Everything happened at once. The wolf in Fiona's mind roared, a sound that shook her
to her bones. The invisible barrier that had held back for eighteen years shattered like
glass. And power—raw, ancient, overwhelming power—exploded through her body.
Fiona's scream became a howl.
Her bones cracked and reformed. Her skin rippled and sprouted fur. The world tilted and
shifted, colors bleeding into new spectrums, scents blooming into complex symphonies.
She fell forward onto hands that became paws, felt her spine elongate, her muscles
bunch and strengthen. Her red hair seemed to ignite as it transformed, becoming
something else entirely.
The shift took seconds. It felt like eternity.
When it was over, Fiona stood on four legs for the first time in her life. And she was
magnificent.
Her fur gleamed silver in the dying light—not gray, not white, but true silver, like
moonlight given form, like starlight made solid. She was huge, larger than any wolf she'd
ever seen, with paws the size of dinner plates and fangs that felt like daggers in her
mouth. Power thrummed through her veins like electricity, like starlight, like something
divine and terrible and utterly unstoppable.
The rogues had frozen, their eyes wide with shock and sudden, primal fear.
"Silver," the woman whispered. "She's a silver wolf. That's impossible—"
Fiona didn't give her time to finish.
She moved with speed that shouldn't have been possible, crossing the distance
between them in a single bound. Her jaws closed around the lead rogue's throat, and
she felt something surge through her—not just strength, but power, ancient and
absolute. The rogue didn't even have time to scream. He simply... dissolved. Turned to
shadow and ash, leaving nothing behind but a dark stain on the grass, a silhouette
burned into the earth as if by lightning. The young rogue tried to run. Fiona's claws caught him mid-stride, and the same terrible power poured through her. He crumbled like paper in fire, reduced to nothing but a shadow burned into the ground, his form preserved in negative space.
The woman shifted, her wolf bursting forth in a desperate bid for survival. But Fiona was
faster, stronger, more. She caught the rogue wolf mid-leap, and the power sang through
her like a hymn, like a prayer, like the voice of something vast and ancient and utterly
merciless.
When it was over, three shadows lay on the grass where the rogues had been. Nothing
else remained. No bodies. No blood. No bones. Just the dark impressions of where
they'd fallen, like photographs burned into the ground by some terrible light.
Fiona stood over them, her sides heaving, her silver fur gleaming in the twilight. The
wolf in her mind—no, the wolf that was her mind now—felt satisfied. Complete. Whole in
a way she'd never been before.
And terrified. What had she done? What was she?