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I shrugged off my coat and dropped it by the door as I stepped inside. "Cassius! I brought Shante with me."

"Make sure you're decent!" Shante hollered behind me, barely hiding her amusement at whatever look had crossed my face.

Heavy footsteps thundered down the staircase a moment later, and then Cassius was right there  pulling me close, pressing his lips to mine like hours had passed instead of minutes. When he finally turned to greet Shante, she raised both hands and took a step back.

"No touching. She's still in heat."

"I'm fine," I said through my teeth, lacing my fingers together tightly.

They kept the hug short and quickly put space between themselves. My wolf didn't snarl, but she stirred  rising slowly inside me, her coat standing on end.

Cassius laced his fingers through mine, then looked to Shante. "Glad you came back in one piece."

"Bloodfang didn't even bother showing up," she said with a shrug. "The moment they figured out Selena was out in the wildlands, they backed off. Just like you said they would." She tilted her head at me, something like wonder in her eyes. "It's still hard to wrap my head around how long this heat has dragged on."

"About that " I hesitated, bracing myself. "It's not the same one. I went into heat during the Harvest Moon. Then Lucien bit me, and apparently… it reset everything."

Cassius opened his mouth, but Shante was faster.

"Hold on to another heat? Out of season?"

"You didn't even blink when I told you I could finally shift, or that I had four alpha mates." I laughed, shaking my head. "Now this surprises you?" I turned to Cassius. "Shante and I were planning to go see Ellie  talk through the Bonded marks and everything that's been happening."

"I'm coming," Cassius said, leaving no room for debate. "And knowing Rowan, he will be too."

"Maybe," I muttered.

The oversized alpha hadn't bothered to step foot inside. He was out there somewhere, no doubt planted by the entrance like a wall with fur.

"Let's run!" Shante's eyes lit up as she grabbed my shoulders and gave them a shake.

She slung her bag off her shoulder and began cramming her clothes inside. A growl climbed up my throat before I could catch it, and she burst out laughing.

"Okay, okay  I'm going." She disappeared around the corner while Cassius and I began undressing.

Cassius swung the door open, and a small gray wolf with warm brown legs shot past us into the open air.

I smiled and reached inward. Want to run?

My claws hit the hardwood floor before the thought had even finished forming. "Go ahead," Cassius said softly.

He knew my wolf hated walls. Outside, Shante and I circled each other, noses working  and I noticed we were nearly the same size. My lightning was nowhere to be seen, which was a quiet relief. No questions I wasn't ready to answer.

Cassius locked up behind us, tucked the key into his bag, and shifted. A large black wolf fell into step at the rear.

Shante led us through the winding Moonblood streets toward one of the smaller gates in the wall. A brownish wolf yipped as she passed, and she glanced back briefly before moving on.

"What was that about?" I asked.

Shante jumped sideways, startled. That's when it hit me  she wasn't an alpha. She couldn't hear me.

"She can't receive your thoughts, moonbeam," Cassius said gently, arriving at the same realization I had. "She's neither your packmate nor an alpha."

"Sorry, Shante," I said. "I should have mentioned  my wolf doesn't work the way most do." I paused. In more ways than one.

She huffed out a laugh, then slowed near the gate, likely speaking to her packmates on the other side, coaxing them to let us through. The moment we crossed beyond the wall, she and Cassius moved to either side of me, with Rowan anchoring the rear.

She and I surged forward, the alphas matching our pace without complaint. I wondered briefly if it frustrated them  holding back for wolves half their size.

But running beside her, even in silence, felt like breathing again. My wolf was loose and light, shielded on both sides by alphas who wouldn't let anything touch us. Out here in the wildlands, racing next to my best friend, I felt like nothing in the world could reach me.

When Ellie's cottage blinked into view through the trees, Shante slowed and shifted back. Cassius and I followed. He and Shante kept a few trees between them as they dressed, but my wolf kept circling inside my head  restless, ready to bolt back into her skin at any second.

"It's because we haven't claimed each other yet," I said quietly when Cassius reappeared, fully dressed, his bright moccasins the first thing I spotted through the trees.

He gave a slow nod. "Once we're fully mated, your wolf will likely ease up during future heats. Her mark on me will be enough to keep other wolves from even glancing my way."

That pulled a smile right out of me. Alphas were always painted as the possessive ones  but every wolf alive knew better than to step between a female in heat and the male she'd chosen.

"Selena," Shante said from behind me, "is your wolf an alpha?"

"No," I said carefully. "But she can push thoughts out the way an alpha does." I nodded toward Ellie's door. "Let me explain it to both of you at the same time."

Before we even reached the porch of Ellie's low wooden cabin, her smooth voice floated out through the walls.

"Women only. Alpha pheromones give me a headache."

Cassius caught my eye and tilted his head toward the door. He planted himself beside the entrance without complaint. Rowan simply melted back into the tree line, silent as always, not a single word offered to anyone. I exhaled slowly and stepped inside after Shante.

Ellie looked exactly as I remembered. So did her home. Mismatched appliances lined the walls around her dark wooden table and chairs, and her long red hair was braided the same way it had been before. She still had her fluffy purple slippers on, as though we'd caught her mid-morning before she'd bothered to get properly dressed.

The warm smell of herbal tea curled through the air as she pressed a mug into Shante's hands. The scars mapping the backs of her hands caught my eye, the way they always did  and something about seeing them made me feel like we understood each other without needing to say so.

"Nothing for you, Selena. I haven't forgotten how your face looked the last time you tasted my tea."

I laughed softly and sat down. Three wooden chairs slid away from the table on their own  smooth, unhurried  without Ellie so much as glancing at them.

"I wish I could do that," I murmured, watching the chairs settle.

"Convince a coven to lift your curse, and I'll teach you everything I know." Her green eyes moved over me slowly. "I'm relieved the wolfsbane didn't leave lasting damage. Though I did hope you'd have filled out a little more by now."

"You should have seen me before Luca started feeding me constantly and Cassius put me on a training schedule," I said with a helpless shrug.

"Still  you've learned to shift. That alone is worth celebrating." Ellie brought her mug to her lips.

"And to shift back, which I owe to Rowan." The smile that came with that thought faded just as quickly.

"Alright, enough stalling!" Shante leaned forward in her chair. "Tell us everything, the voice, the wolf, all of it."

"Pack Alpha Kylie once mentioned knowing a wolf who didn't shift until after his twenty-fifth birthday, under a full moon." I spread my hands open, gesturing at myself. "Turns out I'm cut from the same cloth. I crossed paths with a survivor from the Dawn Chaser pack; they're calling themselves the Bloody Dawn now. He told me my type of wolf has a name. An Odinswolf." I looked between them. "Does that mean anything to either of you?"

Shante's brows climbed. Ellie gave a slow shake of her head.

Even as a half-breed herself, this was new ground. She'd long suspected I was something uncommon  but Odinswolves had never come up.

"He passed along a lot of old stories, so I can't be sure what's legend and what's real, only what I've lived through myself." I counted it out on my fingers. "First, my kind shifts late, exactly like Kylie described. Second, I can cast my thoughts outward the way an alpha does, even though that's not what I am. Third, my eyes stay the same color when I shift. And fourth " I paused. "Lightning sometimes runs through my fur."

"What?" Shante shoved her chair back like she was ready to stand. "I need to see that with my own eyes."

"Honestly? I was surprised it didn't happen while you were around."

Her mouth curved. "Your wolf feels safe with me."

"There's a fifth thing," Ellie said quietly, her gaze steady. "You're still caught in your heat."

I shook my head and walked her through the first heat, how it had ended, and what had come after.

"Ah." Those too-perceptive green eyes drifted toward the front door. "Another mate. That would be what set it off again."

"One more thing separates my wolf from everyone else's," I said. "Four men. That's how many my wolf settled on the night we ran under the full moon with the Howling Evergreen pack. She claimed every last one of them."

Cassius had seen it coming long before I had.

"But the one standing outside  the dark wolf  your paths had never crossed before that night?" Ellie's voice was gentle but her eyes were cutting.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, thinking. The shift in my scent had started during that stretch of time when Rowan and I had been completely alone together in the open wilderness. If Lucien's bite carried the blame, surely something would have stirred while I was still caged under Darius's control.

"That's a fair point," I breathed. The heat had nothing to do with Lucien at all.

Shante dragged out a slow, theatrical smile. "Ro-wan did it," she announced in a little melody.

I wrinkled my nose at her. She looked thoroughly delighted with herself.

"Decades of studying wolf-kind and I never once stumbled across different varieties," Ellie murmured, more to herself than to us. Her gaze drifted back to me. "Though something in your expression tells me wolves aren't the only subject on your agenda today."

"There's a magic side to this too."

One of Ellie's brows arched. "Have you taken up with a coven?"

A laugh jumped out of me. Then I caught myself which belonged to those with a coven at their back. Ellie and I both stood outside that world. We were mages. Strays, in the language of magic.

"Mage business. Sorry, wrong word."

"Perfectly fine. I simply couldn't picture you stumbling into a coven with everything else on your plate."

"Trust me, there's been plenty on that plate." I pulled in a slow breath. "After Lucien claimed me, a mark surfaced on his face. At the same moment, these appeared on me." I drew my collar aside, uncovering two runes pressed close together beneath my collarbone. "The second one came the night Luca and I found each other."

Ellie went very still. "When mages trade pieces of their power, they become Bonded  stitched together, marked just like that." Her finger hovered briefly over my runes. "What I cannot wrap my mind around is it happening without intention. A ceremony exists for this very reason  so that every person involved walks in with open eyes. Because once two souls  or more  become Bonded to one another..." her hand dropped, settling flat against the table, "walking away is not a door that stays open."

My chest caved in around the words.

Lucien had pressed that mark into my skin without breathing a syllable of warning. And I had answered him in kind without knowing it for even a second. This was not the kind of thing that dissolved under a full moon like a claiming mark. Whatever this was, it had teeth.

"Keep going. Tell me everything."