The Fifth Howl

Chapter 5 Lyra

The runes didn't just flare.

They sang.

For five hundred years, the Observatory Tower had been dead stone. Professors brought First-Years here to show them what dead wards looked like - ancient carvings that no amount of Alpha blood could light up anymore.

Now every single line on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, was burning violet. Not Kade's black-purple, not Jaxon's fire-purple. A deeper, older violet. The color of the sky right before a god is born.

They remember me.

Lyra's voice in my head wasn't a scratch anymore. It was clear. It was a woman's voice, tired and amused and so, so old.

Elder Margot stumbled back, clutching her chest. "Moon Goddess..."

Thorne dropped to one knee. Actually dropped. A Council Elder, a hundred and twenty years old, kneeling. Not to me. To the light.

Only Darius stayed standing. His face was no longer fatherly. It was stone.

"Enough parlor tricks," he snarled, and lunged.

He didn't lunge for me. He lunged for Silas, who was closest. His hand, already shifting, claws out, aimed at Silas's throat.

He never made it.

Kade's shadows hit him mid-air and slammed him into the far wall. The entire Tower shook. Books fell.

"Don't touch him," Kade growled, and his voice wasn't his own. It was layered with something else. Something that lived in shadows.

Darius slid down the wall, blood on his lip. He looked up, shocked. No one had ever hit Alpha Darius Vane and lived. Kade was nineteen.

"You... you dare..."

"Father," Seraphina whimpered from the doorway, finally scared for real.

Jaxon moved between me and the Enforcers, fire crawling up his arms, but it wasn't orange anymore. It was violet at the tips. My violet.

"Anyone who wants her goes through us," he said, grinning like a madman.

"Enough!" Thorne roared, and the force of his Alpha voice made the windows c***k. Even Kade flinched. "All of you, enough! Vane, get off my floor. Nocturne, release him."

Kade's shadows pulled back reluctantly. Darius stood, wiping his mouth, never taking his eyes off me.

Thorne turned to me. He was still on one knee. "Child... if you are what I think you are... you must tell us. What do you remember?"

What do I remember? I remember being called blank. I remember scrubbing floors while Seraphina got tutored in how to be Luna.

But Lyra... she remembered more.

At Thorne's question, she pushed forward. Not taking over. Offering.

Let me show them, little light. Let me show our pieces.

I closed my eyes.

And I remembered things I never lived.

I remembered being made. Not born. Made. Hands of moonlight pulling star-stuff together and breathing.

I remembered running through a world where there were no Packs, only forests, and wolves were as big as houses.

I remembered four wolves I loved like my own paws. Shadow, who hid me when I was scared. Fire, who kept me warm. Mind, who sang me stories. Soul, who never left my side even in death.

I remembered men in black robes. A priest with a knife made of fallen moon. He said a god was too much power for one body. He said power should be divided, owned.

I remembered pain. Being torn into five. Four pieces ripped away, screaming. The core - me - left to die in a hollow, bleeding light.

I gasped and my eyes flew open. Tears were running down my face, but they were hot, glowing.

"They killed me," I whispered, but it was Lyra speaking through me now, her voice making the Tower hum. "Your ancestors killed me because they could not control me. They split my soul into four Alphas so they could breed an army. And you took my heart and told it to clean boots."

Seraphina made a choked noise and fainted. No one caught her.

Darius's mask finally broke. "You were supposed to be dead! The vessel was supposed to be empty! A blank to carry the scent and die at twenty!"

"The vessel was never empty," Rhys said quietly, his eyes full of horror and awe. "Gods don't die. They wait."

Silas stepped forward, right into the circle of violet runes, and knelt in front of me. He took my clawed hands in his pale ones. The touch didn't show me his death this time. It showed me his life. Lonely observatory. No one touching him. Until me.

"Lyra," he whispered, and it was a prayer.

And I - Elara, who had been invisible - finally answered to my real name for the first time in five hundred years.

"Yes," I said, and the Tower sang louder.

The two Enforcers, who had been standing frozen, slowly, deliberately, took their hands off their silver collars and knelt too.

Outside, across the entire Academy, every wolf howled. Not in fear.

In welcome.

Elder Margot was crying. "The Fifth has returned. The prophecy-"

Thorne stood, his old eyes wet. "Aeternum Academy is no longer safe for you, child. If the Council in the capital hears-"

"They already have," Kade said, looking out the window. His face was grim.

Far in the distance, over the mountains, the sky was turning black. Not night black. Smoke black.

Beacon fires. The capital's beacon fires. They were lit.

War beacons.

Darius laughed then, a terrible, broken laugh from where he was still slumped against the wall.

"You think this is a happy ending, little blank? You think they'll let you live? You just declared yourself a god in a world that killed its god once and liked it. They will come for you. All of them."

Jaxon pulled me behind him, fire roaring.

"Let them come," he growled.

Lyra purred in my head, satisfied.

Yes. Let them come. I am hungry.