Chapter 38 The Council of Elders
The morning of the Full Moon didn't begin with a whimper; it began with a summons.
Leela and Fennigan had barely finished a quiet breakfast when Elana appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was dressed formally in a tailored black suit, her expression unreadable.
"The Elders are here," she said simply. "They are waiting in the boardroom. Bring the book."
Fennigan nodded, his jaw setting tight. He went upstairs to retrieve the gray, fire-damaged book from the library, while Leela tried to calm the fluttering in her stomach. The stone in her chest hummed, sensing the spike in adrenaline.
They walked into the boardroom ten minutes later. It was a space Leela hadn't seen yet—a long, intimidating room with a mahogany table that could seat twenty. Today, only five seats were occupied.
The Elders were the oldest members of the Blackwood Pack. Their hair was white, their faces lined with decades of battles and hard choices, but their eyes were sharp. They exuded a power that felt different from Fennigan’s—it was heavy, ancient, and judgmental
.
"Sit," the eldest one, a man named Elder Horne, commanded
.
Leela and Fennigan sat at the far end. Elana stood at the head of the table.
"You called us on short notice, Elana," Thorne rumbled. "You said it was a matter of Pack survival."
"It is a matter of species survival," Elana corrected. She gestured to Leela. "Show them."
Leela stood up. Her hands were shaking slightly, but Fennigan reached under the table and squeezed her knee. She took a deep breath, unbuttoned the top of her flannel shirt, and pulled the fabric aside.
The room went deathly silent.
The emerald and moonstone gem pulsed against her skin, the white flower tattoos shimmering like starlight.
"The Earth Stone," a female Elder whispered, leaning forward. "I thought it was lost."
"It was absorbed," Fennigan spoke up, his voice steady. "Leela didn't just wear it. She became the vessel for it."
He slid the gray book down the table.
"She is an Elemental," he stated. "A true Magical Lycan. The bloodline we thought was extinct."
The Elders passed the book around, muttering in hushed, frantic tones. They looked at the illustrations, then back at Leela. They looked at the way the air in the room seemed to bend around her, the way the static electricity made the hair on their arms stand up.
"We haven't seen a soul as powerful as this in three centuries," Elder Thorne admitted, closing the book. He looked at Leela with a mixture of fear and reverence. "Has she shifted before? Because if she hasn't and she shifts tonight... the energy release alone will be like a beacon."
"That is why we are here," Elana said. "We need a decision. Do we announce her? Do we claim her status to the Council of Alphas?"
Horne looked at the other Elders. They communicated in silence, a pack mind linking them together.
Finally, Horne shook his head.
"No," he said firmly. "If word gets out that an Elemental has returned—a female capable of breeding the line back into existence—she will never know peace. Every Alpha, every rogue, every hunter will come for her. They will try to take her, use her, or kill her."
He looked Leela in the eye.
"We must never let the word out. This secret dies in this room, for now."
He stood up, leaning his knuckles on the table.
"As far as the world is concerned, she is a wolf. A strong wolf, perhaps a little different, but just a wolf. We will mask her signature. We will guard her."
He looked at Fennigan, his expression softening for the first time.
"She is the spark," Horne said.
He gestured to the door.
"We need to figure out how to stop her first shift until we know for sure she can control her energy."
"With all due respect, Elder," Fennigan interjected, standing tall beside Leela. "She doesn't just leak energy. She controls it. She already found how to ground herself. She quieted the entire Grove when the necklace came off."
Horne raised a bushy white eyebrow. "She grounded a ley line surge? Untrained?"
Horne drummed his fingers on the table. "Even so. The First Shift is violent. It breaks the body to rebuild it. If she loses focus during the bone-breaking, the energy could spike and alert every sensitive within five hundred miles."
He stood up decisively.
"We take her to the Grove. The ancient trees there are already saturated with magic; they will mask her signature better than the concrete of the Pack house basement. And we will all go."
An hour later, a convoy of the three mountian climbers wound its way up the mountain path.
It wasn't just Fennigan and leela this time. The passenger seats were filled with the heavy hitters of the Blackwood Pack. Elder Thorne sat in the front of the lead truck. Elana and Damon—Fennigan’s father, were in the second.
Jax, drove the rear guard, scanning the woods for any sign of trouble.
They reached the clearing just as the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in bruises of purple and orange.
Elder Horne walked toward the center of the clearing, his eyes scanning the area critically. He stopped dead when he saw the structure hanging between the two massive redwoods.
The vine hammock was still there, lush and green, with the white star-flowers still blooming along its woven ropes. It didn't look built; it looked grown.
"Where did this come from?" Thorne asked, walking up to it and touching a vine.
"This species of ivy... it doesn't grow in this formation naturally. It’s woven."
Fennigan stepped up beside him. "She made it."
Horne looked at him. "She wove it?"
"No," Fennigan shook his head, looking at Leela with pride. "She thought it, and it appeared. She wanted a place to rest, and the trees gave it to her."
Horne looked back at the hammock, his face pale. "Matter manipulation," he whispered. "Before she has even shifted. By the Gods."
He turned to the group. "Positions. Now. The moon is rising."
They formed a circle. Damon and Jax took the perimeter, watching the woods. Elana and Horne stood near the cabin porch, ready to cast shielding wards if necessary.
Fennigan stood in the center, right next to Tara on the soft moss.
The sky turned black. The first sliver of the full moon crested the mountain peak.
Leela gasped.
It started in her spine. A sharp, hot crack that felt like lightning striking her marrow. Her knees buckled, and she hit the ground hard.
"Fennigan!" she cried out, clutching her chest.
"I'm here!" Fennigan dropped to his knees instantly, grabbing her hands. "Look at me, Sparky. Look at me!"
Leela screamed as her shoulder blades snapped, reshaping, forcing themselves into a new alignment. The pain was blinding. It wasn't just an ache; it was her entire anatomy dismantling itself to make room for the predator inside.
"It hurts!" she sobbed, squeezing his hands so hard her knuckles turned white. "Make it stop!"
"I can't stop it," Fennigan said, his voice thick with emotion, hating that he had to watch this. "You have to ride it. Give in to it, Leela! Don't fight the break!"
Another crack—her femur this time. Leela threw her head back, a guttural sound tearing from her throat that sounded half-human, half-animal.
The stone in her chest flared with blinding green light. The white flowers on her skin began to glow, spreading rapidly down her arms and legs, pulsating with the rhythm of her breaking bones.
The ground beneath them shook. The trees groaned.
"Breathe!" Fennigan commanded, leaning his forehead against hers. "You are strong. You are iron. You are gold. Let the wolf out!"
Leela grit her teeth, tears streaming down her face. She felt her jaw unhinge, felt her fingers lengthening, felt the fur bursting through her skin like fire.
She looked into Fennigan’s eyes one last time before the human part of her slipped away into the dark.
I'm ready, she thought.
And then, with a sound like a thunderclap, her body arched, and the Shift took her.