The Blood That Doesn't Boil

The snow of Sangue Negro Forest showed no mercy to the weak.

I felt every ice crystal beneath my bare feet, a constant reminder that I was the only one here who still needed clothes and fire to survive.

Around me, massive silhouettes of dark fur and gleaming eyes moved like shadows through the trees.

My packmates.

Creatures who, by eighteen, had already claimed their animal forms.

I was about to turn nineteen, and the silence inside me was absolute.

"Lyra!" The call came not through the mind-link but through her voice — soft and weary.

I turned to find Mara, the Omega she-wolf who'd taken me in when I was nothing more than an abandoned burden left at the border.

She stood in her human form, wrapped in a threadbare blanket, her eyes filled with a worry that cut through my chest.

She was the bottom of the pyramid — the one who cleaned and served — and for raising me, she carried twice the pack's contempt.

"Go back to the cabin, sweetheart. The Alpha is coming for the hunt tally. You know he doesn't like... imperfections in his path."

I knew. Alpha Vane. A tyrant who believed the Sangue Negro pack should be pure power. To him, a she-wolf who never awakened was a defect. One adopted by an Omega was a geological error.

"I'm not an imperfection, Mara. I'm just... slow," I lied, trying to hide the tremor in my hands. Deep down, I'd already accepted I would die without a wolf.

Before Mara could answer, the air turned heavy. The scent of oak and electrical storm slammed into my lungs like a fist. He was close.

A colossal wolf, with fur as dark as the abyss and shoulders as broad as an ancient oak, emerged from between the trees.

Vane.

His golden eyes swept the clearing with absolute authority and stopped on me.

The contempt in his gaze was physical — a pressure that made me want to buckle at the knees.

"Still here, little wolf?"* His voice invaded my mind, glacial and commanding. "Nineteen years and not a single growl? Mara should have left you for the crows when she found you. You're dirtying my ground."*

I held his stare, even as my heart hammered against my ribs.

I couldn't feel my wolf, but I felt a strange heat rising through my neck. A rage that didn't seem like mine.

"I belong to this pack as much as you do, Alpha," I challenged out loud.

The snarl that tore from him sent the birds scattering from the trees.

He advanced, stopping inches from my face, his hot predator's breath hitting my skin.

"You don't belong anywhere, Lyra. If by your next birthday your blood hasn't boiled... I'll drag you beyond my borders myself. Alive or not."

He turned away in a sharp, violent motion, leading the pack's run.

I stayed behind, trembling — but not just from the cold.

For the first time, I felt a deep pang at the base of my spine.

A sharp pain, as if something were trying to break a seal in my own DNA.

I didn't know it then, and no one there could have imagined, that my biological clock wasn't running late.

It was simply tuned to a bloodline they didn't dare speak aloud.

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