Tiernan had always thought he was prepared for surprises.
He’d grown up in a pack that thrived on storms—physical and political, riding the edge of old oaths and wild lands, where rogues tested their borders and the old magic in the mountains woke without warning. He’d seen alphas fall and rise, watched allies turn into enemies overnight.
But nothing in his twenty-eight years had prepared him for the scent that had slammed into him the moment he’d stepped into Redwood Shadow’s hall.
Mate.
The word had knifed through him with terrifying clarity. No question. No doubt. The bond flared fast and hard, bright as lightning.
And his mate—
His mate was trembling in his arms, her body convulsing, her bones shifting under his hands with a violence that made his own wolf snarl in sympathetic pain.
“Outside,” he growled, his voice edged with command but raw with something else. “Now.”
Two of his men, Rian and Jory, moved instantly to flank him, clearing a path through the milling, shocked wolves. Some parted on instinct, lowering their heads under the wash of his aura. Others stared, stiff with offense and confusion.
“Alpha Voss,” Rhys said sharply behind him. “This is *my* territory. You will stand down and allow our healers—”
“Your healers had sixteen years to do something about this,” Tiernan snapped without looking back. “Move.”
It was reckless. He knew that.
He didn’t care.
The girl—Kaia—clutched at his shirt like he was the only solid thing in a world gone molten. Her eyes were open, but she didn’t seem to see the corridor rushing past, the stone walls, the flickering torches. Her irises glowed—*glowed*, not with the usual wolf-gold, but with a light that shifted between molten bronze and searing white.
His own wolf, Kade, prowled under his skin, pacing, snarling, desperate.
*Ours,* Kade rumbled, voice rough with shock and possessive ferocity. *She’s ours. Something’s wrong. Fix it.*
*Working on it,* Tiernan shot back grimly.
They burst out into the cold morning air.
Snow crunched under his boots. The sky was a flat, unbroken gray, the edges of the forest dark against it. It had started to snow again, thin flakes drifting lazily down.
“Here,” Luna Elyra said breathlessly, hurrying ahead, skirts gathered in her hands. She pointed to a patch of open ground near the training rings. “Give her space. When the shift hits, she might—”
The rest of her sentence was lost in Kaia’s scream.
It ripped up from deep in her chest, flaying the air. Her body bowed backward in his arms, every muscle corded. Heat rolled off her in waves, startling in the winter chill.
Tiernan went to his knees with her, easing her down onto the snow as gently as he could while she thrashed. Her fingers dug into his forearms, nails scraping his skin through the fabric.
“Breathe,” he rasped, though he wasn’t sure who he was talking to—her or himself. “Kaia. Look at me.”
Her gaze flicked to his.
For a second—just one heartbeat—the world narrowed to that point of contact.
Her eyes were wild, yes, pupils blown wide, light pulsing underneath. But there was…something else. Recognition. Desperation. And trust, raw and unformed but there, searing him to the core.
Then her spine arched again, a guttural sound tearing from her throat.
“What’s happening?” Rian demanded from behind him, voice tight. “Alphas’ mates don’t—”
“She’s not just shifting,” Elyra said quietly, her own eyes wide and far older. “She’s…awakening.”
Tiernan shot her a glance. “What the hell does that mean?”
The Luna’s silver gaze met his, haunted. “Her parents. They were—”
Her words were drowned under the crack of Kaia’s bones.
Tiernan had seen first shifts before. Pups screaming and trembling, their bodies not yet used to the violence of transformation. It was never pretty. But this—
This was something else.
Heat rolled off her in waves strong enough to melt the thin layer of snow around her. Steam rose in tendrils. The scent of ozone thickened, sharp and metallic on his tongue.
Her skin shimmered.
For a heartbeat, scales like molten copper flickered under her flesh, then vanished. Her fingernails elongated too fast, then snapped back. Lines of glowing light traced themselves along her arms—veins of fire—then sank.
“What is she?” Jory whispered, awe in his tone.
“Just a girl,” someone scoffed behind them—Corin, voice still brittle with offended pride. “A wolfless omega pretending to—”
“Shut up,” Tiernan snarled, not bothering to look back.
Corin stumbled a step, as if physically struck.
Alpha Rhys’s aura pressed, heavy with warning. “Tiernan—”
“Do *you* not feel that?” Tiernan demanded, his own wolf pushing forward, hackles high. He gestured at the girl in the snow, at the heat, the light, the *pressure* building in the air. “Do none of you sense what’s waking under your noses?”
Most of them didn’t, he realized.
Their wolves paced uneasily, yes. There were murmurs, wide eyes. But they didn’t breathe the storm like he did. Didn’t taste the charge riding the air on their tongues.
His pack lands had taught him to read weather and magic the way other men read words.
And what coiled under Kaia’s skin felt like a gathering storm years in the making.
Her back arched again.
Something gave.
Light exploded out of her.
Tiernan threw up an arm, instinctively shielding his eyes. The wolves around him yelped, some staggering back, others dropping to one knee as the force of it washed over them.
It wasn’t just light.
It was *power*.
Raw. Untamed. Wild as a wildfire breaking its boundaries.
For a single, terrifying heartbeat, Tiernan thought she would burn herself out from the inside.
Then the light coalesced.
Where a girl had been writhing in the snow, a wolf now stood.
Tiernan knew, instantly, that she was not like any he’d ever seen.
She was…huge. For a female, for any wolf. Her shoulders came nearly to his chest even on all fours. But it wasn’t just her size. It was her *presence*. The air around her hummed, heavy and electric. Her fur was bronze-dark at the roots, shot through with streaks of white-hot silver that flickered and shifted like living lightning.
Her eyes were molten—bronze ringed with searing white, light pulsing in time with her ragged breaths.
She snarled, head whipping as she took in the ring of wolves around her, lips peeled back from gleaming white fangs.
Several warriors instinctively dropped their gazes, their wolves bowing inside them before their minds caught up.
Alpha Rhys stiffened.
“Goddess,” someone whispered. “What…is she?”
“Elemental,” Elyra said, her voice small and steady. “Just like her parents.”
Tiernan’s head snapped toward her.
“What did you say?”
The Luna’s shoulders slumped, something like shame etching her fine features.
“I hoped,” she said quietly, “that the Goddess would spare her. That the bloodline had jumped a generation. But I suppose…she never does.”
“Explain,” Tiernan bit out.
“Not here,” Elyra said, looking around at the crowd that had already begun to gather from all parts of the grounds. “Not—”
Kaia’s wolf lunged.
Not at anyone.
Instinct drove her *away*.
Away from the buildings, from the crowd, from the crushing press of stares and scents and expectations. She leapt, powerful muscles bunching, snow exploding under her paws.
“Kaia!” Brenna shouted.
“Stop her!” Corin barked. “She’ll hurt someone—”
Tiernan didn’t hesitate.
His clothes were off and in the snow before the thought had fully formed. Bones shifted, ligaments stretching, fur bursting from skin as he surrendered to the familiar, violent slide into his other self.
Kade exploded out of him in a rush of black and silver fur, a snarl splitting his muzzle, eyes hot ember-red.
Mate. Ours.
He didn’t spare the other wolves a glance. He flung himself after her, paws digging deep furrows into the snow, breath burning in his chest.
She was fast.
Her new, untested body ate the ground in great, loping strides, but there was something chaotic about her movement, powerful and uncoordinated, as if her instincts were scrambling to catch up with the sheer force of her muscles and magic.
Snow kicked up in plumes as she thundered toward the treeline.
*Kade,* Tiernan snapped in their shared mind. *Careful. She’s not just afraid. She’s unstable.*
*So are we,* Kade shot back, but there was more awe than recklessness in his tone. *Look at her.*
Tiernan did.
She was a streak of bronze and lightning against the white, a living contradiction—awkward and magnificent at once. Power radiated off her in waves, making the air around her shimmer. When her paws hit the snow, thin cracks spidered out like fractured ice.
She veered left, then right, spine twisting as if something inside her didn’t quite fit.
*She doesn’t know her own strength,* Kade realized. *She’ll break herself on the first tree if we don’t—*
They hit the treeline just as she did.
The forest swallowed her, the world narrowing to trunks and branches and the crisp scent of pine and frost. Tiernan pushed harder, his body built for this terrain, for dodging between trees, for leaping fallen logs.
He caught a glimpse of her ahead—plowing straight through a low-hanging branch instead of ducking it. It exploded into splinters around her shoulders. She shook her head, dazed, then stumbled, paws sliding on an icy patch.
Without thinking, Tiernan surged forward and shouldered into her, redirecting her momentum so she didn’t crash chest-first into a tree.
She snarled, snapping at him on reflex, teeth flashing dangerously close to his throat.
He took it. He let her jaws close on his ruff, her teeth piercing skin. Pain flared, but he held steady, muscles braced, giving her something to push against.
*Easy,* he rumbled into her mind, laying his aura over hers as gently as he could. Not a command. A presence. *Easy, stormheart.*
Her teeth loosened fractionally.
Her eyes—those wild, glowing eyes—met his.
Recognition flashed again. Stronger this time. Clearer.
*Kai—* he started.
Something slammed into his flank.
He went tumbling, snow spraying, a snarl wrenched from his chest.
Another wolf—a large, dark gray male—had hit him from the side, lips peeled back, teeth bared.
Back off, foreign alpha, the other wolf’s posture screamed. You don’t get to—
Kade recovered in a roll, coming up on his feet, hackles high, a growl rumbling so deep it vibrated the ground.
“Enough!” Elyra’s voice cut through the air, sharp as a whip crack.
Both wolves froze.
The Luna stood at the edge of the trees, skirts damp with snow, hair tangled. Alpha Rhys was a looming shadow at her side, his own wolf half-risen under his skin, eyes burning.
A ring of warriors hovered just behind them, tension rolling off them in waves.
“Stand down, Kellan,” Rhys snapped at the gray wolf, his Gamma.
The gray wolf—Kellan—hesitated, gaze flicking between Kaia’s massive, crackling form and Tiernan’s bristling one.
“Now,” Rhys bit out, alpha command lacing the single word.
Kellan’s ears flattened. He dropped his gaze and backed off, shifting mid-step back into human form, panting, naked chest streaked with snow and sweat.
Tiernan shook himself, sending a spray of blood from the bite on his neck. His eyes never left Kaia.
She stood between them all, breathing hard, fur bristling. Small tongues of pale fire licked along her shoulders, vanishing into steam as they touched the snow.
*She’s burning herself,* Kade muttered.
Tiernan eased forward, careful to keep his movements slow and lateral, not direct or threatening.
Kaia’s ears pricked. Her nose twitched as she inhaled his scent.
*Mate,* Kade crooned, pouring warmth and reassurance into the word.
Her posture shifted.
Just a little. But enough.
The wild, feral edge of her snarl softened. Confusion rippled across her features. She whined, a small, almost pup-like sound that broke every chain around Tiernan’s heart.
*It’s all right,* he told her. *You’re all right. Breathe. Listen.*
He laid his aura over her again, this time more deliberately—alpha power tempered by something gentler. Not dominance. Shelter.
Her breathing hitched.
For a second, the crackling energy around her flared, bright enough to make the snow hiss and melt in a wider circle.
Then, slowly, it began to ebb.
The glow in her fur dimmed. The flickering tongues of fire sputtered and died. Her massive shoulders slumped, muscles quivering with exhaustion.
She took one shaky step toward him.
Then another.
Then her legs gave out.
Tiernan moved without thinking.
His body flowed back into human form mid-stride, bones snapping, fur withdrawing. He caught her as she fell, arms wrapping around her massive shoulders, his bare chest pressed to her hot, shuddering fur.
She was too big for him to hold fully, but he anchored her head in his lap, one hand fisted in the thick fur at her ruff, the other splayed over her ribs, feeling the frantic gallop of her heart gradually slow.
“Easy,” he rasped, voice hoarse. “Easy, Kaia. You did it.”
Her great head lolled.
Her muzzle nudged weakly at his bare thigh, almost unconsciously seeking comfort.
He wanted to gather her up, to carry her somewhere safe and quiet and wrap himself around her until the world made sense again.
Instead, he lifted his gaze to the wolves watching them.
Rhys’s face was carved from stone, but a muscle jumped in his jaw.
“You will explain,” Tiernan said, his tone edged. “Now. What you did. What you *didn’t* do.”
“Careful, Voss,” Rhys growled. “You are in my—”
“Sixteen years,” Tiernan snarled, rising to his feet, still bracing Kaia’s head gently on the snow. He was naked and didn’t care. “You had a girl with this much power in your midst, and you left her wolfless. Vulnerable. Ignorant. *Alone*.”
“We didn’t *leave* her—” Corin started, face mottled.
“You hid her,” Elyra said quietly, cutting him off.
Every head swiveled toward her.
“Luna?” Rhys said sharply.
“We hid what she was,” Elyra continued, eyes on Kaia. There were tears there, shining and unshed. “We told no one. Not even her.”
Tiernan’s hands curled into fists.
“Why?”
“Because of what happened to her parents,” Elyra whispered.
The memory of the story slipped through Tiernan’s mind—the rumor he’d heard in passing, years ago. A rogue attack. A warrior couple dead defending their Luna. A pup left orphaned.
He’d never been told that couple had been *elementals*.
Old, old blood.
Old, old magic.
“I thought,” Elyra said, her voice breaking, “that if we kept her small, kept her hidden, if we never *spoke* of what Mira and Darin were, that maybe…the power would skip her. That she would live an ordinary, safe life.”
Tiernan stared at her.
“She’s an omega,” Corin spat. “That *is* ordinary. For her.”
“She was never omega material,” Elyra said sharply, rounding on him. “You know that.”
Corin’s mouth twisted. “What does it matter what she was *meant* to be, if she never had a wolf?”
“She had a wolf,” Tiernan snarled. “You all just never gave her the chance to *wake*.”
“Impossible,” Rhys said coldly. “Wolves do not simply appear eight years late because some foreign alpha looks at them.”
“Not just any alpha,” Elyra said hoarsely. “Her mate.”
The word landed like a rock in a still pond, sending ripples through the gathered wolves.
“You *knew*?” Tiernan demanded, fury spiking. “You knew she had an elemental bloodline and you stuck her in the kitchens? You let your Beta’s whelp throw towels at her?”
Elyra’s composure cracked at that, grief twisting her beautiful features. “I thought I was protecting her,” she said. “You weren’t here, Voss. You didn’t see what happened last time an elemental took full form in this pack.”
“Enlighten me,” he bit out.
“Her parents’ wolves,” she whispered. “They burned half a rogue army to ash. And nearly took a quarter of our warriors with them. They couldn’t control it. It took Rhys and Kellan and three other alphas to bring them down without killing them. The cost was—” Her throat worked. “High.”
Tiernan’s jaw clenched.
“So you decided the best course,” he said, voice ice-calm over boiling rage, “was to leave their daughter powerless. Friendless. At the mercy of every petty cruelty in your pack.”
Elyra flinched.
Rhys’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Watch yourself,” he growled. “You do not know what we have done for this pack. Or for her.”
“You can start by telling me why,” Tiernan said, every word deliberate, “you are acting like her mate claiming her is a problem, instead of the answer the Goddess just handed you.”
Silence pressed.
“You come into my home,” Rhys said finally, low and deadly, “you command my Beta, shame my pack in my hall, and now you dare—”
“What do you plan to do with her?” Tiernan cut in, equally soft. He gestured at Kaia’s still form. “Because I’ll tell you what you *can’t* do. You can’t shove her back in the scullery and pretend nothing happened. You can’t keep her wolfless and tame while that much power roils under her skin. You *will* lose control of her. And when you do, people will die.”
“You speak as if you know,” Kellan snapped.
“I do know,” Tiernan said, baring his teeth in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Stormwake territory is ringed by old stones and older storms. Our first alpha bound half his soul to the mountain lightning to protect our land. We train with elemental surges every damn winter. We know how to ride the edge. Do you?”
Kellan’s nostrils flared.
Elyra inhaled sharply. “You would…take her?”
Tiernan’s gaze slid down to Kaia.
No.
The answer formed in his chest before the question had fully left Elyra’s mouth.
Not take.
Claim.
Protect.
Cherish.
The ferocity of it startled even him.
“I would give her what she should have had years ago,” he said. “Training. Pack. A place where her power isn’t feared, but guided. Where she isn’t treated like trash because you’re too scared of what she might become.”
“She is *our* pack member,” Rhys growled. “Our responsibility.”
“You abdicated that responsibility the moment you let your wolves call her curse and useless omega to her face.”
Rhys surged forward, aura flaring.
Tiernan met it, Kade lunging inside him, their combined power slamming up against Rhys’s like colliding tides.
Wolves around them whimpered, some dropping to their knees, some shifting halfway against their will. The air crackled.
“Enough,” Elyra snapped, her own power unfurling in a sudden, sharp wave.
It wasn’t alpha power. It was different—cooler, like moonlight on snow. But it sliced between the two clashing male auras with surprising force.
“We will not tear this pack apart in the training yard,” she said, voice ringing. “Not over a girl who is barely conscious.”
“She is not just a girl,” Tiernan snarled.
“She is *my* pack,” Rhys said.
“She is my *mate*,” Tiernan shot back.
The word hung there.
Everyone heard the truth in it.
Everyone smelled it in the way their scents tangled, in the way Kaia’s sleeping wolf stirred when Tiernan’s frustration spiked.
Elyra closed her eyes briefly.
“What does she want?” she asked quietly.
The question surprised him.
Tiernan looked down again.
Kaia’s massive wolf head lay half in his lap, half on the snow. Her fur was damp with melted frost and sweat. Steamy breath huffed weakly from her nostrils. Her eyelids twitched as if she were dreaming.
*Kaia,* he tried gently, reaching along the fragile, glowing thread that had snapped taut between them in the dining hall. *Little storm. Can you hear me?*
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then—a flicker.
*Go away,* a faint, exhausted voice grumbled in his mind. *Too loud.*
Despite everything, a rough huff of laughter escaped him.
*Not happening,* he said. *Wake up. They’re talking about you like you’re a piece of meat to be passed around.*
*Rude,* she muttered. Then more clearly: *My head hurts.*
*Mine too,* he admitted. *Price of being special, I guess.*
There was a pulse of amusement under the weariness.
Then, tentatively: *Who…are you?*
He swallowed against the unexpected tightness in his throat.
*Tiernan,* he said. Saying his own name in the private space of her mind felt strangely intimate, like baring his neck. *Tiernan Voss. Stormwake alpha. Your—*
He hesitated, then pushed through.
*Your mate.*
There was a pause.
Then: *No.*
The word was small but fierce.
He blinked.
*No?* he echoed.
*No,* she repeated, stronger. *I don’t…trust…alphas.*
The last word was spat like a curse.
A low, instinctive growl rumbled up his chest before he could stop it.
Not *at* her. At the world that had made her say that.
*I’m not your alpha,* he said roughly. *Not yet. Just…Tiernan. Just a man who very much doesn’t want to leave you here to be stepped on.*
Her mental presence wavered, exhaustion dragging at the edges.
*Can’t…leave,* she mumbled. *Omegas. Brenna. Nana. They need…me.*
Of course she was worried about others even now.
Something warm and heavy settled in his chest.
*What do you need?* he asked.
Silence.
Then, so soft he barely caught it: *A chance.*
His fingers tightened in her fur.
He lifted his head, meeting the Luna’s gaze.
“She wants a chance,” he said aloud. “To be more than what you’ve allowed her to be.”
Elyra’s throat worked. “And you believe you can give that to her.”
“I *know* I can,” he said. “We train our wolves to ride lightning, Luna. To dance on the edge of storm cliffs. We know power. We know fear. We do not bury what we are afraid of.”
Rhys’s jaw clenched. “Even if she wanted to leave—which she has not said—she is underage. She belongs to this pack until she’s of age and formally released.”
“She’s seventeen,” Tiernan snapped. “You’re quibbling over months?”
“I am honoring our laws.”
“Your laws nearly killed her.”
“Enough,” Elyra said again, quieter but somehow more decisive. She looked down at the girl in the snow, at the massive, exhausted wolf whose fur still steamed in the cold air. At the boy Tiernan had been, standing in this same yard eight years ago, watching bodies carried from the forest.
He realized, with a jolt, that she was remembering him. He had visited Redwood Shadow once as a teenager with his father, before Rhys had taken over. Elyra had been younger then. Lighter.
“You will both get what you want,” she said slowly. “Eventually. But not today.”
Tiernan’s teeth ground together. “Luna—”
“She is *not* leaving this territory until we understand what she is and what she can do,” Elyra said, steel under the softness now. “Until we know she will not burn your mountains down around you in some storm-tossed tantrum.”
Tiernan opened his mouth.
“She also,” Elyra continued firmly, “will not be shoved back into the omega quarters to scrub floors and dodge insults as if nothing has changed. Not after this. Not with the Goddess’s mark burned so clearly on her.”
Rhys stared at her. “Elyra—”
“I am still your Luna,” she said without looking at him. “In matters of the Goddess, you will listen.”
Tiernan, despite his frustration, felt a flicker of respect.
“What do you propose,” he asked tightly.
Elyra’s gaze drifted to the training rings, to the packhouse, to the distant omega dorms half-hidden behind the main building.
“She will stay,” she said. “For now. She will train. With Kellan. With whomever else we need. And with you, if you truly know what you claim to know. She will learn what she is. *Who* she is. And when she is of age—” She exhaled. “We will let her choose.”
Tiernan’s jaw flexed.
Wait months while she stayed here, under the thumb of a Beta who hated her, an Alpha who’d neglected her, in a pack that had taught her to flinch at every raised voice?
Kade bristled, pacing. *Unacceptable.*
*She asked for a chance,* Tiernan reminded him grimly. *Not a rescue.*
Kade snarled anyway.
“What if she chooses to stay?” Rhys prodded, a faint, smug smile touching his mouth.
Tiernan bared his teeth. “Then I will respect her choice. Even if it kills me.”
Elyra studied him.
“You would,” she said, sounding faintly surprised.
“Yes.”
She nodded once. “Then that is the path the Goddess has laid.”
Rhys made a disgruntled sound. “We’re just going to allow a foreign alpha to linger in our territory, playing trainer and—”
“If he leaves,” Elyra said sharply, “she will have no anchor for her powers. You saw what happened when her wolf woke. Do you want a repeat of Mira and Darin, only worse because you insisted on your pride?”
Rhys’s teeth clicked together.
“Fine,” he bit out. “Voss can stay. For now. But he will respect our rules. Our hierarchy. Our authority.”
Tiernan didn’t bother to agree.
His hand tightened on Kaia’s fur again, feeling the faint tremors running through her.
“What about her?” he asked quietly. “What happens when she wakes up properly and realizes every eye in this pack just saw her brought to her knees in the yard like a spectacle?”
Elyra’s gaze softened. “We give her what we can,” she whispered. “Answers. Options. Time.”
“And?” he pressed.
“And we pray,” she said, looking suddenly so tired it made something in his chest pinch, “that the Moon Goddess has not set us all on a path we cannot survive.”
Tiernan looked down at his mate—his storm, his second chance, his impossible gift—and felt, for the first time in years, something like faith stir under his ribs.
Not in the Goddess.
In the fierce, exhausted girl whose head lay in his lap.
“She will survive,” he said, conviction ringing through every word. “I’ll make damn sure of it.”
He didn’t say the rest aloud.
*Even if I have to burn this pack’s rules to ash to do it.*
---