The scent of burning silver filled the air.
Aria screamed, her body arching off the cold stone floor as the magic within her surged again—angry, wild, and awake. The silver shackles on her wrists hissed and smoked as heat radiated from her skin, pulsing with runes that hadn't been there before.
From the corridor, she could hear them coming.
> Footsteps.
Doors creaking.
Her stepmother's voice like poison on the wind.
"Keep her drugged! If the spell breaks, she'll destroy us all!"
Spell.
That one word shattered something inside Aria. The chains weren't just physical. For years, her stepmother had silenced her wolf, dampened her magic, weakened her blood—with a spell that now cracked and peeled away like dried skin.
Her fury was no longer quiet. It screamed.
The wolf inside her snarled.
> Fight.
The magic inside her hissed.
> Burn.
The vampire blood within her purred.
> Drink... revenge.
Her eyes snapped open—no longer brown, but glowing green-gold, ringed with red.
She stood.
The chains broke with a metallic shriek, exploding into ash. The stone floor beneath her feet splintered in a spiderweb of cracks. Aria raised her palm—and fire bloomed from her fingertips, raw and untamed.
The door flew open.
Three guards rushed in—snarling wolves, teeth bared.
Aria didn't hesitate.
Her hand slashed through the air and a wall of flame erupted, crashing into them like a living beast. They howled, rolling across the floor, scrambling to retreat. She didn't kill them—but they would remember her now.
> Let them fear me, she thought, and it felt right.
---
She ran through the tunnels, guided by instinct.
Every step burned. Her body ached with power she hadn't learned to control. Doors burst open as she passed. Shadows writhed along the walls. Her magic reacted to her thoughts—fire, wind, a shimmer of illusion—all breaking loose.
She was no longer the weak, wolfless servant-girl of Blackthorn Pack.
She was a storm in human skin.
Aria reached the underground stairwell just as another figure appeared at the top—tall, graceful, glowing like the moon.
Lucien.
He took one look at her and froze.
His eyes widened, flicking from the smoke curling off her hands to the magic crackling in the air around her.
"Aria," he whispered. "What have you done?"
She didn't answer—just collapsed into his arms, her energy finally giving out.
Behind them, the building trembled. Another explosion echoed from the corridor below. The spell was broken. Her bloodline remembered. And now the whole pack would know.
Lucien lifted her effortlessly, holding her like something precious.
> "She's awake," he murmured to himself, a strange mix of awe and hunger in his voice.
"Don't touch her."
Ronan's voice came from the shadows.
He stepped into view, eyes full of fire and fury, a wolf barely holding himself back.
"She belongs to both of us."
Lucien smirked. "I was just borrowing her."
Aria, barely conscious, whispered one word before blacking out.
> "Home…"