“Deep breaths,” I repeated to myself for the hundredth time. Maybe distracting myself would help. I knelt down, picking up the armor, feeling the rough floor scrape my knees as I tried to smear grit over the metal as I felt an impending sense of doom I couldn’t explain.

I grabbed the grit container and smeared powder across the dented steel. My hands shook so violently the paste spilled onto the ground. It was useless. Nothing could distract me from the terror rising inside me.

“Is this it?” My whisper cracked. “Is the Moon Goddess finally answering my prayers? Is this… my death?”

The thought should have been comforting, I’d wished for it enough times. But staring at my quaking fingers, at the sweat beading down my arms, horror gripped me tighter than hope ever had.

“Moon Goddess, I take it back,” I gasped, pressing a hand over my mouth as if to hold the words in. “I don’t want to die. Not like this. Call me a coward, call me pathetic, but I still have dreams. I want to find my mate. I want a family. I want…” My voice broke. “I want to see my wolf.”

The buzzing in my ears grew louder, until I thought blood might pour out. My vision spun, armor glinting like shards of lightning all around me. I stumbled to my feet, heart pounding. I had to move. I had to get help.

Lucy.

Her name instantly struck me. She always knew what to do, ever since I was a child. When Father raised his hand against me, it was Lucy who pulled me into her arms and whispered, “You’re mine to guard.” When Nicole locked me out in the storm, it was Lucy’s lantern light I followed through the trees. She had saved me more times than I could count.

I pressed a fist to my chest. She will save me again. But then Father’s voice sliced through my memory. “Don’t leave this house. Not unless you want the world to crumble worse than it already has.”

And hadn’t he been right? Everywhere I went, disaster followed.

Flowers wilted if I touched them. Soil turned barren after I walked across it. When I was six, I reached for Sasha’s hand while she played in the garden. She collapsed, struck with wolfpox so severe she nearly died. She screamed when she woke, clutching at her skin as if my very touch had burned her. From then on, she never came near me again.

I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing away the memory of her pale face, the fear in her voice when she whispered monster.

“Damn it,” I hissed. I couldn’t think about that now. If I stayed, I would collapse. Lucy was my only hope.

I shoved the door open and staggered outside.

The sun had bled completely from the sky. Shadows crawled between the trees, the moonlight was thin and cold. Lucy’s cottage wasn’t far, just beyond the pack’s border, but tonight the path felt endless. My breath came ragged, every step I took made my chest seize tighter.

A rustle stopped me cold.

I froze in place, straining to listen. Five long seconds passed, broken only by the cry of an owl. I forced myself forward. Probably just a rabbit. Probably nothing.

Until I heard another shuffle. Goosebumps prickled across my arms. My heart thrashed wildly, and my eyes widened at the sight of a tall silhouette shifting in the dark. Man-shaped. Watching me.

Panic took over. I screamed, piercing the silence, and bolted through the forest. Branches whipped against my arms. My feet pounded the earth in a rhythm that screamed run, run, run. But another set of footsteps thundered behind me.

“No—” I gasped, but before I could beg the Goddess for mercy, something slammed me to the ground.

I thrashed wildly, clawing, kicking, every muscle burning. “Leave me! Please, I don’t have anything you want!”

I blinked back my tears, feeling my anger simmering upon hearing the familiar laughter teasing me.

“What the hell—Luciano?”

He bent over, grinning like the devil himself, clutching his stomach. “You should have seen your face.”

I shoved at him with all the fury my trembling arms could muster. “That is not funny.”

“Admit it.” He flicked my forehead. “You’re nothing but a scaredy-cat.”

“Scared?” I scoffed, glaring. “Of you? I beg to differ. Not even on my deathbed.”

“But that’s not what you said when you were begging me to let you go.” His smirk glowed even in the dark.

Bastard. Immediately I got on my feet, I turned my back on him and stormed forward.

“Hey,” he called, still laughing. “What are you even doing out here? It’s not safe.”

“I don’t need your opinion.”

Luciano was a rogue—son of the rogue king, heir to a kingdom of wolves who bowed to no Alpha. I’d met him on one of my forbidden escapes, and against all odds, he’d become a friend. He never flinched at my curse. Never called me monster.

But I wasn’t in the mood for his taunts tonight.

“I’m going to see Lucy.” My tone was sharp enough to send him the message.

“Then let me—”

“I want to be alone,” I snapped, sprinting deeper into the forest before he could finish his sentence.

My lungs screamed for air. By the time I stopped, my legs gave out, and I collapsed onto my knees, dirt caking my palms. The wind rose suddenly, fierce and wild. It howled around me like a living thing, carrying voices I couldn’t understand.

I clapped my hands over my ears. “Stop, please—”

“Go,” a whisper slithered through the gale, close as breath against my cheek. “Do what the prophecy stated. Realign the stars, as decreed by fate.”

I turned toward the sky, confused, my eyes darting everywhere. “Who’s there?” I gasped, spinning wildly. Nothing but trees and shadows.

“Do not fret,” the voice came again, louder, rolling through the forest like thunder. “I am you, as you are me. We are one.”

My stomach growled with uneasiness. I knew that voice. It was the storm’s whisper, the same that had haunted me years ago, the same that first cursed my life.

The sky split with a jagged crack of lightning. The forest shuddered, shadows twisting like claws reaching for me. My chest tightened until I couldn’t breathe. Tears blurred my vision.

My steps slowed when the trees opened up, and I finally saw it—the old, worn-down brick house. Lucy’s home.

For a moment, relief washed over me. Then my stomach tightened. My hand hovered just above the door, shaking. Something didn’t feel right. It was as if the night itself was warning me not to go inside.

Still, I had no choice. Lucy always always knew what to do. At least, I hoped she did this time.

Taking a long shaky breath, I pressed my hand against the door.