Elara’s labor began at dawn.
Not with warning.
Not with ceremony.
With a scream that tore through stone.
The dungeon shook with it—raw, animal, wrong. Guards stumbled back from the cell doors as the scent hit them all at once: blood, corruption, sulfur threaded through something that should have been life and wasn’t.
The healer froze the moment she crossed the threshold.
“This isn’t right,” she whispered.
Elara lay twisted on the floor, fingers clawing at the stone, eyes wild and unfocused. Her stomach convulsed unnaturally, skin stretching in ways that made even seasoned wolves recoil.
“Get it out of me!” Elara shrieked. “It’s burning—gods, it’s burning!”
The Alpha guards exchanged looks of horror.
Then the child came.
And the world broke.
It was not a wolf.
It was not human.
