The fire crackled between them, casting dancing shadows across Thorne's weathered face.
Elara stared at him. Waited for the punchline. The joke. The moment he'd laugh and say of course you're human, what else would you be?
He didn't laugh.
"I've lived among wolves for over eighty years," Thorne said quietly. "Delivered hundreds of pups. Treated thousands of wounds. Watched the Moon Goddess bless her children with mates and magic and the gift of the shift." His pale eyes held hers. "And in all that time, I've only seen marks like yours once before."
"When?"
"Two hundred years ago. In a painting."
The fire popped. Elara jumped.
"There was a royal house once," Thorne continued, his voice dropping lower. "The Silver Crown wolves. They didn't just lead packs—they ruled them. Every Alpha bowed to the Silver King. Every Luna prayed to the Silver Queen for fertility and favor. Their word was law. Their blood was sacred."
"What happened?"
"Rebellion." The word tasted like ash. "The packs grew tired of royalty. Wanted to rule themselves. For centuries, the Silver line had kept peace through power and prophecy—but power breeds resentment, child. Always has. Always will."
Elara's hand crept to her throat, covering the marks. "They were... killed?"
"Hunted. Butchered. The last King and Queen died defending their infant daughter—the heir to the Silver Crown. Legend says they sealed her before the final battle. Hid her away with blood magic so ancient that even the elders have forgotten how it works." Thorne's gaze burned into her. "They hid her where no one would think to look."
"Where?"
"Among humans."
The words hung in the air like frost.
Elara's breath came shallow. Fast. Too fast. "You're saying—"
"I'm saying the timing matches. I'm saying you appeared at an orphanage eighteen years ago with no records, no family, no explanation. I'm saying you have silver marks that only appear on royal blood. I'm saying..." Thorne reached out, gripped her wrist with surprising strength. "I'm saying the Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes, child. And neither does blood."
The Moon Goddess doesn't make mistakes.
The phrase echoed in Elara's skull. She'd heard it before—whispered by pack members, muttered during the Moon Ceremony preparations, spoken with reverence and fear.
If the Goddess doesn't make mistakes... then Kael rejecting me...
No. She couldn't think about that now.
"I don't feel like royalty." Her voice came out strange. Hollow. "I feel like an orphan who's been invisible her entire life."
"Royalty isn't a feeling. It's blood. It's bone. It's the magic running through your veins that you've never been able to access." Thorne released her wrist, leaned back. "The marks are appearing because something is waking you up. The bond, perhaps. The proximity to your true kind. The Blood Moon approaching."
The bond.
Elara's chest burned at the thought.
"Kael," she whispered. "He can't... he doesn't..."
"He can't smell you because your scent was sealed at birth. A protection spell, woven into your very skin." Thorne's expression grew complicated. "The spell does more than hide you. It tests."
"Tests?"
"Tests worthiness. A royal heir's mate must be strong enough to protect them. Worthy enough to stand beside them. The seal doesn't break until the mate proves themselves—through sacrifice, through devotion, through becoming enough."
Elara thought of silver eyes looking through her like glass. Of a cold voice saying we should have let her die. Of the way Kael's nostrils flared and found... nothing.
"He's not worthy," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Not yet." Thorne's voice held a strange note. "Perhaps not ever. But the bond exists, child. Dormant, yes. Hidden, yes. But real. The Moon Ceremony didn't lie—Kael simply couldn't perceive the truth. And until he can..." He paused. "Until he can, the marks will keep spreading. The wolf inside you will keep stirring. And eventually, something will break."
"What?"
"The seal. Or you."
---
Elara left the healing hut in a daze.
The compound moved around her—wolves training, wolves talking, wolves living their normal, everyday lives—and she walked through it like a ghost. Like the nothing everyone believed she was.
But I'm not nothing.
I'm royal.
I'm the last heir to a murdered line.
I have a wolf inside me.
The thoughts didn't feel real. They felt like something from one of her dreams—silver and distant and not quite touchable. She pressed her hand to her chest, felt her heart hammering, and tried to ground herself in the physical.
Cold air. Frozen ground beneath her boots. The ache in her ribs where the rogues had—
Rogues.
They'd attacked her. Specifically her. Not the orphanage, not the town—her, walking alone in the woods.
They were hunting me.
The realization hit like ice water.
They knew. Somehow, they knew.
Elara's feet carried her without conscious thought. Past the training grounds. Past the kitchens. Past the omega quarters to the edge of the compound where the forest pressed close and the world felt less... watched.
She stopped at the tree line.
Breathed.
The marks on her neck pulsed with warmth.
You're not alone, something seemed to whisper. You've never been alone.
But she had been. Eighteen years of being the unwanted girl in the corner. Eighteen years of watching families walk past without stopping. Eighteen years of dreaming of silver wolves and waking up alone.
If she was royal... where was her family?
Where was anyone?
"Why now?" she whispered to the forest. "Why after all this time?"
The forest didn't answer.
But something else did.
Footsteps behind her. Heavy. Deliberate. The kind of footsteps that expected you to move out of the way.
Elara turned.
Kael stood ten feet away.
---
He'd been training—she could see it in the sweat on his brow, the way his chest still heaved slightly, the sword belted at his hip. His dark hair was damp, pushed back from his face, and his silver eyes caught the fading light like a predator's.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then his gaze dropped to her throat.
To the marks she'd forgotten to cover.
Elara's heart stopped.
Kael's eyes narrowed. "What's that on your neck?"
Think. Lie. Anything.
"Rash," she heard herself say. "From the furs in the omega quarters. Healer Thorne gave me something for it."
He stared at her. Silver eyes sweeping over her face, her posture, the way she held herself. Looking for deception. Finding... what?
His nostrils flared.
Nothing.
Of course.
"I told you to stay in the omega quarters." His voice was flat. Unimpressed. "Not wander near the tree line where rogues could grab you again."
"I needed air."
"You needed to follow orders." He stepped closer. Not threatening—not exactly. But close enough that she could smell him for the first time. Winter pine. Smoke. Snow. And underneath, something darker. Something that made her chest burn hotter.
The bond, she thought wildly. It's the bond.
But he couldn't feel it. Couldn't sense it. Couldn't see her any more clearly than he had in the great hall.
"Why are you really here?" The question came out before she could stop it.
Kael's eyes flickered. Something passed through them—too fast to read. "I don't answer to omegas."
"You don't answer to anyone. I know." Elara's chin came up. That stupid, suicidal chin she couldn't seem to control. "But you're here, at the edge of the compound, talking to a human you clearly wish was dead. So I'll ask again—why?"
The silence stretched.
Kael's jaw tightened.
Then, so quietly she almost missed it: "I don't know."
He looked as confused by the admission as she felt.
For one breathless moment, something passed between them. Not recognition—he still couldn't see her. But awareness, maybe. The faintest flicker of there's something here before his walls slammed back down.
"Stay away from the tree line." He stepped back. Turned away. "I won't tell you again."
And then he was gone, striding back toward the compound, leaving Elara standing at the edge of the forest with her heart pounding and her marks burning and her mind spinning with impossibility.
He came to find me.
He doesn't know why.
But he came.
---
That night, Elara examined her marks in the candlelight.
They'd spread again.
Now they curled past her elbow, down toward her wrist, intricate patterns that almost looked like—she squinted—wolves. Tiny silver wolves, running in circles around her arms. Forming patterns she couldn't quite decipher.
She thought about what Thorne had said.
The seal doesn't break until the mate proves themselves.
Kael had come to find her tonight. Had stood close enough to touch. Had looked at her—really looked, for the first time—even if he hadn't seen what was right in front of him.
Was that progress?
Or was she grasping at straws because some part of her, some stupid, hopeful part, wanted him to be worthy?
Stop it, she told herself fiercely. He rejected you. Publicly. Cruelly. He said they should have let you die. You don't owe him hope.
But as she finally blew out the candle and lay back in the darkness, she couldn't stop thinking about silver eyes and confusion and the way he'd said I don't know like it cost him something.
Like maybe, just maybe, some part of him felt it too.
---
The dream came again.
Silver wolves running through a burning forest. A throne made of bones. A woman with Elara's face, wearing a crown of stars, reaching toward something—someone—in the shadows.
Daughter of the moon, the voice whispered. They come for you. They've always been coming.
Who? Elara tried to ask. Who's coming?
But the dream shifted, and suddenly she was somewhere else.
A cave. Dark. Cold. A circle of robed figures chanting in a language that made her ears bleed. And in the center, a wolf—silver, magnificent, chained to the earth with iron spikes through its paws.
Wake up, the wolf said. Wake up before they find you.
Who are you?
I'm you. I'm the wolf. I'm the blood. And I'm running out of time.
The wolf lifted its head.
And Elara saw its eyes.
Silver.
Kael's silver.
---
She woke screaming.
Or tried to. The sound caught in her throat, emerged as a strangled gasp that had Marta rushing to her curtain.
"Girl? Girl, what—"
"Nothing." Elara's voice shook. "Just a nightmare. I'm fine."
Marta's tired eyes searched her face. "You're not fine. You've been here three days and you look like you haven't slept in years."
I haven't. Not really. Not since the dreams started.
"I'll be okay."
Marta hesitated. Then, unexpectedly, she sat on the edge of Elara's cot. "I had a daughter once. Human. Father was a wolf who couldn't keep his hands to himself." Her voice was flat. "She used to have nightmares too. Used to tell me they'd pass. They didn't."
Elara didn't know what to say.
"She died," Marta continued quietly. "Ten years ago. Sickness. The pack healer could have saved her—he had the medicine—but Alpha Kael's father was Alpha then, and he'd just lost his mate to rogues, and he'd decided humans weren't worth the resources anymore." She met Elara's eyes. "I'm telling you this so you understand. The wolves don't care about us. They never have. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you stop hoping for things that won't happen."
Elara's throat tightened. "I'm not hoping."
"Good." Marta stood. "Because hoping got my daughter killed. And I'd hate to see the same thing happen to you."
She left.
Elara sat in the darkness, her marks pulsing with warmth, her dream still burning behind her eyes.
The wolf in the cave. Silver eyes. Kael's eyes.
I'm you, it had said. I'm the wolf.
But the wolf in her dream had been chained. Trapped. Waiting.
Running out of time.
For what?
And why did she feel, deep in her bones, that whatever was coming for the silver wolf was also coming for her?
---
End of Chapter 3🐺