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“There you are.”

Flora stood with four other people. Ophelia, the little girl, and the red-haired woman who was her mother, a woman who resembled someone I’d seen in my head.

Sylvan stood apart from them slightly, watching the lot of us enter, his eyes slightly narrowed and a small smile on his face.

Like he was determining something, I realised as we got closer, working out who and what we were.

“More of you, and closer now,” Flora said, then nodded her head. She started to stump over towards us, leaning heavily on her cane, the woman making a small sound, but Flora just waved her off. “Not too old to walk across a damn room, Mother, but I guess that is just your nature.”

Flora paused midway between us, glancing from me to the red-haired woman and then back again, then cackled.

“But if you’re the mother, what’re you, Priestess?

” She eyed me closely, the evil smile somewhat fading, the deep lines of her face proclaiming her age and wisdom.

“Crone, mother, maiden, always the divine three. The priestess is usually the mother, the one with the energy to meet the needs of the community and some of the wisdom.”

The little girl broke away from her mother, pacing closer, looking us over carefully with what appeared to be an intelligence beyond her years.

“Priestess?” There was a challenge in her voice. I didn’t understand the context or the content, so it kinda went over my head, but something inside me didn’t. “No, you’re something else again—meddler, parasite, aberration.”

She bit the words off, the little girl, damning me before the crowd, but for what? It was him that provided the final answer, joining the rest of the group, leaving the red-haired woman behind, looking a little lost.

“Branwen?”

He looked into my eyes like they were the windows into something or someone else, and maybe that was true. I’d carried around my Tirian inside me for years, but now? It was starting to feel awfully crowded in here.

NO! my Tirian roared, and I was surprised when I saw others flinch at that, but my beast’s cry was quickly ignored, as was I. I felt our consciousness, all we were, shoved roughly aside to make room for her.

Watching your body move, seeing your hand reach out, feeling your lips purse, when you aren’t the one that moves them, that shit is freaky.

“Sylvan?” she used my voice to say his name with every iota of repressed passion I felt right now, for a man I didn’t know. He blinked, something surging there, his eyes turning bright green in response, but while I saw hope rise in his face, I saw it be quickly smothered as well.

“What’s going on?” he asked Flora, and I felt the pain inside us when he turned his back. “I thought we were done with this.”

“How can we be done with this?” Flora asked, amused in a way that suggested this was the most fun she’d had in ages. “How can we ever be done with this? Sanctuary is a good place, a noble place, but it was not created that way.”

The way she looked at me—no, us, it had changed completely.

“I wondered when you’d make an appearance, prayed it wasn’t me that would need to deal with you.” Her face became a skull, complete with frozen snarl. “Wretched thing, insult to nature?—”

“Your progenitor,” we snapped. “You would have no village to preside over if not for me, Crone. I created you, and I can destroy you.”

Gasps went around the room at that, making us realise that maybe we’d overcommitted ourselves.

We needed them, this town and its inhabitants, for our master plan.

Without worshippers, without participants, our power was as it had always been—limited.

We straightened up, ignoring the old biddy.

She was on death’s door right now, and perhaps she could be pushed out of it, replaced with someone much more aware of the privilege bestowed upon her.

We used that same sense of the whole community, every person in it a small pinprick of consciousness we could touch at will.

Yes, there were some ambitious ones out there, one’s who would disregard the current crone, the alpha, all of it, in return for power.

We fought the urge to smile triumphantly, schooling our face into that calm, empathetic mask the people always seemed to like.

“Did I not raise your forebears from the ashes created by the Volken? Did I not send you a conduit that helped eradicate them once and for all?”

We nodded to Sylvan, who oddly blanched in response. That was concerning. We obviously needed to spend some more time re-establishing the bond there. Our eyes flicked to the red-haired woman, our doppelg?nger, our rival, and then dismissed her without thought.

“Have I not presided over the development of your community, your people, your whole existence? Did I not fuse the lost souls of Oemis with yours? Where would any of you be without me?”

“Why?” The question wasn’t snapped out, yet when Ophelia said the word, it had the same effect. The room went dead silent, so we could hear every breath everyone took. “Why did you do this, Branwen?”

We smiled. “Those that accepted my bargain did not argue.”

I saw it then, women left pregnant and alone, left to bear the children of rape in the destruction the Volken had wreaked, growing thinner and weaker each day.

Then she’d come forward, a picture of glowing health.

She stepped up towards the one woman who didn’t scrabble away from her and…

I saw it for just a second, a ghostly wolf form in white before it dissolved into a cloud that filled the nose of the first woman.

Then more and more, each woman filled with their Tirian spirit, transforming now into beast form and striding away from the wasteland that had been their town, out into the world and beyond it, to here.

“Why?” Ophelia insisted.

I felt the tension in our limbs as her compunction rode us. She was the alpha, and her will beat down on mine.

But not Branwen’s. I felt her fight to maintain her hold on me, something that had my heart rattling with fear.

I knew then that I was an obstacle to Branwen and what she wanted. She might bamboozle me with dick, keep the guys coming and me with them, but that wasn’t an altruistic impulse. She wanted me kept docile and happy so she could control me.

The alpha’s will, it created the point of weakness I needed, my Tirian surging up and out of me, wresting control of my body from both of us.

We stood there on four paws, head hanging down and panting our way through the transformation.

I couldn’t have taken human form if I tried, my beast rigid as she fought to keep our body our own.

I felt her reluctance, her disquiet at this, but in the end, we were an animal backed into a corner and we’d act accordingly.

Being bonded with a Tirian was a strange thing.

Most of the time, I barely felt her, except when the moon was full or if I was doing something really dumb.

She reared her head then, but largely, I was just me, with the addition of a grumpy great aunt wolf or something that occasionally questioned my poor life decisions.

Right now, I felt it, what she did, what had her hackles up—fear.

Whatever Branwen was, whatever she’d done to create Sanctuary, my beast was not pleased by it at all.

This was an animal facing down a hereditary enemy, braced and ready to fight, but the fight was always to be held within.

So when I felt his hand on the back of my neck sinking into my fur, we jolted, expecting something much less pleasant.

“Hey, beautiful girl.”

Shaun’s voice was low, calm, reassuring, and it reduced the tension in us a little, but then we felt Branwen surge again, so a small growl escaped our lips.

“Well, it appears we have quite the situation on our hands,” Ophelia said, frowning slightly as she looked over everyone. “Let’s move into the meeting room and talk this out. I get the impression I am not up to date on this issue, and we are going to sit down until I feel like I am.”

The guys recounted my stories for the table, and I sat there in wolf form, watching them all, catching their every reaction, while Ophelia stayed much the same.

Nothing seemed to ruffle her, and Flora continued to look mildly amused, but it was Sylvan and the red-haired woman, Arelia, I found out, that had the most pronounced responses.

He paid rapt attention to everything, seeming to suck up every word with a fervour in his eyes that was unnerving, which perhaps explained Arelia’s response.

She was very quietly, very decorously, losing her shit.

I saw it in the furtive twitch of her fingers that she ended up clasping tight to stop, the thin line of her mouth, the rapid shift of her gaze, looking at everything and nothing all at the same time.

Somehow, this was familiar.

It took a bit, that memory, of past me stepping free of the gown the seamstresses worked on, of walking past the overbearing stage mum, Lady Something-or-other, and her daughter? Niece? What was her name?

Jaya.

Arelia’s head jerked up at that, meeting my eyes across the table, frowning slightly before her daughter moved closer, pressing her head into her mother’s shoulder and staring me down.

Arelia wasn’t the one who freaked me out.

She looked worried, hurt, hopeless, but the little girl?

She was like one of those horribly precocious kids you see in horror movies who then go on to kill their parents, but it wasn’t her mother that was her target.

That was clear from the way she wrapped her arm around her mum’s and held her close.

No, all that childish ire was directed at me.

The guys finished telling the table all the details.

Well, Shaun did. Shade just watched everything play out, his hand sliding over to tangle itself in my fur periodically, but Ethan?

He looked just as pale as Arelia. I pulled away from Shade, padding around the table, people following my progress but maintaining the conversation until I came to a stop at Ethan’s side.

I sat down on the plush carpet, and he spared me a brief sidelong look, then a much longer one as we continued to stare.

His eyes flicked from the conversation and back again, then settled on me, his hand reaching out to pat me casually like the other guys had.

But our lips, they pulled back into a snarl.

Why? I cried out in my head. I was probably the least connected to him, but everything I’d experienced had been positive.

Seriously positive when, I thought about him and Axel moving to…

But my jaw locked down, my muzzle twitching as I bared my teeth.

He looked hurriedly down the table, wanting to avoid a scene, it appeared, but he missed that opportunity.

Frowns formed, eyes asked questions as the rest of the table watched us, but the conversation continued.

When Ethan shrank back into himself, we were finally satisfied, settling back on our haunches, waiting for all the blather to taper off.

“We were always going to have to pay the price for the peace we have enjoyed. We have had all of the Mother’s love bestowed upon us.

The Great Wolf has watched our community grow and thrive,” Flora said.

“There is no fighting this, only a management of the risk. Sanctuary will change, was always going to change, and we can choose to move with that or try fruitlessly to stop it.”

“But what changes and how?” Arelia asked finally. “Vague prophecies? I’m not afraid to say, I am well tired of them.” Her eyes slid to Sylvan and then back again. “Branwen fed Sylvan the last lot, which resulted in him…” She straightened up, then swallowed hard. “We have him back now?—”

“Arelia,” he said.

“I have little use for more of Branwen’s machinations. We should find a way to neutralise her, remove her as a threat. Bec’s ancestors were removed from Sanctuary. Why? Perhaps there was a good reason for this?”

“Arelia.” Sylvan’s voice was definite this time. “That is not worthy of you. You, more than anyone, know how Sanctuary works. Has it not been exactly that for you and your sisters?” All the starch went from her spine as she curled in on herself. “Whatever we decide to do, we do as a community.”

“And you’re a particularly important part of that, boy who lived,” Flora said with a grin. Whoa, was the old biddy a Potterhead? “You have been the conduit for the Black Wolf and been in intimate contact with the conduit of the White Wolf since…?”

“As far back as I can remember, I’ve always heard Branwen in my mind.

It was only when…” His voice trailed away as he traced circles on the desktop.

“It was only when I was swallowed by the Great Black Wolf that I lost that. I lost everything, everyone.” His eyes slid sideways to the little girl, whose eyes blazed bright green right now.

“I came back, reconnected with everyone else, but not her.” Those bright blue eyes found mine, studying my Tirian form, and even I could hear the faint sound of longing in his voice.

“I’d thought that was done with, that I was free to move on with things, with my life. ”

“You are the Black Wolf’s conduit,” Flora said drily.

“You will never be free. You may have relationships, raise a family, create a life, but your existence, above all others, will be disrupted by the machinations of the gods. Balance must be restored. We have preserved the line for so many generations, across two different worlds, and now, we must bring the natural order back to our people. One you upset.”

I was sitting close to Ethan, so I caught the tiny suck of air in when Flora’s eyes swung our way. Did she mean me, my Tirian, or Branwen? That was the question, but for Ethan, there was another one.

Did she mean him?

In this form, I could catch scents, detect muscle tension, read a person much more clearly.

He feels guilt , my Tirian said inside our head. Why?

Why, indeed.