The witch waited for me.
Just as she had the first time, long ago, when I was still young enough to be afraid and just old enough to hide it. Back when the shadows in my blood were barely whispers and I didn't yet understand what I was willing to become.
Her hut stood crooked in the roots of the Withered Pines, cloaked in rot and thick with shadow. The air buzzed with old magic, the kind that didn't ask permission and never forgave a broken promise.
This time, I wasn't afraid.
Evan stood beside me, barefoot, bare-chested, the mark of the blood pact still seared like a dark flame across the left side of his chest, a branching pattern of blackened veins that radiated outward from his sternum as though something had burrowed beneath his skin and taken root.
His eyes burned gold, not with the soft flicker of the boy I'd once manipulated into doing my bidding, but with the wild, feral glare of Rau fully unchained.
He wasn't Evan anymore, not really. And that pleased me.
"Come in," the witch rasped, her voice like wind scraping bone.
We stepped inside, and the door closed behind us with a whispering thud.
"You've come for more than answers now," she said, without turning. "You want power."
"I want what's mine," I replied. "What the prophecy was always meant to give me."
She chuckled, the sound dry and rattling. "Power costs."
"I'm willing to pay."
She turned then, and her ancient eyes—milky and ageless, pupils lost in a sea of white—landed on Evan. "And him? Does he come of his own will?"
Evan bared his teeth in a grin that belonged to something other than human. "I am the will."
The witch nodded once and reached into a chest filled with bones, dust, and vials sealed with ancient symbols pressed into wax.
She began to chant—low, guttural syllables that made the air vibrate—and I drew the dagger from my belt. The same silver blade that had sliced open Evan's palm at the pond, still dark with the residue of our first oath.
"Blood for blood," I said.
"Shadow to shadow," she echoed.
Evan stepped forward, and I did not flinch when he drew the dagger across my forearm. The cut was clean and deep enough to bleed freely, and the blood ran hot and dark, dripping into the waiting stone bowl between us. I watched it pool—thick, almost black in the candlelight.
He followed, his own cut mingling with mine.
The witch's words grew louder, faster, until the bowl began to pulse with light. The blood turned black and shimmered with threads of violet, a color that didn't exist in the mortal world. Power, wild and untamed.
And ours. We drank together.
The world spun.
Magic tore through me like fire and ice simultaneously, ripping apart the pieces of who I had been and replacing them with something harder, stronger, crueler.
I felt my shadows stirring, not like whispers anymore, but like creatures, alive and pulsing and obedient, coiling beneath my skin with a hunger that matched my own.
Next to me, Evan's body arched violently, a roar ripping from his throat that shook dust from the rafters.
His muscles tightened, cords of sinew standing out beneath the skin like cables pulled to breaking point. His breath turned to steam.
The wounds he'd inflicted on himself over the past days—split knuckles, torn forearms—sealed before my eyes, flesh knitting together with impossible speed.
When it was over, we collapsed into each other, panting.
His mouth found mine: rough, hungry, and possessive. The taste of blood and power burned on our tongues, metallic and electric. There was no gentleness or love. It was an alliance forged in something far more honest than affection—mutual destruction aimed outward.
We were weapons and we were war. And we were ready.
Our return to Midnight Crest was unannounced. But not unseen.
The moment we entered the estate, the air turned still—as if the very walls knew what was coming. The stone corridors that had once felt like a cage now felt like a kingdom waiting to be claimed.
My mother and father sat at the long stone table in the great hall, feasting, drinking, laughing over something meaningless. The firelight caught the silver in my father's hair, the gold chain at my mother's throat.
Until they saw us.
Until they felt what we had become.
"Dominic," my mother said carefully, rising to her feet, the chair scraping loudly against the stone floor. "What have you done?"
"Fulfilled my purpose," I said. "Finally."
My father growled, the sound rolling from deep in his broad chest, his Alpha presence flaring instinctively. "You reek of forbidden magic. What have you brought into our bloodline?"
"Strength," I whispered, and let the first of the shadows slip from my fingers.
It crawled across the table like a serpent—hissing, twisting, expanding into something monstrous with burning violet eyes that left scorch marks on the wood beneath them. My father shoved back from the table and drew his sword, the steel ringing in the sudden silence.
But it was too late.
Evan moved faster than any wolf should have been able to. He was a blur—a shadow with teeth. He tore into my father's chest with a snarl that shook the windows in their frames, claws punching through leather and flesh, and the blade clattered to the floor in a spray of blood.
My mother screamed.
I turned to her.
She backed away, shaking, her eyes wide and streaming, hands raised as though she could ward me off with nothing but open palms. "Dominic, please, you don't know what you're doing."
"I know exactly what I'm doing."
"You were never meant to—" she choked, her voice breaking.
"Atlas… Atlas is your twin. Your blood. We were wrong about the prophecy—we never knew which of you was the cursed one. We were wrong, all of us were wrong!"
I stilled. Something flickered deep inside me: a tremor, faint and distant, like an echo of the boy I might have been if the world had been kinder.
But it was gone in a breath.
"And now," I said coldly, "it doesn't matter."
"No, please—"
My hands closed around her throat, fingers pressing into the soft tissue on either side of her windpipe. I felt the cartilage flex beneath my grip, felt her pulse hammering against my palms in frantic, weakening bursts. Her last breath left her in a strangled gasp, her eyes going wide and then empty.
I smiled as she collapsed to the floor.
The shadows withdrew, sliding back beneath my skin like obedient hounds returning to heel.
Evan stood beside me, bare-chested, mouth bloodied, his golden eyes wild and satisfied. The great hall was silent except for the crackle of the fire and the slow drip of blood pooling beneath my father's body.
And I was finally free.
I turned to face what remained of my once-noble family's legacy—the servants frozen in doorways, the guards with their hands on hilts they didn't dare draw—and claimed it with a single command.
"Kneel."
And the pack did.