SERAPHINA’S POV
I had seen many impossible things since Catherine’s return.
I had seen wolves corrupted beyond recognition, psychic constructs capable of mimicking life, and horrors born from experints that should never have existed.
But I had never seen a puppet shift.
The transformation was violent and unnatural.
Fur erupted across his skin as his fra expanded violently, and bones snapped and reford.
Dark power flooded the chamber as the thing wearing my father’s face abandoned the illusion with a sickening precision that suggested not instinct but design. When it finally settled, a massive wolf stood before .
Its shoulders rose nearly as high as my chest, even from a distance. Thick black fur covered a body that looked powerful enough to smash through reinforced concrete without slowing down.
The shape of the wolf was unmistakably familiar, too.
My father’s wolf, Kane.
Or at least Catherine’s version of Kane.
The wolf’s face retained traces of the man it had once been. The shape of its eyes, the structure of its muzzle, even the proud bearing of its stance all carried echoes of my father.
I understood imdiately why Catherine had done this.
She was not trying to defeat through strength alone; she was trying to fracture before the fight even truly began.
She wanted to see my father in the monster she had created, to catch that glimr of him and hesitate—a heartbeat of grief she could exploit, trusting mory might stab deeper than any wound.
The beast lowered its head, and a growl that vibrated through the ritual chamber rolled from its chest.
Behind her barrier, Catherine smiled.
"Magnificent, isn’t he?"
I tore my eyes away from the wolf long enough to glare at her.
"You’re sick."
Catherine’s laugh was so gleeful I wanted to throw up. "I’ve been called worse."
The wolf took a step forward, and the stone cracked beneath its claws.
I steadied myself, jaw clenched, forcing away the fear that pressed in at the edge of my mind and refusing to back down.
The longer I looked at the creature, the more wrong it beca.
The outer shape was convincing enough, the proportions carefully constructed to mimic what a powerful wolf should look like. Even the coloration of its fur carried echoes of familiarity that would have unsettled under different circumstances.
But familiarity was not truth, and beneath the surface of that imitation there was sothing deeply corrupted.
The aura radiating from the beast felt like decay forced into obedience, unstable and rotting, bound together rather than healed or transford.
The realization made my skin crawl, because it ant this thing had never been alive in any real sense of the word.
It was not a transformation, not a natural evolution of power, but an assembly of sothing far more disturbing.
When it moved, the illusion of coherence broke further. Its limbs carried a strange inconsistency in rhythm, as though different instincts were fighting for control of the sa body.
Catherine watched carefully from behind her barrier, clearly aware that I had begun to understand what I was looking at.
The satisfaction in her expression was subtle but unmistakable, the kind of pride that ca from soone who believed they had created sothing elegant rather than horrifying.
I could feel anger rising in again, starting as trembling heat before settling into sothing colder—a blade of resolve. I had seen enough now to separate pain from instinct, to push past confusion and anchor myself in purpose.
This wasn’t my father’s wolf.
Kane had died with his Alpha, and even in death, Catherine hadn’t allowed them peace.
"You had to fuck with every mber of my family," I hissed. “You couldn’t leave even him alone.”
Catherine tilted her head. "Why would I? Such valuable material should never be wasted."
The casual cruelty of the statent twisted my stomach.
Material.
That was all she saw people as.
“This all ends now,” I hissed.
The creature lunged.
Its speed was wrong for sothing its size, too fast and too heavy at the sa ti, as though it was being propelled by sothing other than muscle and instinct.
I moved just in ti, feeling the pressure of its passing tear through the air where I had been standing a heartbeat earlier, and I landed several paces away while it crashed into the stone floor behind with enough force to fracture it.
It turned imdiately. No hesitation. No sense of recalibration. That too confird that there was no awareness behind its movent, only execution.
I exhaled slowly.
Enough.
Silver surged through my veins as power erupted outward, and the chamber filled with silver light.
Fur replaced skin. Claws extended. The world sharpened as Alina surged forward completely.
The transformation completed in seconds, grounding in a clarity that human emotion could not sustain in a mont like this.
Across from , the corrupted wolf snarled and charged.
I t him head-on, and the collision shook the chamber.
Pain exploded through my shoulder as our bodies slamd together with enough force to crater the floor beneath us.
The beast was stronger than expected.
Dark power like Jack’s surged beneath its fur like living poison.
The longer we fought, the more obvious it beca.
The creature wasn’t operating like a wolf. It was operating like multiple things forced together.
Every exchange between us exposed inconsistencies that should not have existed in a single creature.
A movent that carried the timing of one fighting style would suddenly be interrupted by another that contradicted it entirely.
A defensive reaction would begin like a wolf’s instinct, but finish like sothing trained. In the next instant, sothing almost human would surface, as if rembering how to think mid-battle.
It was not adaptation. It was conflict.
The beast lunged again.
This ti, I dodged and raked my claws across its flank.
Fur split open, and dark blood sprayed.
Its body buckled under the weight of its own instability, and the illusion that had held it together began to fall apart in real ti.
Beneath the fur and corrupted flesh, I saw the truth clearly enough that it burned into mory.
There were seams. Not taphorical ones, not magical impressions, but physical stitching, as though different bodies had been torn apart and sewn back together without regard for what that would do to the whole.
Catherine had not simply corrupted sothing that already existed; she had taken pieces of multiple lives and forced them into a single functioning weapon.
The wolf recovered before I could fully process it, slamming into with enough force to send us crashing through a crystal formation together.
Pain shot through my ribs, but I rolled imdiately and regained my footing.
The beast turned as well, its wound already healing.
But I had seen enough for horror to root itself so deep inside that I could hardly breathe.
The wolf charged again, and this ti, I welcod it.
Not because I was winning. Because I needed answers.
We exchanged blow after blow across the chamber.
Silver collided with corruption. Ancient stone shattered. Crystal exploded.
The ritual room gradually beca a battlefield.
And with every strike, the disguise deteriorated.
Another wound revealed more seams.
Another exposed mismatched muscle structure.
The sounds it made with each injury were not a roar or a growl. It was suffering.
The beast attacked again.
I slipped beneath it, silver power gathering around my claws.
Then I struck, a precise blow at the weaknesses I had identified.
The beast crumpled to the ground, unmoving.
What remained after the collapse was not a wolf in any aningful sense.
It was a patchwork of mismatched parts, held together by dark magic and sheer violation of nature. A thing that should never have been alive, and yet sothing inside it still was.
I felt it imdiately: a presence buried deep within the ruined form, weak and fractured but undeniably conscious.
A trapped wolf spirit, still aware enough to feel everything that had been done to it.
The realization hit harder than the fight itself.
Because suffering like that did not belong to a weapon.
It belonged to a victim.
The creature whimpered faintly, and the fear and pain and confusion in the sound hurt more than any of the blows had.
It wasn’t Kane, I knew that instinctively, but it had belonged to soone once. Soone who had been trapped inside this nightmare and used as an anchor for Catherine’s monstrosity.
The creature’s eyes t mine.
For one brief mont, I saw sothing beneath the agony.
Recognition.
Not of . Of what I represented.
Silver.
Hope.
I lowered my head as I reached out with my power, not as a weapon this ti but as release, allowing the silver light to flow into the corrupted remains and begin undoing what had been done to it.
“Hey!” Catherine’s voice cut through the chamber sharply. “Stay back!”
I ignored her.
I could feel the corruption resisting at first, clinging to what it had stolen, but the silver broke through. Slowly, painfully, completely.
The corruption binding everything together began unraveling.
Cracks spread across its body as dark magic leaked from beneath its fur, and the disguise collapsed rapidly.
The wolf convulsed on the floor as fur and flesh peeled away, and the illusion shattered completely.
What remained barely resembled an animal at all.
Different limbs connected at unnatural angles. Mismatched sections of muscle stitched together through black magic. Fragnts of multiple wolves fused into a single grotesque body.
The creature whimpered again as I lowered my head and bumped it gently against his.
‘You’ve suffered enough.’
I felt the wolf spirit separate from the prison Catherine had built around it.
The creature relaxed, and peace settled over it.
The faint image of a wolf appeared above the ruined body.
The spirit looked at , and, despite everything, I felt gratitude.
Then it dissolved into silver light and disappeared.
And silence followed.
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