Chapter 79
JESSICA
They say the first shift changes everything.
That the moment your skin rips, and your spine cracks, and your scream folds into a howl–you stop being who
you were.
That your wolf doesn’t just emerge.
She judges.
She crawls up from the dark corners of your blood and decides if you’re worthy.
If you’re pack. If you’re prey. If you belong to anyone at all.
It’s tradition, of course. That’s why every year, young wolves like me gather in front of the village square, barefoot and bare–skinned beneath the sacred tree, waiting for the moon to rise and rip us open.
“Are you nervous?” Grayson whispered beside me.
I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. I was still pissed.
Astared ahead instead, jaw clenched, spine straight, eyes locked on the flickering bonfire in the middle of the
circle. The flames were white–hot, sacred. They said the goddess breathed through that fire–that she watched every shift from the smoke and the stars.
I hated her for it.
“You don’t have to be scared,” Grayson said again, voice lower this time. “I’ll be right here.”
Easy for him to say. He already had his wolf. He already had his power. And he is the alpha’s son. I watched him shift when I was young. I can still remember how bloody the color of his eyes was.
Grayson Westwood shifting in his wolf form is a memory I cannot forget. That’s the day I told myself I’ll be like him
too.
I clenched my fists. I wasn’t just scared of the pain. I was scared of what came after. Because if I shifted and my wolf reached for him–if the mate bond snapped into place like he claimed it would-
What then? What if he lied? What if he was wrong? What if the bond didn’t go to him? What if it went to–
“Jessica Wilkinson.”
The Elder’s voice rang out across the field.
My heart dropped.
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Shit.
It was time.
My feet didn’t move at first. The bonfire crackled louder. Around me, the pack is silent.
“You can do this Jess,” Grayson said before he pushed me forward.
The branches reached out like ribs, bones of something ancient and half–alive. Something that still remembered every name, every scream, every broken body offered here.
I stopped five feet from the tree.
I didn’t remember walking that far.
My body wasn’t mine anymore.
All I felt was the heat.
It licked at my skin, even from this distance. But it wasn’t just fire–it was alive. It shimmered with pale blue veins, flickering between white and silver, pulsing like breath.
Above us, the moon crested the treeline.
The flames noticed.
They surged upward in a sudden bloom of light, shooting toward the sky like they were trying to kiss her. Thin orbs of glowing vapor peeled off the fire and floated into the air, spinning slowly around the ring. They shimmered- silver, lavender, frost–blue. Like spirit fragments. Like memory.
The stone markers hummed. Faintly at first, then louder, vibrating through the soles of my feet. Runes glowed faint gold across their surface, old magic crackling to life like the air had turned electric.
The Elder stepped forward, voice like flint.
“Kneel,”
I didn’t move.
Something inside me curled. A pressure behind my ribs, building slow and dangerous.
“Kneel, Jessica,” he said again, louder now. “Offer yourself to the Moon.”
My legs buckled.
I dropped hard.
The ground was colder than I expected—damp and laced with power. I could feel it buzz beneath my knees, humming up my spine, tightening the back of my throat like a warning.
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Then I looked up–and saw what the fire had become.
It was no longer a bonfire. It was a vortex.
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A column of white–blue flame twisting upward in spirals, pulling silver threads from the moonlight above. They streamed downward like strands of liquid starlight, feeding into the fire and warping the air around it. In the center, where the flames danced fastest, the shape of a wolf flickered in and out–massive, translucent, ethereal.
The Moon Goddess.
Or some echo of her.
Watching.
Waiting.
Judging.
I wasn’t sure if I could breathe. My chest ached. My hands trembled. The orbs circled faster now, trailing lines of
light behind them like they were drawing runes in the air.
Then the Elder unsheathed the ceremonial blade.
Long. Silver. Moonforged.
It caught the light and glowed blue as he dipped it into the flame. The metal didn’t melt–it pulsed brighter.
He stepped in front of me.
“Blood before bone,” he murmured. “This is the law.”
I didn’t move.
I didn’t flinch.
Even when the blade pressed against the skin just beneath my collarbone.
Even when it slid down in a single, clean stroke.
It didn’t burn. It sang.
My blood rose to meet it, glowing faintly as it spilled down my chest–shimmering like ink under moonlight. The fire welcomed it, twisting higher, faster. The runes on the stones blazed gold now, as if the ring itself was waking
- up.
Then everything stilled.
The wind stopped. The air went heavy.
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And I felt it.
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A shift in the pulse of the earth. A pressure at the base of my spine. A voice–not words, but instinct–whispered through my bones.
Now.
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“AaaAH-!”
My hands slammed into the dirt.
Fingers clawed at the ground, nails cracking–no, changing–splitting open as claws erupted from my fingertips. Blood streaked across the mud. I couldn’t tell if it was mine or the earth’s anymore.
I gasped, but the breath caught halfway.
No–no, no, no-
My spine arched violently, lifting me off my knees. Every vertebra popped like a firecracker, snapping backward in
rapid succession. It wasn’t just breaking–it was rebuilding. Making space for something bigger. Wilder. More real
than my human skin had ever been.
“MAKE IT STOP-!”
But it wouldn’t.
The shift doesn’t stop.
It takes.
My legs convulsed, thighs shaking as muscle tore and reformed. My knees bent at the wrong angle–backwards- and then righted themselves. My feet lengthened, Bones cracked. My toes split, claws piercing through.
I screamed again–louder, rawer.
“AAAAAHHH-!”
The fire answered.
It twisted upward in a howling column, and the orbs dove into it, vanishing in streaks of silver light. The sacred tree’s roots glowed like veins, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
My eyes snapped open-
And the world burned gold.
Everything was sharper. Brighter. Too much.
I could see every flicker of the flames. Every rune, every thread of moonlight, even the panic carved into the Elder’s
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face as he stepped back.
The ground beneath my claws trembled. The ring was shaking.
My skin was tearing down the middle of my back now. Wet. Burning. I could feel something pushing out–my second spine, my tail, fur blooming like fire along my shoulders and thighs.
I wasn’t kneeling anymore.
I was crouched.
Low. Wide. Ready to lunge.
And then-
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I felt her.
My wolf.
She slammed into my chest like a heartbeat. I didn’t know I’d lost and a howl ripped out of me before I could stop
- it.
Damp earth pressed against my belly. My hands–no, not hands–were curled into the dirt, claws sunk deep into
roots 1 didn’t recognize.
My chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow pants.
I couldn’t breathe right.
And then I felt something like a string snapping taut between two bodies. No. No, no, no-
The mate bond.
It found me.
My wolf twisted sharply, body jerking forward as if yanked by the throat.
She turned her head.
And locked eyes with- Riot.
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