Rejected by the Alpha, Crowned by the Moon

I woke tasting silver on my tongue and knowing it wasn't mine.

The twilight pressed against my skin like wet silk, too warm for the season, too thick for natural air. My blood moved differently since yesterday's healing—sluggish and hot, as if the shard had left honey in my veins. Or venom. Hard to tell the difference anymore.

Something watched from between the trees. Not him—I knew his presence like my own shadow now. This was older. Patient in the way of things that had already won and were just waiting for me to realize it.

"You're bleeding," came the voice from somewhere to my left.

I touched my nose. Crimson on fingertips, but it sparkled. Since when did blood sparkle?

Since you started becoming, the shard whispered—not in words, but in sensation. A low hum in my teeth, a tightness behind my eyes. It felt pleased. Or hungry. Maybe both.

We were moving before full dark, following game trails toward the eastern border. Five nights until the Trial Moon. Five nights to prepare for whatever came hunting. But first, he insisted, I needed to understand the landscape. Know every hollow, every stream, every place where the world grew thin.

The screaming started just after full dark.

Not human. Not quite wolf. Something between—the sound of a body trying to remember what shape it was supposed to hold. We found him in a ravine, pinned beneath a fallen pine that must have come down in last night's wind.

A boy. Maybe fifteen summers. Rogue from his scent, but fresh to it. The tree had crushed his legs, and the angle... even in moonlight, I could see bone through skin.

"Please," he gasped. "Please, I can't—I can't feel—"

I was moving before thought formed. The silver flame came so easily now, eager to be used, eager to prove itself. I'd healed poison. I could heal this.

Yes, the shard purred. Show him what we can do.

My hands found the boy's mangled legs. The flame responded instantly, silver light pooling between my fingers like liquid starlight. For a moment—just a moment—I felt it working. Felt bone trying to knit, flesh trying to seal.

Then it went wrong.

The healing became something else. The flesh didn't mend—it changed. Silver threads spread beneath his skin like infection, twisting muscle into patterns that belonged in nightmares. His scream changed pitch, became something no throat should produce.

"Stop!" Hands on my shoulders, pulling me back. "Stop, you're—"

I saw what I was doing. The boy's legs weren't healing. They were becoming something else. Something that pulsed with silver light and moved wrong, joint bending in directions that broke every law of anatomy.

I jerked back, flame dying instantly. But the damage was done. Where I'd tried to mend, I'd created aberration. The boy stared at his transformed flesh, eyes wide with horror that had no words.

"Kill me," he whispered. "Please. Before it spreads."

The knife was faster than my protest. Clean across the throat. Mercy given with the efficiency of someone who'd delivered it before.

"The gods don't give," he said quietly as the boy's eyes went dark. "They test."

I stumbled away, made it three steps before my knees gave out. The taste of failure was ash and silver, coating my throat like shame. I'd tried to save. Tried to heal. Instead, I'd created something worse than death.

You gave him transformation, came the shard's pulse—tight pressure behind my ribs, the crawl of heat up my spine. He was too weak to accept the gift.

"It wasn't a gift." My voice cracked. "It was mutilation."

Then came a ripple under my skin. Like laughter. Like something under the surface shifting.

Dirt beneath my hands shivered. My bones tingled—as if they were rearranging, reshaping without my consent.

He knelt beside me. I felt his presence before I saw him. His hand reached toward my shoulder—hesitated.

And something inside me reacted.

Heat spread. My skin flushed, lips tingling with a strange warmth. The shard didn't burn—it possessed. It warned.

He touches you like you're still a body, it hissed in sensation. A low frequency beneath my heartbeat. But I know what you truly are.

His hand stopped an inch away. He said nothing. Just moved to his feet, put distance between us.

"We should burn the body," he said at last, gaze flicking to the corpse.

We built the pyre in silence. But his eyes lingered too long on my throat, on the place where silver pulsed just beneath the skin.

He's just a man, came the shard's hum. Flesh and fear and fading. I am your becoming. I am forever.

I focused on the work. Or tried to. But its presence had weight now. A second heartbeat behind my ribs.

Sleep came wrong.

I dreamed of running, but my legs weren't legs. Dreamed of howling, but my mouth poured silver flame instead.

Then the forest changed. Became something older.

A wolf waited in the mist.

Translucent. Starved. Scarred by time. Its ribs visible through phantom fur, its eyes hollow.

It limped closer. I couldn't move. Could only watch.

"Do you even remember your name anymore?"

I opened my mouth to answer—tried to say Aria—but the word wouldn't come. What came was silver light. Streaming from my throat like confession.

The wolf watched. Not with malice. With mourning.

"The last time flame tried to save," it said, voice like wind through broken things, "the forest still wept. Trees remember what wolves forget. Names especially."

Then it was gone.

Not in smoke. In silence.

But before vanishing, it left a word:

Miralys.

I woke with dirt in my mouth and a blade at my throat.

"You were gone," came the warning. "Body here. But you were... elsewhere."

I spat earth. Looked down. My arms were coated to the elbows in soil. Nails cracked. Torn. I'd been digging.

"The wolf," I whispered. "Did you see it?"

"No." But his eyes scanned the trees. And I knew he'd felt it too.

This time, when he helped me up, the shard didn't burn. It pulsed. Not rejection. Recognition.

Something howled in the distance.

Not wolf. Not Flamebound.

Something older.

The shard turned toward it.

Not my body. But the sense of me. Like flowers lean to light.

Home, it pulsed.

"Who?" I asked. No answer. Only silence thick with meaning.

He moved to the edge of the clearing, weapons ready.

I didn't follow. Just stood, listening to the thing inside me hum like it had heard its name in the howl.

Four nights until the Trial Moon.

Four nights to remember who I used to be.

Miralys.

And for the first time, I was afraid.