The smell of broth hit me halfway back to the packhouse.
My stomach growled loudly enough that Brenna snorted.
“See?” she said. “Soup. The cure for ravine-related stupidity since forever.”
“I didn’t do anything stupid,” I muttered, still shaking. “Not *technically*.”
“You let a piece of the earth borrow your spine,” she said. “That’s at least *adjacent* to stupid.”
Ashra huffed. *It was necessary,* she said. *Pup would have fallen.*
*I know,* I answered. *Doesn’t mean my bones liked it.*
Tiernan stayed close as we walked, not quite touching, his presence a steady weight at my side. Every time my steps faltered, his hand hovered near my elbow, ready.
He didn’t speak until we reached the side door to the kitchens.
“I’ll report to Elyra,” he said, voice low. “Rian and Kellan are already with Rhys. You—”
“Eat,” Brenna cut in firmly. “Then sleep. Do not go to the war room and pretend you’re fine. You’re gray.”
“I’m always gray,” I muttered.
“Gray-er,” she corrected. “You look like porridge that’s been left out too long.”
Tiernan’s lips twitched despite the tension coiled in his shoulders. “I agree,” he said. “On the eating and sleeping. Not the porridge.”
“I’m fine,” I protested automatically.
He gave me a look.
The kind that made my excuses shrivel.
“You’re *standing* because you’re too stubborn to fall over,” he said. “That’s not the same as fine. Half the reason we’re in this mess is because elementals before you pushed past ‘fine’ until they cracked. We are not repeating that pattern.”
Ashra hummed her approval. *For once, I agree with the stormboy.*
I exhaled, the fight draining out of me.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Food. Sleep.”
His hand brushed my arm—quick, barely there. “Good,” he said. “I’ll come by after the war council. To…check in.”
Brenna’s eyes gleamed. “Should I leave you two alone?” she whispered loudly.
“Brenna,” I groaned.
Tiernan’s mouth quirked, but his eyes were tired. “This is not flirting time,” he said dryly. “This is ‘prevent her from collapsing’ time.”
“That’s what you say now,” Brenna muttered.
I elbowed her and stepped into the warm chaos of the kitchen.
Head Cook Tomas spun around, ladle raised like a weapon. “If you brought that ravine mud in here—oh.” His face softened when he saw me. “Sit.” He jabbed at a stool by the big prep table. “Now.”
“I can—”
“Sit,” he repeated, brooking no argument.
I sat.
A bowl appeared almost instantly—thick vegetable soup, steam curling up in fragrant waves. Brenna snatched another bowl and filled it without being asked.
“Eren?” I mumbled around the first scalding spoonful. “And the pup?”
“Girl’s with Miri,” Tomas said. “Eren hasn’t let go of her hand since they got back. Little thing’s shaken but whole. Unlike my nerves.”
Relief loosened something in my chest I hadn’t realized was clenched.
“And Callen?” Brenna asked in a low voice.
“Missing,” Tomas said shortly. “For now.”
A clatter near the back of the kitchen made us all flinch.
Lyra stood at the washing station, hands white-knuckled around a stack of plates. She was still wearing her pale blue dress, though it was splattered now with water and what looked like gravy.
Her eyes met mine.
For once, there was no sharpness there.
Just…shock.
Fear.
And something like shame.
“Don’t drip on the floor, girl,” Tomas grumbled, more out of habit than heat. “We’ll have omegas breaking their necks.”
Lyra set the plates down with exaggerated care.
“You’re alive,” she said to me, voice flat.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I said before I could stop myself.
Her mouth twitched.
“Idiot,” she muttered. “You could’ve died.”
“So could the pup,” I said. “I picked the worse option.”
Her fingers tightened on the cloth she was holding, knuckles whitening. “I…” She swallowed. “I saw. From the balcony. When the howls started. When the ground…Brenna was already halfway out the door screaming your name before I even moved.”
Brenna opened her mouth.
I shot her a warning look.
She shut it with an audible click.
Lyra looked away first. “You’re right, you know,” she said quietly. “We both got chewed by the same machine. I just…” Her throat worked. “I don’t know how not to bite back.”
“Try,” I said, more gently than I’d planned. “For her.” I jerked my chin toward where the pup had disappeared.
Lyra’s jaw clenched.
“We’ll…see,” she muttered.
It wasn’t an apology.
But it wasn’t another knife.
Progress.
After two bowls of soup and a heel of bread slathered in butter, my hands stopped shaking quite so much.
Brenna walked me back to my room, complaining loudly about Kellan’s training schedule and how she was going to personally feed his spear to the hogs.
“You can’t pick a fight with every Gamma who makes your friends run,” I said, amused.
“Watch me,” she said.
At my door, she bopped me on the nose. “Sleep,” she ordered. “If you dream of stones, throw soup at them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
***
I must have fallen asleep almost immediately, because the next thing I knew, I was standing in the middle of the ravine clearing.
Except—it wasn’t quite the same.
The stones loomed taller, their symbols glowing faintly.
The ravine yawned wider, deeper, its darkness almost physical.
Mist curled along the edges.
I looked down at my hands.
They glowed.
Not with fire.
With lines of light tracing veins and bones, a living map of whatever Ashra had become inside me.
*Dream,* she said quietly.
*I figured,* I replied.
A sound like a chuckle rolled out of the ravine.
“Back so soon,” a voice drawled.
It wasn’t Callen’s.
It was…many.
Layered.
Older.
My skin crawled.
Ashra bristled, stepping forward in our shared space, massive and crackling.
*Show yourself,* she snarled.
A shape coalesced at the edge of the darkness.
Not fully formed.
Shadow and light and suggestion.
A wolf’s head.
A woman’s eyes.
A crown of twisted branches wreathed in faint blue fire.
I didn’t recognize her.
But I *knew* her.
Every story whispered around campfires about the old days, before the Goddess unified the packs, before the Moon’s whisper bound us one to another, flooded my mind.
Ashra’s hackles shot up.
*No,* she hissed. *She should be *gone*.*
“Who are you?” I demanded, throat dry.
The figure smiled.
“Names,” she said, voice echoing strangely. “You call me Ashra sometimes. Or did. Long ago. Before you forgot the shape of my storms.”
My stomach dropped.
“Ashra is *my* wolf,” I said. “Not some…ancient…thing in a hole.”
She laughed, delighted. “Oh, pup. You think your soul was woven from nothing? That your wolf sprang brand new from the Goddess’s loom?”
“The Goddess *gave* me Ashra,” I said, clinging to what I’d been taught, even as it felt flimsier by the second.
“The Goddess took what was already here,” the figure said. “Folded. Shaped. Bound. I was. Am. Will be. You carry a spark of me. A sliver. A shard. Enough to light your own fires. Not enough to make you *me*.”
Ashra snarled. *We are ourselves,* she said. *Not a fragment. Not a puppet.*
“Of course you are,” the figure soothed. “You are Kaia’s. She is yours. But the storm that birthed you? That’s mine.”
A headache pounded behind my eyes.
“Why are you in my dreams?” I asked. “Why laugh when wolves nearly fall? Why talk through Callen?”
“Because,” she said, her voice dropping, “the leash your Goddess put on me is fraying. Because your packs have been poking my bones. Because elementals are waking wild and untrained, and the world is ripe for old patterns to repeat. And because *you* walked into my teeth and didn’t flinch.”
“I *flinched*,” I said incredulously. “I nearly pissed myself.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “You stayed. You bargained. You asked instead of took. That interests me.”
“Oh good,” I muttered. “I’ve always wanted to be interesting to an ancient storm-deity-spirit…thing.”
“You mock because you’re scared,” she said, amused.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s accurate.”
She leaned forward, eyes bright.
“I have watched,” she said. “For centuries. As your alphas used my children. As your Goddess tried to tame us. As packs rose and fell. I have seen elementals like you burn towns and save pups and die screaming. I am…bored.”
“That’s horrifying,” Ashra said.
“So I’ve decided to...intervene,” the figure went on. “A nudge here. A whisper there. A crack in a ravine. A dream in a stormborn girl’s head.”
“I don’t want your nudges,” I said sharply. “I have enough voices in here.”
Ashra snorted. *Rude.*
The figure laughed. “You don’t get to choose,” she said. “Not entirely. But you can…influence. Steer. You can decide whether my whispers become knives or ropes.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
“It means,” she said, “that when the next choice comes—the big one, not this little ledge-and-pup drama—you will have to decide if you stand with your packs or with your own kind. With leashes or with storms. With structures or with chaos.”
“I choose *not letting pups fall off cliffs*,” I snapped. “Both times.”
She smiled slowly. “It’s never that simple.”
“For me it is,” I said.
She watched me a long moment.
“You are…annoying,” she said finally.
“Likewise,” I said.
Then, softer: “Why Callen?”
A flicker of something like annoyance crossed her face. “He called first,” she said. “He bled on the right stones. He listened. Poorly. He is angry. Anger makes for good kindling.”
My throat tightened. “He fell,” I said. “Into…you.”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s not dead. Yet. I can use him. As I could use you. If you let me.”
Ashra bristled. *We are not your weapon,* she growled.
“We’ll see,” the figure said.
The dream began to crumble around the edges, stones dissolving into mist.
“Wait,” I said, panic flaring. “How do we *seal* this? The ravine. You. Whatever Callen opened.”
She laughed, the sound thunder and rain on rock. “You don’t,” she said. “Not fully. The dam is cracked. The river will find a way. The question is whether you drown in it or learn to ride it.”
“That’s not comforting,” I said.
“Comfort is for pups,” she said. “You’re not a pup anymore, Kaia Thorn.”
Her form blurred, stretching taller, thinner, until she was just storm and shadow.
“Next time,” she said, fading, “bring soup.”
“What?” I blurted.
She was gone.
Darkness swallowed me.
I jerked awake with a gasp, heart racing, sweat cooling on my skin.
Moonlight spilled across the floor through the window.
My room was quiet.
Too quiet.
The bond hummed.
Tiernan.
Awake.
Alert.
*Kaia.* His voice slid into my mind, rough and urgent. *You pulled.*
I hadn’t meant to.
Somewhere in the dream—somewhere between ancient-deity-snark and my own panic—I must have reached for him without realizing it.
“I’m okay,” I whispered, though my voice shook. “Mostly.”
A heartbeat later, he was at my door.
“Kaia?” he called softly. “Can I—”
“Yes,” I said, before my pride could catch up.
He slipped inside, hair mussed, eyes shadowed.
“You okay?” he asked, crossing to my bedside.
“No,” I said honestly.
He sat on the edge of the bed without waiting for an invitation, one leg folded up, the other braced on the floor. “Tell me,” he said.
I did.
Every word.
Every flicker of blue fire. Every layered voice. Every unsettling implication.
I even told him about the soup comment.
He listened without interrupting, jaw tightening, fingers flexing on his knee.
When I finished, I was trembling.
He swore softly. “Of course she’d be involved,” he muttered.
“You…believe me?” I asked, small.
He looked almost offended. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it sounds…insane,” I said. “Old storm goddess bound under a ravine talking through my wolf’s namesake. Using half-feral elementals as messengers. Laughing at me.”
“Insane doesn’t mean untrue,” he said dryly. “In my experience, the most insane things are often the *only* true ones when it comes to old magic.”
Ashra huffed. *He has met us. He knows.*
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Stormwake’s legends said Ashra—that Ashra—was buried under three peaks,” he said. “Not under Redwood’s ravine.”
“Legends were wrong,” I said.
“Or incomplete,” he said. “If the Goddess bound her, she didn’t do it in just one place. She used…anchor points. Stones. Crossroads. Elemental wells. Ravines like that.” He exhaled. “We’re idiots for not seeing it sooner.”
“You’re not an idiot,” I said, surprising both of us.
His mouth quirked. “You’re biased,” he said.
“Not much,” I said. “Yet.”
His gaze softened.
Silence stretched.
“You know this means she’s not just your problem,” he said. “She’s *ours*. Mine. Stormwake’s. Every pack with old stones.”
“You were always part of it,” I said. “Even before she decided to use my dreams as her entertainment.”
His eyes searched mine. “You’re scared,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t like being someone’s…chosen.”
“You’re not hers,” he said fiercely. “Don’t let her twist that word. You’re *yours*. And…mine, if you ever decide you want that.”
Heat flooded my cheeks.
“I don’t want to be the center of some cosmic tug-of-war,” I said. “Between Goddess and storm-thing and alphas and rebels and gods know who else.”
He reached for my hand.
I let him take it.
His thumb stroked over my knuckles, grounding.
“You’re not,” he said. “You feel like it because you’re in the crossing of all these lines. But they were drawn long before you. You’re just…standing where they meet. That gives you perspective. Not responsibility for all their shit.”
“Feels like responsibility,” I muttered.
“I know,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. Together. Storm to storm.”
Ashra purred. *He said ‘we.’*
“I can’t do this alone,” I admitted.
“I’d be offended if you tried,” he said.
Silence fell again, heavy but…softer.
Our hands stayed tangled.
“Do you ever regret it?” I whispered. “The bond. Finding me.”
His thumb paused its slow movement.
“No,” he said simply.
“Even with all this?” I gestured vaguely. “Ravine gods. Elemental uprisings. My pack’s mess. Your pack’s mess. Callen screaming about leashes.”
He huffed a laugh. “All that would be happening with or without the bond,” he said. “Old magic doesn’t care who we’re kissing.”
My cheeks flamed.
“I don’t—” I started.
“Yet,” he said again, eyes glinting.
I glared.
He sobered.
“Do *you* regret it?” he asked quietly.
My instinct was to say yes.
To push.
To put distance.
Instead, I…considered.
“I regret not having a choice in *when*,” I said slowly. “In how fast. In the way it threw my life into a bonfire. But the bond itself?” I swallowed. “I don’t…hate it. I don’t hate…you.”
Ashra made an approving noise. *Progress.*
Tiernan’s shoulders eased, tension bleeding away.
“I’ll take that,” he said. “For now.”
His gaze dipped to my mouth.
Heat flared between us.
I felt the moment stretch—thin, taut.
He could lean in.
I could meet him.
Everything in me ached toward it.
Fear flared.
Of losing myself.
Of needing.
Of falling.
He saw it.
He stopped.
“Not yet,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. He squeezed my hand once. “Sleep, stormheart. We have a long day of arguing with old alphas and stubborn stones tomorrow.”
“I’m so tired of arguing,” I mumbled.
“Get some rest,” he said softly. “We’ll yell at the gods more efficiently when you’re not half-dead.”
I snorted.
He stood reluctantly, letting my hand go.
The room felt colder without his warmth.
“Tiernan?” I said as he reached the door.
He turned, hand on the handle. “Yeah?”
“Thank you,” I said. “For coming. Again.”
He smiled, small and real. “Always,” he said.
And—for the first time—I believed him.
---