Each moonrise brought horror.
Aiden's transformations were no longer rare, nor driven solely by the full moon. Emotion, fear, even hunger sometimes triggered the change. The beast clawed closer to the surface each day. He'd wake in blood-drenched shirts with claw marks down his arms, or deep in the forest with the taste of raw meat in his mouth and no memory of how he got there. He was becoming something unrecognizable.
He hurt someone—he couldn't be sure who. Just a flash of frightened eyes and a scream echoing in the night before blackness took over. That was the night he ran.
He left Glenhollow without a word, no note, no farewell. He couldn't bear to see fear in his sister's eyes. Couldn't risk another mistake. He ran through moonlit fields, into the hills, through rivers, over stone and sand, until his breath burned in his chest and the beast inside fell quiet.
The wilds welcomed him with silence.
---
For weeks, Aiden wandered. His clothes tore. His boots wore down. He hunted with bare hands, slept beneath thorn-branched trees, and feared the moon. He began to forget how to speak. When he looked in pools of water, his reflection startled him—eyes rimmed in gold, hair wild, jaw sharper. The human in him was slipping.
He might have become a wild thing, forever lost in fang and fur, if not for the firelight he saw one night flickering atop a canyon ridge.
He approached it warily, crawling on all fours, nostrils flaring. There were voices. Laughter. And the scent—familiar yet strange.
Like him.
They knew he was coming.
"Easy, pup," came a low growl.
Four of them circled the fire: a tall, weathered man with a silver-streaked beard; a woman with a tattooed scalp and eyes like sapphires; a boy no older than fifteen sharpening a blade; and a red-haired woman who seemed more shadow than flesh.
"You gonna attack or sit down?" she asked.
Aiden collapsed.
---
They called themselves the Broken Fang. Not a pack in the traditional sense—no alpha, no hierarchy. They were outcasts, wanderers, exiles. Most had been abandoned by their clans, others had survived hunts or betrayed laws of old. But all had the same fire behind their eyes. The same pain.
They fed Aiden. Spoke little. Watched him. The red-haired woman, Kael, later told him it was a test. If he'd turned on them, they would've put him down.
Instead, he stayed. And they taught him.
From Rowan, the silver-bearded man, he learned focus. "The beast is not your enemy," Rowan said one morning as they sparred. "It's your instinct. Let it guide your body. Not your mind."
From Kael, he learned rituals—ways to balance moon energy, control his breath, steady his thoughts during a shift. She carved runes on his palms. He didn't ask what they meant. They helped.
From Lessa, the tattooed woman, he learned pain. She beat him in combat every day until he stopped fighting like a man and started fighting like a wolf.
"Out here, you bleed or you bite," she said. "We're not noble. We're surviving."
And from Toren, the boy, he learned laughter again.
"You scream like a squirrel when you change," Toren said once.
Aiden barked a laugh. "And you smell like wet fur."
The others stared.
Then Kael smirked. "He's one of us now."
---
But peace in the Broken Fang never lasted.
Aiden's transformations grew smoother, more fluid. He could now half-shift at will, summon claws, enhance his senses, even delay the full moon's pull. For the first time, he felt in control.
And with control came dreams.
Not his own. But ancestral. Wolves running across fields of fire. A great white tree split down the middle. A red star falling.
He told Kael.
"You're Moonborn," she said, quiet. "I wondered."
"What does that mean?"
"You're not just cursed. You're chosen."
She pulled out an old hide map—drawn in runes he barely understood. She pointed north.
"Something stirs. A shadow older than kings. We've felt it too. But we're just survivors. You? You might be a weapon."
That night, Rowan brought out a ring etched with the symbol of the Silver Circle—the ancient order Mira had told him about.
"We once protected the balance," Rowan said, his voice heavy with memory. "Before we fell apart. You may be the key to rebuilding that purpose."
"But I don't want to lead," Aiden said.
"No leader ever does," Lessa replied. "But the world doesn't care what we want."
---
The next full moon, they ran together. Five wolves through silver-lit canyons, howling not with hunger—but unity.
Aiden felt the beast in him, no longer snarling in rage, but singing.
He was no longer alone.
He was no longer packless.
But in the wind, he heard something else.
A distant cry.
A warning.
The North awaited.