The Fifth Howl

Chapter 2 Four Alpha's One Scent

The howl in my head was so loud my teeth rattled.

It wasn't a sound. It was a feeling. Like my spine was being pulled straight for the first time in my life. Like something that had been sleeping curled around my ribs finally stood up and bared its teeth.

Ours. OURS. MINE.

No one else in the courtyard seemed to hear it. They just saw four Alphas staring at a bleeding wolfless girl.

Which, apparently, was more interesting than any fight in The Pit.

Kade Nocturne's grey eyes hadn't left my knees. His shadows were acting wrong. They usually clung to him like a second cloak, pooling at his feet even in broad daylight. Now they were pulling away from me. Recoiling.

"What did you do?" he said to me. His voice was low, furious, like I'd insulted him personally.

"I... I fell," I stammered. My voice sounded pathetic even to me.

Seraphina laughed, too loud. "Oh, Kade, ignore her! She's just-"

"Did I talk to you?" Kade didn't even look at her. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Seraphina went white.

Jaxon Wilder pushed past him. He was closer now, and I could smell him - which was impossible, because Alphas only let their scent out when they wanted to. Smoke and burnt cinnamon. His amber eyes were glowing. Not the normal flicker you get when a wolf is close to the surface. Full glow.

He crouched in front of me. Right there in the mud. His uniform pants getting dirty. The crowd gasped.

"You smell like a storm," he whispered, just for me. "Yesterday you smelled like nothing. Like empty air. Now you smell like... like after lightning hits a forest."

I flinched. "I don't have a scent. I'm wolfless."

His grin turned feral. "Yeah? Then why is my wolf going f*****g crazy?"

Behind him, Rhys Sterling made a sharp, pained noise. He pressed two fingers to his temple, his perfect blond hair falling into his eyes. He looked... shaken. Rhys Sterling never looked shaken.

"Stop it," he snapped at me.

"Stop what?"

"Stop blocking me! I've been able to hear every pathetic thought in this courtyard since I was fourteen, but you-" His blue eyes locked on mine, and for a second his charm cracked completely. "Your head is silent. It's been silent for a month, and now it's screaming."

Silent? I'd been praying for my head to be silent. That scratching, that voice-

He can't have us. We are not his to read.

The voice answered. Not me. Her.

Silas Crowe hadn't said a word. He stood a little apart from the other three, his silver hair catching the purple lantern light. Everyone gave him space without being told. People were scared to even accidentally brush him in the hallway, because Silas Crowe's touch showed you how you were going to die.

His silver eyes were fixed on my bleeding knees. On the blood dripping down my shins onto the white stones.

He moved.

"Silas, don't-" Kade started.

Silas didn't listen. He knelt. Slowly. Gracefully. Like the rest of the world was moving too fast for him.

He reached out his hand. Pale, long fingers. No gloves. He never wore gloves.

The crowd actually held its breath.

He touched my blood.

Not my skin. My blood. His fingertip brushed the smear of red on my knee.

The second his skin touched my blood, the world stopped.

It wasn't an explosion like I thought it would be. It was silence. Total, absolute silence, like someone had muted the entire universe.

Then light.

Violet light, so bright it was white at the edges, erupted from where his finger touched me. It shot up his arm, up my leg, connecting us like a vein of lightning. The stone under us cracked.

I screamed. Not because it hurt. Because for the first time in nineteen years, I felt my bones move.

Not break. Shift.

My spine popped. My nails lengthened. Black claws, not human nails, punched through my fingertips. My canines dropped, sharp enough to cut my lip. My eyes - I knew without a mirror - were bleeding violet.

Silas gasped. His eyes, which had been solid silver since he was three days old, flooded with color for a split second. Violet. My violet.

And I saw what he saw.

I saw him dying. Old. Much older. In a temple made of black glass. With my head in his lap, his hands covered in my blood, while three other men howled.

Then it snapped.

The light exploded outward, throwing Silas back ten feet, throwing Kade and Jaxon back, throwing the entire front row of students to the ground.

I was left kneeling in a circle of scorched stone. My knees weren't bleeding anymore. The wounds were closed, leaving only faint silver scars.

And rising from my shoulders, translucent but undeniable, was the outline of a wolf.

Not a normal wolf. Bigger. Whiter than bone. With eyes that were galaxies. And with four tails made of shadow, fire, light, and mist.

The entire courtyard heard it this time. Not in their heads. In their ears.

A howl that made every single wolf, Alpha or Beta or Omega, drop to their knees.

Even the Quads.

Kade was on one knee, his head bowed, his shadows kneeling with him.

Jaxon's fire had gone out.

Rhys was staring at me like he'd finally solved an equation that had haunted him his whole life.

Silas, on the ground where he'd landed, was smiling. Actually smiling.

"Lyra," he whispered, and his voice broke. "You found us."

Seraphina's scream cut through the silence.

"WHAT IS THAT THING?! WHAT DID YOU DO, YOU FREAK?!"

But no one was looking at her anymore.

Everyone was looking at me. The wolfless girl. The blank. The pet.

Who had just made four Alphas bow.