Chapter 4 INSTINCTS

Lucian stared out the window, his jaw tight, his fingers drumming an absent rhythm against the windowsill. Something in his nature recognized something in hers and it made him uncomfortable. He replayed their conversations in his mind, searching for inconsistencies, for any hint of what she truly was. The way she had looked at him not with the usual fear or fascination that most people offered but with something almost like recognition. It unsettled him more than he was willing to admit.

There was something different about her, something he couldn’t quite place. She wasn’t wolf. He would have known immediately. But she wasn’t entirely human either. He could sense that much.

He was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the heavy footsteps until a shadow fell across his desk.

“When are you going to step out of the shadow and lead your own pack?” His father’s voice dripped with disdain. All his life, his father had looked down on him, and Lucian had spent years trying to understand why. What had he done wrong? What was it about him that Kaelen could never accept? Lucian flinched, his stomach twisting into knots. Alpha Kaelen, a towering figure with eyes like chips of ice, radiated power the way a fire radiated heat consuming everything around it. “You’re too soft, Lucian. Too weak to lead this pack. An Alpha doesn’t waste his time on trivial pursuits. An Alpha focuses on strength, on power.” Lucian’s fists clenched, but he kept his gaze down, unwilling to meet his father’s piercing stare. “You disgust me,” Kaelen spat. “Spending your time doing nothing instead of honing a skill. How do you think I became this powerful?”

The words landed like blows, each one precisely aimed. Lucian said nothing. He had learned long ago that silence was the only armour that worked against his father. Anything else, a defence, an argument, even a flicker of emotion, would only be used against him.

“That’s enough, Kaelen!” Lucian’s mother, Lyra, stepped into the room, her voice a low growl. Though smaller in stature than her mate, she possessed a fierce protectiveness that no one dared challenge. Her eyes locked onto Kaelen’s with a steadiness that made even the Alpha pause. “Lucian is doing what he needs to do. He’s learning, he’s growing, and he will be a great Alpha.” Kaelen scoffed, but Lyra stood her ground. “He’s trying to understand the world around him, something you seem to have forgotten how to do. Maybe that’s why you can’t see the potential he possesses.”

For a moment, the room held its breath. Kaelen’s gaze moved slowly from Lyra back to Lucian, something dark and unreadable passing through his eyes. Then he turned and walked out without another word, his footsteps heavy and deliberate, the door swinging shut behind him.

The silence he left was suffocating.

Lyra crossed the room and placed a hand on Lucian’s shoulder. “Don’t let him hollow you out,” she said quietly. “That’s what he wants.” Lucian looked at her, at the tiredness etched into the lines of her face, the kind of tiredness that had nothing to do with sleep. He nodded once, not trusting his voice.

But the fury was already rising.

A surge of rage ripped through him, fueled by his father’s constant belittling and his mother’s unwavering defense, the fact that she always had to defend him, that it had come to this, again and again and again. He felt the shift before he could stop it, a strong urge rising within him. His bones cracked, his muscles contorted, and fur sprouted across his skin. The world narrowed to instinct, to heat, to the desperate need to be anywhere but here. With a final heart-wrenching howl, he crashed through the window, shards of glass raining down as he fled into the darkening tree line, swallowed whole by the forest.

Lyra stood alone in the wreckage of the room, glass glittering across the floor like scattered stars. She exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers to her temple. “Oh, Lucian,” she whispered to no one.

Meanwhile, back at Marcella’s house…

She thought about her parents too, for the first time in a long time really thought about them, not just the soft, carefully preserved versions of them she kept in the back of her mind. Faces she knew only from photographs. Aunt Liv had always spoken of them with such tenderness, such careful, measured love, that Marcella had never thought to question the edges of the story.

But now the edges were all she could see.

They had known. Whatever this was, this power, this curse, this supernatural world that had apparently been circling her entire life, they had known about it. Had carried it.

The thought sat heavy in her chest, shapeless and cold. She didn’t have words for it yet. It wasn’t quite grief, she had done her grieving for them long ago, in the quiet, lonely way children grieve people they never got to know. This was something else. A question that hadn’t fully formed yet, hovering just out of reach, too frightening to pull into the light.

Did it have something to do with this?

She didn’t let herself finish the thought. Not yet. She pressed it back down, buried it beneath everything else, and stared at the wall until her eyes stopped stinging.

“Marcella, we’re here!” Selene’s voice echoed through the hallway as it disrupted Marcella’s thoughts. She and Carmilla bounded up the stairs, their energy filling the space the way it always did, warm and easy and familiar. But the cheerful atmosphere evaporated the moment they pushed open the bedroom door and saw her.

Marcella sat on the bed, shoulders slumped, eyes red rimmed, her hands folded in her lap like she was trying to hold herself together.

“Marcella, what’s wrong?” Carmilla asked, the joy in her voice immediately replaced with concern. She moved closer, her brow creasing.

Marcella offered a weak smile, trying to play it off. “Nothing, just a bad day.” But her friends knew her too well. They had been there through everything the school rally, the way Lucian had publicly humiliated her in front of everyone, the kind of hurt that doesn’t fade cleanly. They knew what her real smile looked like, and this wasn’t it.

“It doesn’t look like ‘nothing,’ Marc,” Selene said, her voice gentle as she stepped further into the room. “You’re crying.”

Marcella looked away. The truth pressed against the inside of her chest like something trying to get out. She had confided in Selene and Carmilla about almost everything, every embarrassment, every heartbreak, every fear. But this was different. This was a secret about her very nature, something she herself had only just learned and still barely understood. How could she hand them something she hadn’t even fully processed herself?

“It’s just… a lot,” she mumbled, trying to deflect.

Selene sat beside her on the bed, close enough that their shoulders touched. “We’re here for you, whatever it is. You know you can tell us anything.”

Carmilla settled on her other side without being asked, a quiet solidarity in the gesture. For a moment, the three of them just sat there, and despite everything, Marcella felt the knot in her chest loosen just slightly.

She managed a watery smile, trying to project a strength she didn’t feel. She opened her mouth, some half-formed deflection ready on her tongue.

And then the scream cut through everything.

Bloodcurdling. Raw. Tearing through the hallway from downstairs like something had ripped it out of the air itself. It was followed immediately by the sound of shattering glass.

All three of them froze.

Marcella’s eyes went wide, every nerve in her body snapping to attention. The sound had come from downstairs. From where Aunt Liv was.

Her breath hitched in her throat. The colour drained from her face. And then, before the silence had even settled, her voice cracked as she choked out

“Aunt Liv!”