Chapter 78 SCENT ON THE WIND

Chapter 78 SCENT ON THE WIND
Something vicious lived in Dion that had only ever been contained.
And now, under the rising weight of the blood moon, it pressed outward with a force his body was not built to hold.
At first, it was a tremor, small, almost easy to ignore.
His fingers curled, then uncurled, the tendons along his hands tightening in a way that felt too tight beneath his skin. His shoulders followed, muscles shifting as though something beneath them had changed shape and no longer fit.
Then came the heat, it spread through him in waves, like fire and fever gnawing at his skin.
For just a moment, he saw it, a flicker of silver.
It was gone before he could focus on it.
His breath hitched.
“What the fuck is happening to me?” he rasped, the words breaking apart as another wave rolled through him, stronger this time, deeper.
Sable didn’t move closer.
She stood where she was, watching him like she had been waiting for this moment all along.
“Stay with it,” she said, her voice steady, unshaken. “It will hurt.”
“That’s not an answer,” Dion ground out, his teeth clenching as something in his forearm shifted with a sickening pull.
Her gaze didn’t soften.
“It isn’t meant to be.”
Pain tore through him then, sharp and sudden, dropping him to one knee as his spine arched under the force of it. His breath left him in a broken sound, his hand bracing against the dirt beneath him.
The wolves around him stirred.
Low sounds passed between them, neither alarmed nor aggressive. It sounded like they were chanting an incantation.
Dion dragged in air, but it didn’t help. It didn’t steady anything. The pressure inside him built, coiling tighter, stretching him thinner with every passing second.
“You said power,” he forced out, lifting his head enough to find her through the blur. “This feels like dying.”
Sable’s expression didn’t change.
“Sometimes it is the same thing.”
A rough laugh tore out of him, breaking halfway through as another surge hit.
“The dead don’t hold power,” he said, the words grinding out through clenched teeth.
“No,” she replied. “But you’re not dead yet.”
The wolves shifted closer, gathering around him in what felt like support.
Their voices rose, low and steady, a sound that threaded through the air and wrapped around him. It didn’t stop the pain, but it changed it, gave it shape, something he could feel against instead of being swallowed whole.
For a moment, the sky dimmed.
Clouds slid across the moon, swallowing the red glow, and just like that, the pressure eased.
Dion sucked in a breath that didn’t burn, his body sagging as the tension loosened just enough for him to feel the absence of it.
He looked at Sable then and studied her.
The lines in her face, the scars she didn’t bother to hide, the way she held herself.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked, the words rough, stripped of everything but the truth in that moment.
She didn’t hesitate.
“I had no choice,” she said.
He searched her face for any trace of remorse or regret.
He found none.
“I’m here now.”
The clouds shifted.
The moon returned, glowing shades of red, and the pain started in his spine.
A crack that didn’t sound like it belonged to a living body, followed by another, and another, each one tearing through him as his back arched, his hands clawing into the dirt as his body stopped belonging to him.
Something deeper, something dragged out of him as his bones shifted under his skin, forcing new shapes, new lines, his muscles stretching and tearing and rebuilding all at once.
He felt it.
Every part of it.
The wolves went silent.
The camp changed.
It took him a second to understand why.
New voices cut through the night, disrupting the wolves around him.
“What the fuck is he doing out of chains?”
He recognized the voice; it was Cyrus. “We didn’t pay for this. You said he’d be contained.”
Sable didn’t turn.
“This was never about you,” she said, her voice carrying without effort. “Leave.”
Dion forced his head up, vision swimming; smells sharpened, and his senses overloaded him.
“You…” he dragged in a breath that scraped his lungs raw. “You betrayed me.”
Cyrus laughed.
A harsh, ugly sound.
“Of course we did, with Juniper's help. Roderick won’t step aside for me. Someone has to force his hand.”
Dion tried to rise.
His body didn’t listen.
Another crack split through him, his arm twisting at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible, pain detonating through him so violently his vision went black at the edges.
He dropped.
The ground met him hard, but it barely registered.
Cyrus stepped closer.
“We should kill him now,” he said, almost thoughtfully. “Before whatever that is finishes it’s shift.”
Sable moved then.
Fast.
She stepped between them without hesitation, placing herself squarely in Cyrus’s path.
“Try.”
Sabine hissed, pulling at Cyrus’s arm. “This isn’t right. This isn’t what we agreed.”
Sable’s gaze cut to her.
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
The moon climbed higher.
Dion’s body snapped with it.
This time, the sound tore through the air, impossible to ignore, his spine bending, stretching, forcing him upward as something inside him surged forward with a violence that left no space for anything else.
He could feel it now.
Something that had been waiting.
His head lifted.
His nose flared.
And there was her scent on the wind.
Her.
It cut through everything.
The pain, the noise, the world.
Keira.
The scent hit him sharp and undeniable, threading through the chaos and anchoring itself deep inside him.
Mine.
Cyrus moved then.
A flash of steel in his hand as he lunged forward, aiming for Dion’s throat just as the moon reached its peak.
Dion didn’t see the strike land.
Everything went black as his body convulsed, shifting.
When the world came back, it wasn’t the same.
The air felt different, more alive.
Dion stood, not as a man, but a monster.
He stood higher and stronger, and the ground felt smaller beneath him.
The wolves had lowered themselves, bodies pressed low, necks exposed in silent submission.
All of them except one.
Sable.
She stood where she had been, her shoulders squared, eying him with conviction.
There was something in her eyes now, a tiredness, yet she came towards him.
One step, then another.
Each one deliberate, each one heavier than the last as the force inside him coiled tighter, demanding revenge and blood.
He had been held too long.
He raised his hand to strike.
Sable didn’t move.
“If you need blood,” she said quietly, her voice steady despite everything, “take mine.”
His fingers flexed.
The urge to end it, to finish what had started earlier, surged through him, hot and absolute.
Then.
Something shifted.
It was faint and almost lost beneath everything else.
A thread on the wind.
He stilled.
His head turned.
The scent was there again.
Mate.
Everything else fell away.
Sable stepped forward, just enough to be heard.
“Stay,” she said. “If you leave now, you run straight into your ruin.”
He looked at her, but he didn’t see her; he looked through her.
Then he turned and ran.
Not like a wolf, not fully like a man.
Something in between, something wrong and powerful and unstoppable as he tore through the edge of the camp, the ground barely holding him as he moved.
Cyrus and Sabine were already running.
They turned at the sound of him.
Whatever they saw made them stop.
“What are you?”
They didn’t finish.
Dion didn’t slow.
His hand came up, fast, precise, cutting through them in passing, sending them stumbling, bleeding, broken as he moved straight through them without a second glance.
They didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
Except her.
And the distance between them.