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“So how do we stop this?” My voice rung out through the whole courtyard, demanding an answer in a way that was more Branwen than me, but she’d never say a thing like that.

“How do we change things? Guys?” They both stared at me, impassive, and with as many answers as the statues in the garden.

“We have to find a way. We can’t just let Branwen win and do whatever the fuck she wants. ”

“We’ll need to complete the rite of ascension,” Sylvan said finally.

“No, no, that’s what she wants. She’s been lying in wait this whole time,” Ethan blurted out.

“I know.” Sylvan looked completely tranquil now, a strange quiet falling over the courtyard.

“She’s been in my head for so long I… I had to die to see it, her plan.

In some ways, it was a good one, unseating Lonan, removing his influence, finishing the fucking Volken off.

” He sighed, then looked down at his fingers. “I’d hoped this was over with, done.”

“It won’t be, never will be until you repudiate her.” Apparently, this was the place to be, Arelia striding into the courtyard, her eyes flashing. “I’ve told you that many times.”

“Yes, but…”

“No buts, no excuses.” Dear god, Arelia looked like an avenging angel ready to smite sinners, but then those fiery green eyes swung my way. “This has to end. You can finish this.”

“OK,” I snapped back. “How? It seems like Branwen was a fucking selfish bitch who ended a civilisation because she was horny for Lonan, but what the hell do I do about it? I’m not her.”

“No, you’re not, but you are the current reincarnation, the one she seeks to displace. She wants to hollow you out, replace what you are with herself, and then…”

Is this how Jaya would have looked when she found out about Lonan’s betrayal? She stared at Sylvan with eyes that glistened with tears, but not one fell. I don’t know if they ever had. Whatever Arelia had been through, she’d done it tough, I could see that clearly. But Sylvan? His focus was on me.

Ready to repeat the same damn mistakes again.

“You have to complete the rite of ascension,” she said, then her face fell.

For a moment, she seemed to consider exactly what that meant, and she wasn’t entirely happy with that idea.

“The Great Wolves need conduits in this world, to help shepherd us through our experiences with the Tirians, or…” A long breath escaped her. “Or we let them go.”

“I repeat my previous point,” I replied. “How?”

“You know,” she said, looking oh so vulnerable now. “You’ve always known. You’ve carried it around inside you in each reincarnation.”

“I don’t. I get what you want, Arelia, and if I could give it to you, I would, seriously. But I only just found out about Sanctuary, about the rest of your community. I didn’t even know there were other Tirian out there!”

“Bec.”

I turned to see Shaun walking towards me, Shade and Axel at his back. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close, so I mumbled my complaints into his chest.

“I only just got here. My heat only broke yesterday. I didn’t even know Sanctuary existed.” His hand passed up and down my back in long sweeps, meaning to soothe me, but instead, making a liar out of me.

A small gasp was all the warning they got as our connection locked into place.

We were different then, so very different.

We wore the skins of wolves, roaming the earth, never actually staying in place for long, just like a pack, and he was there with me, my mate.

We crept inside a cave, a burning torch our only light source, trying to penetrate the gloom of the cavern, to gauge whether it was a safe place or not.

It wasn’t.

We hadn’t understood it then, seeing only the hole in the cavern roof, the moonlight streaming into the cave, that and our burning stick the only things to illuminate the crystals.

Like a frozen explosion, great sword-like projections of quartz exploded from the landing site, all that captured kinetic energy simmering there.

As we grew closer, sniffing the air, startling every time a rock rolled away or a bird called, the stones began to sing, a lonely mournful sound.

It was hard to know if the wolf-like Tirians lurked within the stones, or if that was the form they took from our minds, knowing it would allay our fears.

As the wolf crystals howled, we moved closer, until finally, I reached out and touched the closest spike.

I saw the rest of the scene outside my body, over the shoulders of Shaun, or whatever his name was then, watching it twitch and writhe on the ground below as my body was colonised.

It raced through me, whatever this alien parasite was, invading all that I was, changing me on a cellular level.

I had cried out then, using words current me didn’t understand, but I knew were a plea to the Great Wolf, the god of my people then, and it had come.

Emerging from the darkness, a luminous white presence, it observed me mutate into something else until a dry voice inside my mind said, Ahh, I see .

We lay there, the two sides of what I was fusing as Shaun frowned, then placed his hand on the crystal too.

As I saw him shiver and jerk, shifting and arching off the ground, the Great Wolf watched us transform, then they did the same.

It split, becoming him and her, seeing our binary and accepting this as their reality.

And with that came power.

We returned to the first of our people, showing them all that we could do, all we could endure, and they became entranced by our abilities.

They massed upon the cave, grabbing the crystals, breaking some off, seeming to need to take a part of it back for themselves, the destruction sitting uneasily upon us.

Then the people began to change, become Tirian, become something else, something new, and then they showed us what our lives could be like, the places we could build, the society we could create.

Peace, tranquillity, learning, security, it was all there, presented like some kind of pipe dream, but it was one we all shared.

We moved as one, establishing Oemis over the generations, and when this body failed, the spirits seemed to know where to go next, inhabiting a new body and giving them strength, only for those same bonds to form again and again.

Until they started to break.

Our number grew, so the complexities of the host and the Tirian inside them began to develop at pace with the city we built.

Some spirits were born out of sync with those they were connected with, in others, the human host ignored the pull towards the other person, and I saw Branwen doing just that.

Shaun worked in the bureaucracy and was dismissed out of hand by her, Axel was the old groom that worked for her family, much beloved but largely pushed to one side, and Shade…

He was a lover taken then spurned when she was still young, the pain of that rejection leading to him…

I jerked my mind free, forcing my focus back to the courtyard, to them. They clustered closer, my guys, ringing me, caging me in, forming a wall between Arelia and me.

“We haven’t been all together for a long time,” Shade said, his eyes slightly unfocussed. “That power was too risky, but now? If we are to continue as we are, a balance must be struck, between Tirian wisdom and human impetuousness, between male and female, between life and decay.”

He reached out, and when his fingers touched my skin, I felt a sizzling trail following them as he ran his fingers down my collarbone, and their hands followed soon after. I could hear that wolf-like howl of the crystals singing the more they made contact, a small hiss alerting me to why.

My eyes flicked open and saw that crystals were everywhere—in the walls, in the sculptures, in the mosaics.

They came to life now, singing in counterpoint to each other, and Sylvan…

The glowing radiance seemed to infect him as he walked free of Arelia and into our orbit, again, something he’d done over and over.

He stood there, at the edge of the circle we created, an orphan child at the window of the rich and powerful, peering in at the privilege within and aching for it.

And we were willing to invite him in.

I could feel it, that alien part of myself that rose and rose.

Our petty little relationships and alliances didn’t really matter, were just tiny little details we got caught up in.

If Sylvan, Arelia, any of them wanted to fuse their energy to ours, why would we stop them?

I shifted within the ring of power, because that was what this was, what I could feel pulsing inside me.

He would augment it, Sylvan, bringing so much to our circle.

But as he moved closer, I felt it, a pulse of energy that felt like when you tried to force two magnets together, something invisible but as sure as the shove of a hand keeping us apart.

“Sylvan, please…”

There, that, that was where the power came from, the woman and her beast’s eyes glowing emerald green, as bright as the crystals everywhere.

She held out a hand, a defiant gesture, even as her fingers trembled, but still, he resisted, those ice blue eyes swivelling between me and her, back and forth.

“Sylvan!” she cried as he took a step towards us, her hand wrapping around his wrist, an explosion of light coming at the contact.

I shook my head, coming back to my body, sort of, looking around me as I heard a low hum in my ears, seeing Sylvan get hauled away by a determined Arelia and not feeling anything when he left. My focus and my intention was here, with my pack.

“C’mon,” Shaun growled, the low dirty sound making my spine turn to mush, his eyes jerking down. Some dark flared there, his smile spreading slowly. “It’s time to claim our mate.”

All I got was a chorus of grunts in response to that as I was swept up into Axel’s arms, carried through the now brightly lit courtyard, up the back steps, and into the building.

“Mine…” he rumbled.

“Ours,” Shade corrected. “All ours.”