Birthright

Chapter 25 - transition - Jackson PoV

The ridge was steep, slick with moss and shadows, but the moment we reached the clearing I felt it, the portal humming, alive again.

Waiting for us.

Shimmering blue light rippled in an oval between two twisted trees, the same place we first arrived. The air around it crackled like static, tugging at every part of me.

Lex bent forward, hands on knees, panting. “Thank the goddess… I thought that climb might kill me before Lucian could.”

I didn’t laugh.

Couldn’t.

My neck had begun to throb again, just faintly, like a heartbeat under my skin. But I forced myself to breathe through it.

“We go on three,” I said.

Lex nodded.

“One—

Two—

Three.”

We stepped through.

Light swallowed the forest, wrenching us forward, twisting our bodies as if we were being yanked through the eye of a storm. My heart slammed against my ribs, air ripped from my lungs.

And then everything stopped.

We landed hard on stone. My vision blurred, then cleared. Torches burned along the walls. Protective runes glowed faintly.

We were home.

And standing in front of us, eyes wide was Aunt Theo, with half a circle of elders behind her.

“Oh thank the goddess” Theo breathed, rushing forward. Her hands cupped my face before I could react. “Jackson Thorne, you scared the life out of us, we’ve had that portal open for 35minutes, I didn’t think you’d make it.”

Lex grinned weakly. “Good to see you too, Theo.” Then I saw him flinch. I could see the elders starting to cower away from us.

Theo turns to face me with a shock expression on her face.

“Jackson..your aura” Her voice trembled. “It’s shifting.”

Before I could ask what she meant, heat exploded beneath my skin.

I staggered, grabbing onto a stone wall. My veins burned like molten metal. My heart hammered faster too fast. My breath hitched.

Theo gasped. “It’s starting.”

“What’s starting?” Lex demanded, stepping toward me. I could see my aura was causing him discomfort.

The elders murmured among themselves, their expressions shifting from awe to fear.

Theo placed a steadying hand on my chest.

“Your eighteenth year begins tonight, Jackson. The moment the moon was at its highest, you crossed into it.”

My vision flickered blue, gold, red like lightning trapped behind my eyes.

The throbbing started in my chest, pulseing its way to my head, but this time it wasn’t pain.

It was power.

Rising.

Awakening.

My Lycan growled inside me no longer frantic, but bracing himself, for the vampire in me be to be released. I could physically feel my Lycan growing in power, I felt as if my head was splitting into two.. no three places at once.

Theo’s voice lowered to a whisper.

“Your vampire transition has begun.”

My muscles tightened. My teeth ached. Something under my skin cracked like bones preparing to reshape.

“Jac?” Lex’s voice sounded distant.

“You okay?”

But I wasn’t okay.

I was burning alive from the inside out. My mind splitting and reshaping.

Theo steadied me, her fingers trembling. “We need to get him to my place, I have potions. Now. If we don’t guide it, his power will tear him apart.”

Lex runs to the wooden doors and shouts to someone behind the door “go to Theo’s and get her potions now”

I forced myself to meet Aunt Theo’s eyes, vision shaking.

“Aunt Theo” My voice came out rough, distorted.

“I need to finish this. I need to be strong enough..to go back for her.”

Theo paused. Her eyes softened.

“For who, child?”

Ephy’s name nearly tore itself from my throat.

But before I could speak a violent surge of power ripped through me, buckling my knees.

Theo gasped.

Lex lunged to catch me.

The elders scattered to form a circle.

Casey the female Delta came running in with a box full of potions.

And deep inside me my lycan roared as something ancient, something vampiric, something mine finally woke.

The world tilted sideways.

My legs buckled, and before Lex could grab me, a crack tore through my spine loud, violent, wrong. I hit the stone floor on my hands, breath ripping out of me in a raw snarl.

“Jackson!” Lex shouted, dropping beside me.

But I couldn’t answer.

Couldn’t think.

Couldn’t even breathe properly.

Aunt Theo grabs hold of my chin and pours a liquid down my throat, leaving a bitter taste behind.

The heat under my skin burst outward, fire racing through my veins, searing everything in its path.

My bones shifted.

Not the way they had a thousand times when I transformed before.

This was deeper ancient like something was tearing me apart just to rebuild me.

“Hold him! We are too late, the potion will not help” Theo yelled to the elders.

My shoulders snapped back with a sickening crack. My fingers bent, elongated, nails sharpening into obsidian claws. My spine arched, vertebrae reshaping, growing, stacking upon each other until I felt twice as tall maybe 10ft at least.

Fur erupted across my skin dense, coarse, blacker than night, blacker than shadow.

Fur so dark it swallowed the torchlight around me, it was not my usual grey colour. What was happening to me?

Lex stumbled backward, eyes wide. “Holy..Jac… Jac, your Lycan”

Another crack my jaw elongating, reshaping into something monstrous. But where my old canines should’ve been, new teeth pushed through longer, sharper, forged for tearing flesh.

Fangs.

Vampiric.

Wrong and right at the same time.

My muscles bulged, tearing my shirt apart as they doubled then tripled layer upon layer of raw power. My chest broadened. My limbs grew thick with strength I’d never tasted before.

I roared.

Not a howl.

Not a Lycan’s battle cry.

Something else.

Something that vibrated the stone under us.

Something that made the elders flinch and clutch their wards tighter.

Theo stepped forward despite the shaking ground.

“Oh, goddess mercy…” she whispered.

“He isn’t shifting. He’s transforming.”

My vision snapped into clarity too much clarity.

I saw the heartbeat in Lex’s throat.

I saw the magic pulsing in Theo’s veins.

I saw every shimmer of dust in the air.

But the worst part

the most terrifying part

was my eyes.

I could feel them burning.

Not yellow like wolves.

Not amber like Lycans.

Not even the glowing violet that marked every shifter in my bloodline at their full potential.

Crimson. Deeper red than vampires.

A pure, vibrant, merciless red.

The room gasped as one.

“He’s not Lycan anymore…” an elder whispered.

“He’s something else.”

My Lycan my once familiar companion wasn’t just present.

He was towering. Powerful.

Unrecognizable.

A creature of night and moon and hunger seamlessly woven into one.

I slammed my claws into the floor, panting, the beast inside me both raging and electric with new strength.

Theo swallowed hard.

“Jackson Thorne has awakened the hybrid. The legend.”

Her eyes widened.

“The first of his kind.”

I roared again this time not in pain.

In power.

And somewhere beneath all of it beneath the fury, the vampiric hunger, the Lycan strength something whispered in my blood.

A name.

Ephy.

And my pulse hammered in answer, she was my mate, I could feel it.

The hybrid in me was raging, anger burning my veins. I was losing control to the beast inside.