Chapter 29 Training Begins (Vivienne POV)
"Again," Declan says, and I want to throw something at him.
We've been at this for three hours. Three hours of shifting back and forth until my muscles scream and my bones feel like they're made of glass. The sun is setting over the training grounds…a clearing about a mile from the safe house…and I'm exhausted, starving, and starting to hate the sound of his voice.
"I need a break," I manage between gasps. I'm human right now, hunched over with hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath.
"You need to build endurance. Tomorrow night, when hunters attack, they won't give you breaks." His tone is patient but firm. "Shift. Wolf form. Now."
"I hate you," I mutter, but I close my eyes and reach for my wolf.
She comes more easily this time, the transformation taking seconds instead of minutes. When I open my eyes, I'm on four legs again, silver fur gleaming in the dying light.
"Good. Hold it for five minutes, then shift back."
I want to bite him. My wolf helpfully suggests this is an excellent idea.
"I can see you thinking about attacking me," Declan says, and there's amusement in his voice. "Don't. You're not fast enough yet."
Challenge accepted.
I lunge before he can react, closing the distance in two powerful bounds. But he shifts mid-motion, meeting me as a massive auburn wolf who's significantly larger and more experienced than I am.
We collide, tumbling across grass in a tangle of fur and teeth. He's stronger, but I'm faster. I twist out of his grip, going for his throat…
And find myself pinned, his jaws at my neck in a hold that's careful not to hurt but absolutely unbreakable.
Yield?
The thought-impression comes through clearly. Werewolves can't speak in wolf form, but we can communicate through something like shared emotion and intent. Right now, Declan's intent is very clear: I've lost this round.
I shift back to human out of pure frustration, which dumps him off me since he's suddenly holding down a significantly smaller form.
"That was cheating," I accuse, sitting up.
"That was tactical thinking." He shifts back too, both of us naked now. At least I'm getting used to the constant nudity around this pack. "You attacked without assessing my position or capabilities. In a real fight, you'd be dead."
"In a real fight, I wouldn't telegraph my intentions so obviously."
"Wouldn't you? You crouched before attacking. Shifted your weight. Any experienced wolf would have read it." He offers me his hand. "But your speed was good. Another few weeks of training and you might actually land a hit."
"Weeks?" I let him pull me up. "We have less than twenty-four hours."
"Which is why we're training instead of resting." He walks to where we left clothes earlier, tossing me a shirt and pants. "Get dressed. Next lesson is tracking."
"Tracking what?"
"Owen. He went into the woods ten minutes ago. You're going to find him using scent."
I stare at him. "I've been a werewolf for one day. You expect me to track someone through miles of forest?"
"Yes. Your bloodline makes you a natural. Trust your instincts."
"My instincts say I should eat something and sleep for twelve hours."
"After you find Owen." He's already dressed and heading toward the treeline. "Come on. Wolf form is better for tracking."
I pull on clothes, then shift again. The transformation is getting smoother each time, my body learning the pattern. Once I'm wolf, the world explodes into scent.
Everything has a smell. The earth beneath my paws…rich with minerals and decomposing leaves. The trees…pine and oak and something I can't name but recognize as distinctly "forest." Small animals…mice, rabbits, a fox den somewhere to the east.
And underneath all of it, faint but detectable: Owen's scent. Human-mixed-with-wolf, the combination unique to werewolves in human form.
I follow it.
The trail leads deep into the woods, winding between trees and over fallen logs. Owen took a complicated path, deliberately making it harder to track. But his scent is there, a thread I can follow through the overwhelming tapestry of forest smells.
After twenty minutes, I find him sitting on a boulder near a stream, eating an apple.
"Took you long enough," he says cheerfully. "Dec thought you'd be faster."
I shift back, too winded to hold wolf form. "I found you, didn't I?"
"You did. First tracking exercise and you succeeded. That's actually impressive." He tosses me a water bottle from his pack. "Most new wolves can't separate individual scents for weeks. You just did it in under half an hour."
I drink gratefully, the cold water soothing my parched throat. "It wasn't that hard once I figured out what I was looking for."
"That's the Silvermane bloodline talking. Natural trackers, natural hunters." He stands, brushing dirt from his pants. "Ready for the next part?"
"There's a next part?"
"We hunt. Real prey, not just tracking pack members. You need to learn how to take down moving targets."
"I'm not killing anything…"
"You won't have to kill it. Just catch it and bring it down. Declan will handle the actual kill if we find something." Owen starts walking along the stream. "Come on. Deer frequent this area at dusk."
We spend the next hour moving silently through the forest. Owen teaches me how to step without breaking twigs, how to use wind direction to mask my scent, how to read tracks and scat to determine what animals passed through recently.
It's fascinating despite my exhaustion.
"There." Owen points to fresh tracks. "Buck, probably three or four years old. Came through within the last hour."
I shift to wolf and follow the scent trail. It's stronger than Owen's was, more animalistic, triggering instincts I didn't know I possessed.
Hunt. Chase. Catch.
My wolf is eager, her predatory drive kicking in. I move faster, tracking the buck through increasingly dense undergrowth. The scent gets stronger, fresher. Close now. Very close.
I see it through the trees…large, healthy, grazing in a small meadow. Perfect target.
I crouch, preparing to spring…
And something else takes over.
Not my wolf. Not me. Something older, deeper, rising from a place I didn't know existed inside me.
My vision shifts. The forest becomes layered with memory…not my memories, but ancestral ones. I see the same meadow hundreds of years ago, thousands of years ago. See other Silvermane wolves hunting this exact territory, generation after generation stretching back into prehistory.
Words form in my mind. Not English. Something older, more primal.
Karath sen'al. Verith na'shun.
The words pour out of my mouth in a language I shouldn't know, spoken in a voice that's mine but also not. The buck's head snaps up, ears alert. And then it does something impossible.
It bows.
A wild deer. Bowing to me. Like it recognizes something in those ancient words.
"What the…" Owen's voice comes from behind me, but I can't respond.
Because I'm not entirely in control anymore.
The ancestral memory is flooding through me, showing me things. The first Silvermanes. The creation of pack law. The ancient covenant between wolves and prey…take only what you need, give thanks for the sacrifice, honor the balance.
Grathas en'thil, I say, still in that ancient tongue. Thank you for your life.
The buck straightens and bolts, disappearing into the trees.
The vision releases me all at once, dropping me back into my own mind so abruptly I stumble.
"Vivienne?" Owen is beside me now, his hand on my shoulder. "What just happened? What language was that?"
"I don't..." I shift back to human, disoriented and shaking. "I don't know. It just came out."
"That was the old tongue. The original werewolf language. I've heard pack elders use fragments of it, but never anything that fluent." He looks genuinely shocked. "How do you know it? Who taught you?"
"No one. I just... saw things. Remembered things that aren't my memories." I sit down hard on the forest floor. "There were other wolves. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands. All in this same place over centuries. And they spoke in that language, and I understood it, and then I was speaking it."
"Ancestral memory." Freya's voice makes us both jump. She emerges from the trees like she's been there all along. "The Silvermane bloodline carries inherited knowledge passed down genetically. Most werewolves have fragments of it…instincts, reflexes, the ability to recognize pack law. But Silvermanes have complete access. Every memory, every skill, every piece of knowledge accumulated by their ancestors."
"That's not possible," I say.
"You just spoke fluent ancient werewolf and made a wild deer bow to you. Which part seems impossible now?" She crouches beside me. "This is what I've been watching for. What my grandmother's prophecy described. The silver moon child accessing ancestral power."
"I'm not a prophecy. I'm just confused and exhausted and…"
"You're awakening to your full heritage." Her eyes are bright with excitement. "The training accelerated it. Physical stress, transformation repetition, pushing your limits…it opened pathways to ancestral memory that usually take years to develop."
"So what, I'm going to randomly speak dead languages now?"
"You're going to have access to thousands of years of Silvermane knowledge. Fighting techniques. Tracking methods. Pack politics. Ancient laws. All of it stored in your genetic memory, waiting for you to access it." She stands. "We need to tell Declan. This changes things."
"Changes what?"
"Everything."
By the time we return to the safe house, I'm ready to collapse. The ancestral memory episode took everything out of me, leaving me hollow and shaky.
Declan meets us at the door, taking one look at my face and immediately pulling me inside. "What happened?"
"She accessed ancestral memory," Freya says. "Full access, not fragments. Spoke in the old tongue and performed a traditional hunt blessing. The deer recognized it and responded."
"How is that possible? She's been transformed for barely twenty-four hours."
"Silvermane bloodline. The training stress triggered early access." Freya follows us inside where the rest of the pack is gathered. "Everyone needs to hear this."
Kieran looks up from the map he's been studying. "Hear what?"
"Vivienne just demonstrated ancestral memory access," Freya announces. "Complete sentences in the old tongue. Traditional ceremony. Prey recognition."
The room goes silent.
"That's..." Callum shakes his head. "That's Alpha-level ability. Even among Silvermanes, most don't access deep memory until years after first transformation."
"Well, she did. Which means the prophecy is manifesting faster than expected." Freya turns to me. "Do you remember what you saw? Can you access it again?"
"I don't know. It just... happened." I sink into a chair by the fire. "I was tracking the deer and then suddenly I was seeing the same forest from hundreds of different perspectives over thousands of years. And the words just came out."
"What words exactly?" Callum asks.
"Karath sen'al. Verith na'shun. Grathas en'thil." The words flow easily now that I'm not in shock. "It felt like a hunting ritual. A blessing or thanks or something."
"It is," Callum confirms. "Ancient ceremony for taking prey. Acknowledges the sacrifice, honors the balance. Pack elders still use fragments of it, but most of us don't know the full ritual." He studies me intently. "You just performed it perfectly. Including getting the prey's acknowledgment."
"The deer bowed to her," Owen adds. "Just bowed. Like it understood and accepted."
"Because it did understand," Freya says. "The old tongue carries power. When spoken correctly, it can communicate with prey, with pack, even with the land itself. It's the language werewolves used before we integrated into human society."
"So I'm speaking magic wolf language now?" I can hear the hysteria creeping into my voice. "On top of transforming and training and trying not to die when hunters attack tomorrow?"
"You're accessing your heritage," Declan says gently, kneeling beside my chair. "I know it's overwhelming. But this is a gift, not a burden. Ancestral memory will help you. Guide you."
"Or drive me insane. Those aren't my memories. They're not my experiences. But they felt real. Like I lived them." I press my hands to my face. "I saw my mother. In one of the memories. She was young, maybe sixteen, learning the same hunting ritual from her mother. And I felt what she felt…pride and joy and belonging. But those aren't my feelings. They're hers."
The room is quiet.
"That's the hardest part," Callum says finally. "Distinguishing between your experiences and ancestral ones. It gets easier with time. You learn to recognize which memories are yours."
"How much time?"
"Months. Maybe years."
"I don't have years. I have less than twenty-four hours before everything goes to hell."
"Which is why we keep training," Declan says. "Build muscle memory and instinct so when the attack comes, you don't have to think. You just act."
"I'm already exhausted…"
"Then eat, rest for an hour, and we continue. Combat training next. You need to learn to fight as a wolf."
"I can't…"
"You can. You will." His voice is firm but not unkind. "Because tomorrow night, Edmund brings hunters. And they won't care that you're newly transformed or overwhelmed or grieving your human life. They'll just shoot you with silver bullets. So either you learn to fight now, or you die tomorrow. Choose."
The brutal honesty stings, but he's right.
"Fine. One hour rest. Then I'll train." I stand, swaying slightly. "But after tomorrow, after we survive whatever's coming, I want to do something."
"What?"
"I want to confront my father. Not as his victim or his science project. As myself. As Vivienne Silvermane." I meet Declan's eyes. "I need him to see what I've become and understand I'm not going back to who he wanted me to be. I need closure."
"That's dangerous…"
"I know. But I need it." I look around at the pack watching me. "I'm done living in his shadow. Done letting his fear control my choices. Tomorrow we fight his hunters. But after that, I face him. On my terms."
Kieran actually nods. "That's the first thing you've said that I respect. Own your identity. Claim your power. Make him acknowledge what you are."
"If he tries to kill me?"
"Then we'll stop him. But you deserve the chance to confront your demons." Kieran returns to his map. "Besides, seeing you as a fully manifested Silvermane might break him completely. And that has a certain poetic justice."
I want to argue that I don't want to break my father. But the truth is, I don't know what I want anymore. Part of me still loves him, still mourns the relationship we could have had. But another part…the wolf part, the Silvermane part…is angry. Furious at seventeen years of suppression and lies.
Maybe confronting him will give me clarity.
Or maybe it will just hurt us both.
Either way, I need to do it.
"One hour," Declan says, guiding me toward the bedroom. "Sleep. Eat. Then we train until you can fight in your sleep."
"Sounds awful."
"It is. But it's also how you survive."
He leaves me in the small bedroom, and I collapse onto the bed. Every muscle aches. My bones feel fragile. And my head is swimming with memories that aren't mine…generations of Silvermanes living and hunting and fighting and dying.
I close my eyes, intending to rest.
Instead, I dream.
Not normal dreams. Ancestral memory dreams. I see my mother as a child, learning to shift under her mother's guidance. See my grandmother leading a pack through territory that would eventually be called Yorkshire. See great-great-grandmothers defending their land from human hunters, speaking in the old tongue, calling on ancient power.
And I see what comes next. The attack. The confrontation. My choice between two worlds.
The prophecy Freya keeps mentioning shows itself in fragments: The silver moon child will either bridge two worlds or burn them both to ash.
When I wake exactly one hour later, I know which one I want to be.
Not the bridge.
Not the destroyer.
Just Vivienne. Wolf and human. Silvermane and Ashford. All of it together instead of torn apart.
Even if that means losing my father forever.