POV: Everly (dreamscape) & Spirit (limited)
Silence stretched thick and warm, like the world itself had stopped breathing. Everly floated in it. No weight. No pain. No sound. Just… the feeling of being held not by hands, but by stillness.
Somewhere distant, Selene's voice murmured, low and guttural, like wind stirring fallen leaves. "Stay here," she said soothingly, "it's not time."
She tried to open her eyes, but there were no eyes here. Only shadows and silver threads stretching endlessly across an unseen sky.
A voice echoed next, a memory maybe. "Truth is a choice," Spirit had said.
Hadn't she? Or was that just the dream clinging too tightly to her ribs? She heard footsteps. Slow. Gentle. No shoes. A hum, faint, familiar. The scent of river stone and evergreen.
In the waking world, her body lay tucked away in a forgotten healer's room, low-lit and cool, lined with shelves of salves and dust-covered scrolls. No one came here anymore.
That was the point. She hadn't been taken to the main tent. The Alpha had not asked. The Luna had not insisted. Kyran… had not spoken her name.
Only a young omega boy, barely twelve, had found her in the grass and, nudged by instinct or something else, brought her here. Spirit had done the rest.
Now she sat at Everly's side, one leg folded beneath her, head tilted. She said nothing. Only watched. Watched the twitch in Everly's fingers. The tiny shift in her breath. The magic still coiled, flickering beneath her skin like fireflies behind glass.
Spirit didn't reach for her because she didn't have to.
Her magic had already worked quietly: softening the pain, dulling the sharp edges of the bond's backlash, sealing a thread that might have unraveled completely if left untended.
It wasn't healing but it was something like grace.
She stood and turned toward the narrow window carved into the stone. Outside, the wind carried a warning with someone was watching.
Far beyond the Alpha House, past the second perimeter markers and the frozen stream that divided Ironfang from the deep woods, two scouts stumbled back into camp with urgency tight in their chests. They found Commander Eron near the eastern guard tent, hunched over a crude map, jaw clenched. "We saw someone," the taller one said.
Eron didn't look up. "Where?"
"Near the border. West ridge. Just standing there," said the other scout.
"Cloaked?"
The scout nodded. "Didn't hear them coming. Just… turned and they were there. Staring."
Eron straightened. "Rogue?"
"Maybe. But…" He hesitated. "Their clothes were too clean. And their eyes…"
"Eyes?" questioned Eron confusedly.
"Like they knew us. Like they were waiting."
Back at the Alpha House, the Luna stood on the upper balcony, her arms wrapped around herself as she stared at the trees. The Red Moon had passed, but the unease hadn't.
Goosebumps lifted across her forearms and she didn't know why. But it felt like the forest was breathing differently now. "They're watching," she whispered to herself. "Not hiding. Waiting."
In the kitchens, two omegas spoke in hushes over boiling stew.
"Did you hear?" one asked. "The girl collapsed during the sealing. Just dropped."
"She still not back?"
"She never made it to the healers."
They glanced at each other, lips pressed thin.
Later that night, someone left a small pouch of sage and moon salt tucked beneath the old cedar tree by the outer barracks. Another left a white feather folded in cloth and a third placed a single blue stone, round, smooth, precious in its simplicity.
They didn't say her name aloud, but they whispered it under their breath.
Everly, the girl who didn't break.
Spirit walked alone beneath the thinning canopy. She moved like mist, quiet and reverent. Like the forest opened for her. Near the edge of Ironfang's southern border, she stopped.
Another figure waited in the shadows.
Cloaked, silent, unbothered by the chill.
Their face was hidden, but their presence felt… different.
Older. Wilder. Not wolf. Not human. Something in between.
Spirit didn't speak right away.
She only looked.
After a moment, the figure nodded once and Spirit returned the nod. "It's nearly time," she murmured.
The wind stirred the leaves. Somewhere far behind them, a tether throbbed.
Not broken.
Not whole.
But waking.