Chapter 148

Lauren

Time no longer made sense.

The silver light of the Moon bathed the clearing, wrapping around Abigail and me like a veil. Everything beyond it—the crumbling of our pack, the convulsing wolves, the poisoned earth—hung still, suspended in some divine stasis.

The chaos was there, I knew it was there, but in this beam of light, we were cut off from time itself. Held in the space between heartbeats.

My daughter stood in front of me, our hands still locked, her shoulders squared as if she could hold the weight of the world on her own.

And maybe she could.

“You’ve done enough,” Abigail said, voice trembling but clear. “It’s my turn now.”

“No.” My voice cracked. “No, you don’t get to say that to me. You haven’t even lived yet. You haven’t shifted. You haven’t found your path. Don’t take this weight—you don’t know what it’ll cost!”

“I do.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “I’ve always known. Since the Goddess brought me back. I’ve felt it… like a ticking clock. Like something in me was already borrowed.”

“Then we fight it,” I hissed, the desperation rising in my chest like a flood. “We find another way. We don’t give in just because something ancient says it has to be this way.”

She looked at me then—really looked. And what I saw undid me. Not fear. Not even defiance.

Peace.

It was the kind of peace I had never known at her age. The kind forged in fire, in sacrifice, in certainty.

“You told me being a woman wasn’t weakness,” she said softly. “That everything we touch grows. That we don’t fight like them—we fight with everything. I can feel her, Mom. The Moon. She’s asking.”

“No,” I whispered. “She’s not asking. She’s giving us a cruel choice dressed up as a blessing. And I won’t let you walk into that.”

From the edge of the light, Theo cried out—his voice raw with agony. “Abigail, don’t! Don’t do it! There has to be another way!”

His silhouette trembled where the corruption still clung to him. He looked like a boy standing in the eye of a storm, bones shaking, heart breaking. But Abigail kept her eyes on me.

“I love you,” she whispered to him, and he must have heard it, because he staggered forward, reaching for her—but the posion held him back. It had only chosen two of us to witness the moment.

Then, the Moon spoke.

Not in words. Not in commands.

In feeling.

A warm sorrow swept through me, filling my lungs, pressing behind my eyes.

She lives near only because I hold her. Abigail walks by my light alone. And with her, I can cleanse this place. Save the bond. But only with her.

The weight of it dropped me to my knees.

“No,” I breathed. “Please. Please don’t do this. You’ve already taken too much. Don’t take her! Take me!”

The warmth pulsed again—gentle but unrelenting. The divine didn’t barter. She offered choice, but not escape.

Beside me, Abigail knelt. Her fingers brushed mine.

“I want this,” she said, almost in a whisper. “If it saves them—if it saves Owen—I want this.”

I turned to her fully, cradling her face in my hands like I did when she was small. “You don’t understand what you’re giving up! Stop! Stop!”

“I do.” Her voice broke. “I do, Mom. I’ve always dreamed of running as a wolf. Of shifting. Of feeling the dirt under my paws, the wind in my fur. I wanted it so bad it used to make me cry when I was little.”

Tears slid down my cheeks. “Then why—”

“Because Owen will. And Theo. And the kids who haven’t lived, shifted yet. They still can. We gotta the bond with our wolf mother” She blinked, more tears falling. “I’ll still have a future. Just… a different one.”

She smiled, a little. Brave and broken.

I held her for a moment longer, not knowing if it would be the last.

And then she turned her face to the sky.

“I give it freely,” she said. “I give what’s mine.”

The moment she said it, the light changed.

It exploded outward, not violently—but with force. A wave of silver flame burst from us, searing through the corruption like wildfire, chasing every black tendril and smoke back into the ground. The cursed roots curled, cracked, then disintegrated, one by one. The rot screamed—high and keening—and then fell silent.

It was like watching a wound reverse.

Wolves collapsed again—but this time in relief. No longer convulsing. Breathing. Safe.

The Moonlight faded back into the sky.

And Abigail fell forward into my arms.

“Abigail! Abigail!” I screamed, shaking her before my head snarled to the sky. “I’ll kill you! You’ll pay! You’ll—”

“Mom, chill.”

I stopped mid breath for another scream, looking down at my daughter, confusion echoing ove rmy face. I felt her heartbeat against mine, slow and steady. But the warmth that had once lived inside her—the divine tether, the wolf spirit yearning to awaken—was gone.

Not extinguished.

Just… closed.

“I didn’t give my life,” Abigail sighed, pushing away. “I gave up my wolf. My transformation. I’m just a human.”

Abigail would never shift.

And that was the price.

I buried my face in her hair and sobbed.

I’d always believed sacrifice was something you made on the battlefield. With blades. With blood.

But this?

This was the sacrifice that left you breathing.

This was the kind you had to live with.

The kind that never let go.

I rocked her in my arms, whispering wordless comforts as the Moon’s voice receded—still faintly there, like the echo of a lullaby heard underwater. That stupid Moon Goddess, she scared me half to death. Making it sound like she would take my daughter. I could almost hear the snickering.

Across the sacred ground, Owen stirred.

He sat up slowly, glancing around at the pack, then down at his hands. Then, like it clicked—what she had done—his head snapped toward us.

He saw her.

And his eyes broke.

But he stood.

Somehow, through the dust and ruin, Owen stood, ceremonial robes tattered, face streaked with soot and tears—and walked back to the stage.

Everything was ruin, toppled, crumbled. But enough of it stood to finish what had been started.

He placed his hand on the fractured altar.

“I vow,” he said, voice steadier than it had any right to be, “to lead not by tradition, but by love. Not by legacy—but by truth.”

Finishing what he started.

The moonlight found him again. Not as bright as before.

But real.

Unified. Earned.

The pack stood one by one.

And the Alpha King—silent, unmoving—bowed his head.

Not in defeat.

In acknowledgment.

Then came a howl.

One at first—young, cracked.

Then another.

And another.

Until the clearing filled with it—howls that shook the trees, that bled sorrow and rebirth and something ancient breaking open.

Led not by their elders.

But by the ones who had been forced to grow up tonight.

The younger generation howled the loudest.

They were no longer children.

Abigail

The light was gone.

The roar of the pack’s howls had faded into silence, replaced by something eerier—a stillness so full of breath and meaning it hurt to listen to it.

I was alive.

I knew I would be, but I guess that wasn’t clear to Mom.

But the world felt thinner now. Distant. Like I’d stepped out of one skin and into another.

My head rested against my mom’s chest. She hadn’t let go of me yet, and I hadn’t asked her to. Her arms were tight around me like she still wasn’t sure I was real. Her heartbeat thudded against my cheek, steady and anchoring.

We were sitting in the dirt together, the sacred grounds still scorched around us, smelling of ash and new air. The rot was gone. The Moon’s presence was a whisper now—dim, quiet, but still there.

I didn’t feel pain.

But I felt the absence. My wolf—the presence I’d been waiting for since I was a child—was just… gone. Like it had never been. Like the door had shut and locked from the inside.

My lips parted, but I didn’t have words yet.

Just that this… sucked.