Chapter 75 The Silver-Black Moon
Aria POV
The explosion Jess triggered didn't bring the whole building down, but it blew the support pillars near the stairwell and sent a massive wave of heat and debris through the hallway that knocked everyone to the ground. I was coughing and trying to push a heavy piece of drywall off my legs when I felt a pair of hands grab my hair and drag me toward a large, open loading bay that faced the back of the docks. I looked up and saw Jess, but he wasn't looking at me with that smug corporate smile anymore because his face was covered in blood and his eyes were wide with a frantic, religious kind of fervor. He dragged me out onto a stone platform that overlooked the water, and I saw that the clouds had parted just enough to reveal a moon that was a deep, sickly shade of crimson.
"You think this was all about a company or a territory, but the Syndicate was just the bankroll for a ritual that’s been waiting for a girl like you for three hundred years," Jess shouted over the sound of the wind, and he forced me to my knees in the center of a circle that had been painted onto the stone with something dark and metallic.
"What are you talking about? Just let me go and take the coin, Jess, because I don't care about your rituals or your bloodlines!" I yelled back, and I tried to crawl away, but my wrists were still heavy with the silver-laced shackles and the proximity to that red light was making the metal hum so loud it felt like my brain was vibrating.
"The coin was just a tracker, Aria, because we needed to find the one human who carried the dormant Silverfang strain without knowing it, and the fact that you fell in love with a Nightfang Alpha was the perfect catalyst to wake it up," he explained, and he pulled a small, ornate dagger from his belt and sliced his own palm, letting the blood drip onto the center of the circle. "The Blood Moon is at its peak, and the silver in those cuffs isn't meant to keep you from shifting anymore, since it’s actually acting as a conductor to force the change through your nervous system before your body is even ready for it."
I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my spine that made me arch my back and scream, and it wasn't like the dull ache of the silver burns from before because this felt like my bones were being snapped and reassembled by a pair of invisible hands. The heat in the air became unbearable, and as I looked down at my hands, I saw the skin starting to tear away to reveal fur that wasn't the usual brown or grey of a common wolf. Grayson was screaming my name from somewhere inside the warehouse, and I could hear him tearing through the metal doors to get to me, but the red light of the moon seemed to be pinning me to the stone.
"Stop it, Jess, you're killing her! She’s not part of your pack and she’s not a weapon for you to use against my brother!" I heard a voice shout, and I saw Delilah stumble out onto the platform with her clothes torn and her face bruised, looking like she had finally escaped the boardroom only to walk into a nightmare.
"She’s exactly what the Syndicate needs to reset the balance of power in this city, Delilah, so stay back unless you want to be the first thing she eats when she loses her mind," Jess warned, and he began chanting something in a language that sounded like dry leaves skittering over a grave.
"I'm not... I'm not a wolf," I gasped, but my voice was changing into a low, rumbling growl and I felt my jaw elongate until my teeth were crowded in my mouth.
The pain reached a peak that made the world turn into a blur of red and black, and as the silver shackles finally shattered under the pressure of my expanding wrists, a wave of cold energy exploded outward from the circle. I stood up on four legs and the first thing I noticed was that the world didn't look the same, because I could see the heat signatures of the people around me and I could hear the heartbeat of every man in the building. I looked down at my paws and saw that my fur was a strange, shimmering silver that seemed to catch the moonlight, but underneath the silver was a deep, charcoal black that looked like it was shifting and moving like liquid ink.
"It worked," Jess whispered, and he dropped the dagger and took a step back with a look of pure terror on his face. "It’s the Silver-Black form, the one from the old scrolls that was supposed to be a myth."
I turned my head and saw Grayson standing in the doorway in his massive Obsidian form, and his red eyes locked onto mine with an expression of shock that made him pause in his tracks. He didn't move toward me and he didn't growl, because he was staring at my fur and the way the silver light was dancing around my paws like small sparks of electricity. I felt a power surging through me that made the Obsidian wolf look small, and the knowledge that I was no longer the girl from the bakery settled into my mind with a heavy, cold finality.
I didn't feel like Aria anymore, and as I turned my gaze back toward Jess, I realized that the "Mate Curse" wasn't the only thing that had been triggered by our bond tonight. I took a step toward him and the stone under my claws cracked like ice, and the red moon above us seemed to pulse with a rhythm that matched the beating of my new, powerful heart.
Grayson let out a low, mourning sound and shifted back into his human form right there in the middle of the debris, and he reached out a hand toward me as if he could still find the girl he loved underneath the shimmering, dual-colored fur.
"Aria? Is that still you in there?" he asked, his voice trembling with a fear I had never heard from him before.
I opened my mouth to answer, but all that came out was a sound that shook the very foundations of the warehouse, and the truth became clear that the rare form I had taken was something that neither the Nightfangs nor the Silverfangs were prepared to control.