.
"What are you doing?" I scream at them. "Let go! You'll die too!"
"Then we die together," Thorne says calmly.
"Not happening," Kira adds. "You're not doing this alone."
The magic surges higher, pulling at all three of us now.
And somewhere in the distance, I hear the Guardian's voice one final time:
"Clever children. You found the fourth path—the one even I didn't see. But be warned: the price remains the same. A life for a transformation. The curse doesn't care how many lives. It only needs one willing death."
The light becomes blinding.
And I realize with horror what's about
to happen.
The curse is going to choose which one of us dies.