Aria's pov

Sleep didn’t come easily, not with the weight of exams, endless shifts at the restaurant, and that unshakable hollow ache I couldn’t name pressing down on me. When it finally dragged me under, it wasn’t the sweet, dreamless kind.

It began with silver.

Moonlight bled into everything: trees, mist, even the air itself. And me. Except… I wasn’t me. Not exactly. My hands weren’t hands anymore; they were paws. Broad, strong, furred. Every step I took pressed into the damp earth like I belonged to it. The scents overwhelmed me pine, soil, the metallic tang of blood I hadn’t tasted but somehow knew. The rhythm of the world beat in time with my pulse. I was a wolf.

The thought should’ve terrified me. Instead, it felt… natural. Right, in a way nothing else ever had.

Then I saw a woman.

She sat by a stream, her form glowing brighter than the moon itself. His face was shadowy, blurred and unreachable, but his presence pulled me closer. I wanted to cross him. My chest ached with recognition, though I didn’t know why.

I tried to step forward, but the water between us hardened into glass. My claws scraped uselessly across it. The harder I fought, the more her shape blurred, like smoke on the wind. Yet I felt her looking at me. Not just at me.

“you will make a sacrifice for both worlds ” a voice whispered.

I froze. My ears twitched. She hadn’t moved her lips, but I’d heard her as clearly as if she had.

The dream shifted without warning.

I stood now in a circle of women cloaked in midnight robes, their voices weaving strange, sharp words that seared themselves into my bones. Magic crackled, alive, sparking across my skin. My body was my own again, no wolf, but power buzzed in my fingertips. It scared me and yet part of me leaned into it, like it was waiting for me all along.

The witches raised their hands higher, their chant swelling.

You are more. You are threefold. Blood, magic, and moon. The tribrid.

The word slammed into me. Tribrid. My breath caught. “No,” I whispered, backing away, though the ground seemed to tilt beneath me. “That’s not me. That can’t be me.”

The circle dissolved, the women gone as if they’d never existed.

I was back at the stream again, staring down at the surface. But the reflection that looked up at me wasn’t mine. It was the wolf. Golden eyes burned into me. Its lips curled back, teeth sharp and feral, though I felt no snarl inside me.

And then a new voice rose from the depths of the water, ancient and cold.

You cannot run from what you are.

The wolf lunged

I jolted awake with a gasp, tangled in damp sheets, my skin slick with sweat. My chest heaved, every breath shallow and sharp. My hands trembled as I pressed them over my face.

Just a dream.

Just a nightmare.

That’s all.

But the words rang hollow. I remembered every detail too vividly the man by the stream, the witches, that voice. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like a message.

I forced myself up, shoved the panic aside. Shower. Scrubs. Bag packed. Pretend everything was normal. That’s what I’d always been good at pretending.

By the time I crossed the campus quad, the sun was shining, students were laughing, life was… ordinary. At least it should have been.

Halfway across, the world wavered. Shadows beneath the trees bent strangely, like they were alive, bowing toward me. My throat tightened.

I shook my head hard. I’m tired, that’s all. I’m tired and imagining things.

But then my hands started to burn. Not like heat, but like something crawling inside my bones, pushing to the surface. I looked down and my stomach dropped.

My nails weren’t nails anymore. They’d lengthened, curved, sharp as claws.

A surge of horror shot through me. No. No, this wasn’t happening. I fumbled for my phone, desperate for proof that I was still me.

The screen lit up with my reflection and I nearly screamed.

My eyes glowed. Gold. Not hazel. Not human. Wolf eyes stared back at me, fierce and alien. For one terrifying heartbeat, I didn’t recognize the girl in the glass.

I blinked, hard. Once. Twice.

The glow was gone. My nails were normal. Just my tired, shaky hands holding my phone.

But the echo lingered the burn in my fingertips, the afterimage of that golden glare.

“You cannot run from what you are,” the voice whispered again in my memory, like it had followed me out of the dream.

The phone slipped from my grip, clattering onto the pavement. My knees felt weak. I wrapped my arms around myself, trembling, staring down at hands that no longer felt like they belonged to me.

This wasn’t just a dream.

Something inside me was breaking open, bleeding into the real world.

And I couldn’t stop it.