The moment my wolf responded, I understood it had never truly been gone… only taken.
The reaction did not explode through me, and it did not overwhelm my control, but it rose with a quiet force that felt older than the system, older than everything I had become. It was not something new. It was something returning.
My chest tightened sharply as the bond pulsed again, stronger this time, and the connection between me and Kael shifted into something deeper, something instinctive, something that did not need structure to exist.
“You feel it,” the presence beside me said. “Yes,” I replied. The word came softer now. Because this was not something I could analyze. It was something I knew.
The system had never created this. It had suppressed it. Hidden it. Removed access to it. But it had not
