ASHES OF HER SILENCE

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pain ripped through me like my whole body was being rebuilt from the inside.

I couldn't scream. My throat wasn't shaped right for it anymore. All I could do was drop to my knees on the marble floor while five hundred wolves watched me turn into something none of them had ever seen.

My hands weren't hands. Golden fur pushed through my skin so fast it burned. My spine cracked and stretched, and somewhere in the middle of all that pain I heard Damian shout something, but I couldn't understand the words. Everything sounded far away, like I was underwater.

Then it stopped.

I stood up on four legs instead of two.

The hall was dead silent. Even the wolves who had been laughing at me a minute ago weren't laughing now. They were pressed against the walls, some of them shifting halfway into their own wolf forms out of pure fear, like their bodies wanted to run before their minds caught up.

I looked down at myself. My coat was gold, not the usual brown or grey or black I'd seen on every wolf in this kingdom my whole life. Gold like sunlight. My paws were bigger than a normal wolf's paws should be. I could feel muscle under my fur that had no business being there, not on someone who'd been called weak her entire life.

Damian took a step toward me. Just one step.

I let out a growl that didn't even sound like it came from me. It came from somewhere deeper, somewhere old, and it was loud enough that he actually stopped moving.

"Elena." He said my name like a question, like he wasn't sure it was still me in there.

I wasn't sure either.

Selene grabbed his arm. "Get back," she hissed. "Nobody knows what that thing is."

That thing. Twenty minutes ago I was his mate. Now I was a thing.

Something in me wanted to laugh, except wolves don't laugh, not in this body. All I could do was stand there shaking while my new instincts screamed at me to run, hide, get away from every single person in that hall who used to call themselves my pack.

So I did.

I turned and I ran.

I heard shouting behind me, guards yelling orders, Damian's voice cutting through all of it, but none of them could catch me. Not like this. My legs moved faster than anything I'd ever felt, faster than I even knew was possible, and within seconds I was through the hall doors and out into the cold night air, running through the palace gardens with the moon lighting up my new golden fur.

I didn't stop until the palace was far behind me and the only sound left was my own breathing and my paws hitting the dirt.

I collapsed at the edge of the forest, shifting back into my human body without even meaning to, like my wolf had decided I'd run far enough. I lay there in the grass, naked and shaking and completely alone, staring up at the same moon that had been shining down on my rejection ceremony less than an hour ago.

My whole life I thought I understood what my grandmother meant by keeping our bloodline hidden. I thought it meant staying quiet, not standing out, not drawing attention. I never once thought it meant this.

I pressed my hands against my face and finally let myself cry, not because I lost Damian, but because I had no idea what I'd just become or what it meant for the rest of my life.

That's when I heard footsteps behind me.

I froze.

Nobody should have been able to track me that fast. I ran for miles. Whoever this was, they weren't a normal wolf, and they definitely weren't from Damian's pack, because I would have smelled them coming from the palace.

"You can stop hiding," a man's voice said. Calm. Almost amused. "I already know what you are."

I turned around slowly, pulling my knees up to cover myself, my whole body still trembling from the shift.

A man stood at the edge of the trees, wearing all black, watching me with eyes that glowed faintly gold in the moonlight. The same gold my fur had been minutes ago.

"That's not possible," I whispered. "There's no one else like me. My grandmother said I was the last."

He smiled, but it wasn't a friendly smile. It was the smile of someone who had been waiting a very long time for this exact moment.

"Your grandmother lied to you," he said. "There's an entire bloodline of us. And you, little Luna, just told every wolf kingdom on this continent that you're still alive."

Behind him, more shapes stepped out of the trees. Not wolves. Something else, something with the same golden eyes, watching me the way you'd watch something you'd been hunting for years and finally caught.

I tried to stand and run again, but my legs gave out from exhaustion.

The man crouched down in front of me, tilting his head like he was studying something rare and valuable.

"Don't worry," he said softly. "We're not here to hurt you."

Then his smile changed into something colder.

"We're here to take you home."