Minutes stretched into eternity.
Each second on that parapet felt like an hour. My arms ached from clutching the pillar. My legs had gone numb from the cold and the awkward crouch I’d folded myself into. The wind kept picking up, gusting across the exposed stone, and every time it did, I was certain it would push me over the edge.
The guards stood silent, watching. Not helping. Not speaking. Just... watching.
My mark burned hotter with each passing minute, the glow visible even in the darkness. I could feel Kaia pacing inside my mind, agitated, trying to push forward but unable to break through my panic.
>"Let me out," she kept saying. "Lilith, let me out. I can handle this."
But I couldn’t. My terror had me locked in place, frozen, useless.
Footsteps. No—paws. Heavy, deliberate, padding across stone.
I looked up, tears of cold and fear streaming down my face, and my breath caught.
A wolf emerged from the shadows at the far end of the parapet. Pure white, massive, its fur seeming to glow in the starlight. But it wasn’t the color that made my heart seize—it was the aura.
Predatory. Ancient. Overwhelming.
Power rolled off the creature in waves, making the air itself feel heavy. My instincts screamed at me to run, to hide, to submit. Every cell in my body recognized this as an apex predator, something that could tear me apart without effort.
The wolf’s glacier-blue eyes locked onto mine.
The wolf padded closer with terrifying grace, each step measured and deliberate. Then, halfway across the parapet, the shift began.
Bones cracked and reformed. White fur receded into pale skin. The massive form condensed, reorganized, became human.
And then Vladimir stood before me, naked and unbothered by the cold, his platinum hair catching the starlight.
Something inside me snapped.
"YOU BASTARD!" The scream tore from my throat, raw and ragged. I pushed away from the pillar, stumbling toward him on legs that barely worked. "You—you did this! You had them drag me here while I was SLEEPING!"
My lungs burned as I gulped in the frigid air, each breath like swallowing ice shards. "After everything today—after Caesar, after the wedding, after I finally—" My voice cracked. "How DARE you!"
Vladimir stood perfectly still, watching me with those cold, analytical eyes. No apology. No regret. Just calculation.
"You want me to survive?" I was shaking, from cold and rage and terror all mixed together. "This is how? Terrorizing me? Putting me on a—" I gestured wildly at the edge, couldn’t even finish the sentence. "I trusted you! I sat beside you today, I defended you to Caesar, I—"
The words dissolved into something between a sob and a scream of pure fury.
"Fourteen percent," Vladimir said quietly, his voice cutting through my breakdown. "That’s your survival rate without intervention."
"I don’t CARE about your percentages!" I screamed back. "I’m a person, not a—a variable in your calculations!"
The mark on my wrist blazed so bright it cast shadows across the ancient stone.
And Vladimir’s eyes tracked to it with predatory focus.
"There it is," he murmured.
He began to move, circling me slowly, and I turned to keep him in my sight. My back pressed against the pillar again, seeking its solid presence.
"Do you understand what the Luna Duel entails?" His voice was calm, almost hypnotic in its steadiness. Each word precisely measured. "Three trials. The first is a chase through the Blackwood Forest—five miles of hostile terrain while Veronique hunts you in shifted form. You’ll be running through darkness, through brambles and over ravines. If you freeze at a cliff edge, you die."
He moved closer, and I felt the pull of him—that overwhelming presence that made my wolf stir restlessly.
"The second trial is direct combat. Shifted. Tooth and claw. No mercy, no quarter given. If you and Kaia are not perfectly synchronized, if there’s even a moment’s hesitation between what you think and what she does—" He paused directly in front of me. "You die."
My breath came in short gasps, the cold air burning my lungs.
"The third trial—" His glacier eyes bore into mine. "Well. That depends on who’s still standing."
Vladimir resumed his slow circuit around me, and I found myself tracking him, unable to look away.
"The first phase of your training is not about strength. It’s not about speed or strategy." He stopped at my left side, close enough that I could feel the cold radiating from him. "It’s about alignment. Synchronization between human and wolf."
"I don’t understand," I whispered.
"No, you don’t." He moved behind me, and every instinct screamed not to let him out of my sight, but I was pinned by fear and cold. "For pure-bloods, syncing is instinctive. Wolf and human are raised together, understand each other from childhood. But hybrids?" His voice came from over my right shoulder now. "Hybrids are different. You’ve kept Kaia suppressed your entire life. You don’t trust her. She doesn’t fully trust you. You’re two separate entities inhabiting one body."
He completed his circle, standing before me again. "Last year, a hybrid challenged for pack membership. Strong. Fast. Determined. But when the trial began and she tried to shift mid-run, there was a delay. Three seconds. Just three seconds where her human mind said ’jump’ and her wolf hesitated, unsure of the distance."
His eyes never left mine. "She fell twenty feet onto rocks. Shattered both legs. Her wolf tried to heal the damage, but because they weren’t synchronized, the healing was incomplete. Bones set wrong. By the time we reached her, infection had set in."
"She survived," Vladimir continued, his voice still that same hypnotic calm. "But she’ll never run again. Never shift without screaming. The de-synchronization between human and wolf left permanent damage to both halves of her being."
Horror crawled up my spine. "You’re saying if Kaia and I aren’t perfectly—"
"If you tell your body to dodge and Kaia disagrees on the direction, you’ll move in two directions at once. If you try to shift an arm for claws and she tries to shift your legs for speed, you’ll do neither and leave yourself exposed. If she tries to heal an injury and you panic and pull the energy away—" He leaned in slightly. "You’ll bleed out on the forest floor while your own power wars with itself." New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on novèlfire.net