The Divide no longer separates what is ours from what is yours.

Even after the priestess stopped speaking, that line stayed lodged in my head like a splintered note drawn across a fraying string.

I could feel every gaze on me, from the ramparts to the ground below. Wolves stiffened, hands tightening on hilts. Muscles locked, breaths held. On the other side, the witches stood taller. Straighter, and that really pissed me off.

“What do you really want here, Arietta?” Kael asked.

Arietta.

My eyes snapped to Kael, then to her. The name sounded too soft for someone so cold. Yet she smiled like it belonged to her, like she wore it when no one was watching. The way she looked at Kael, familiar, almost fond, told me this wasn’t the first time they’d met.

She stepped forward, white robes swirling like mist, and raised a hand as if waving off a fly. “A formal audience with the Wolfkind Council,” she said, voice smooth as river glass.

Marrick growled. “You want a dominion summit?”

“Yes.” Her gaze found mine. “There are” matters of growing urgency.”

I didn’t like how she said it. Like I was the urgency.

“And summits require protocols,” Marrick snapped. “Letters. Messengers. Not crashing a border and making demands.”

“Since we’re tossing protocol aside,” Damien said, arms crossed, “maybe we should talk about the witches who attacked one of our own.”

Arietta didn’t blink. “If you wish to press charges, do so in Council,” she replied.

“Where was your council when Luna was dragged across the river and nearly died?” Marrick barked. “Where was your justice then?”

The golden-robed priestess, the second one, finally spoke. “We were not privy to that incident.”

“Convenient,” I muttered. “But ignorance isn’t a defence.”

“No one from our circle crossed the Divide,” Arietta said with a level tone. “Had a witch broken that oath, the council would’ve sensed it, and punished them accordingly.”

That was a lie. Or a blind spot.

Because Fabian had crossed. And dragged me with him. His coven had trespassed, spellbound me, and shattered their sacred pact. But there wasn’t a single flicker of recognition. No mention of him, no outrage. Just hollow words and diplomacy.

Were they hiding it? Or were they truly unaware?

Kael’s voice finally came. “You want a summit? Fine. We’ll clear a seat.”

Arietta inclined her head. “We’ll remain at the eastern perimeter until the others arrive.”

And just like that, they turned. No bows or gratitude. They just turned and walked back toward the ridge, cloaks slicing the air behind them. The witches moved in eerie silence, banners vanishing one by one from the field, like they’d never been there at all.

Moments later, the clearing was empty, and only wolves remained.

And the wind, with the feeling that war was no longer a matter of if, but when.

I stared at the spot where Arietta had stood. The space still held the faint trace of her magic; floral, and metallic.

Crossing the Enchanted River was supposed to be impossible. The Divide was laced with magic so old, even the oldest wolves feared it. Yet they’d crossed it. All of them. Without resistance or punishment.

Their magic had grown.

I knew that the moment I met Fabian. The witches were more than what we knew of them. And if they were telling the truth—if they really didn’t know what Fabian and his coven had done—then someone was lying. To them. Or for them.

Either way, the summit wouldn’t start until dawn, when the rest of the packs arrived. So we had to wait, with witches camping on our soil like squatters and the Nightclaw warriors pretending this wasn’t an insult to our sovereignty.

Kael turned on his heel without another word. His coat flared behind him like the final stroke of a gavel.

He didn’t speak to Marrick. Or Damien. Or me. He just walked. We followed, his silence louder than most people’s shouting.

By the time we reached the compound perimeter, it was clear where he was going.

Marrick and Damien veered off without a word, dismissed with a mind-link I still couldn’t access. A private channel I’d been locked out of, though I didn’t know when or why.

I slowed.

Maybe he didn’t want me with him. But then Kael growled at me without looking back. So I kept walking.

The hallway to Kael’s private study stretched ahead like a warning. Long. Dim. Quiet enough to hear my own boots echo like distant gunshots in a dead town. The lights along the stone walls glowed like intimidation.

Kael didn’t speak. Didn’t look back. Just opened the door and walked in.

I followed him anyway. The door closed behind me with a soft, final click that sounded far too much like a lock.

He moved to the long table in the centre of the room, where the dominion’s map lay spread like a corpse. Pack markers sat in their places. Five pristine. Nightclaw’s scorched edges blackened, the metal emblem cracked like it had tried to hold too much heat.

Kael stared down at it for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was like gravel grinding under boots.

“Why didn’t you hear the call?”

That wasn’t what I expected.

“What?”

“When the wards lit. When the pack link opened.” His eyes didn’t move. “You didn’t respond.”

I felt it then, the chill that started in the gut and spread out like frost. The knowing something was wrong before you could name it.

“I didn’t know the link was open,” I said.

Lie.

His head didn’t lift, but his shoulders did, just barely, but enough to confirm he heard the lie too. I saw it in the way his posture locked, the flick of his jaw, the stillness of his hands.

He knew something was off with me. And now it was bleeding into the things I couldn’t fake.

“What do you think they want with this summit?” he asked next.

I pushed off the wall, arms crossed tight across my chest. “I don’t know. But I doubt six High Priestesses crossed the Enchanted River to make peace.”

He finally looked at me.

It wasn’t an empty look, but it gave nothing away. That made it worse. I didn’t trust blank faces, not from someone like Kael.

He exhaled through his nose and turned back to the map.

“Something is different with you,” he said. “And they know it.”

His eyes slid back to me.

“There’s magic under your skin now. Not wolf magic. It feels like witch, and it pulses when you’re near. Like a whisper I can’t quite make out,” he said.

His tone shifted, still quiet, but harder. “Does this have anything to do with the “delicate” matter Marrick brought up before?”

I hesitated, then nodded. No point pretending any more.

“You understand what that means, don’t you?” he asked.

“That they want me,” I murmured.

He nodded once. “They want a claim. The witch part of you. Something they can point to and say she belongs to us. Something they can twist into justification for a bigger move.”

I stepped away from the wall slowly. “And you’re wondering if I’m dangerous enough to be worth the fight.”

Kael didn’t answer. He looked at my hands instead.

Then, he growled, “Show me.”

I froze. “What?”

“The magic,” he said, taking a step forward. “Whatever it is that’s changed. Show me. Because I need to know what I’m standing next to.”

Another step.

“The council won’t care about sentiment. If they decide you’re a threat” if they vote to remove you’”

He stopped. Just long enough for the silence to claw at me.

“Even I, as Ultima, won’t be able to save you.”

That landed hard, and it wasn’t even because it was a threat. It was the cold, hard truth.

I swallowed, throat dry, heart thudding like it wanted out. He wasn’t being cruel. He was being honest.

“Witch or wolf,” he said, “they’ll fear what they don’t understand. If you can’t prove you’re not a threat, they’ll treat you like one.”

He didn’t say the word “exile. Didn’t have to.

I didn’t move. Just stood there while his words folded in on themselves, reshaping the way I saw everything.

What was I now? Not just wolf, and a little bit of witch. Something in between, like a hybrid?

There were no legends about that. No rules, records or protections. Which meant no mercy.

The wolves would want me dead before I set a precedent. The witches, well, they’d probably want to cut me open and study what made me tick.

A sigh scraped out of me, and it was rough and bitter. What started as a simple inquisition before the Alpha Council had spiralled into more of a doomsday prophecy.

I’d wondered, briefly, if the council would exile me if they thought I was compromised. But now with all six High Priestesses on this side of the river?

They’d rewrite the whole trial. And I had a feeling the ending wouldn’t be in my favour.

And worse, goddess, so much worse, was the fact that the alphas of the other packs didn’t give a damn about me. My last name might have bought me reverence in Nightclaw, but it meant nothing to them. Not when I didn’t look or fight like a Baudelaire, or bear the immunity that came with their blood.

Kael was right.

It wasn’t war we feared. It was the unknown. The things that didn’t fit neatly into the stories we told ourselves about who we were and what we were allowed to be.

They would fear me, because I didn’t make sense. Story of my life. And nothing unexplainable gets to survive in a world ruled by fear.

I looked at Kael. Really looked at him.

Jaw tight. Voice steel. Eyes fixed on my hands like he was already imagining what they could do to him if I lost control. Like this was how he looked at enemies across a battlefield, calculating whether to strike or stand down.

I exhaled, and the sound was too loud in the quiet study.

“You know better than anyone,” he said, still watching me like I was the blade and the battlefield, “that I will be your only ally when the summit begins.”

He didn’t blink.

“I need to know what you’re capable of if I’m going to defend you.”

I swallowed. “I don’t know how to summon it yet.”

“Try.”

There was no spell in my blood. No ritual or rite.

We were taught to memorize a few incantations, mostly defensive ones, enough to buy time or scare off an attacker. Nothing that would help here.

So I didn’t search for words, instead I searched for memory.

The air bending. Lyra surrounded. The panic crawling up my throat and the feeling of helplessness that had cracked inside me. Like glass shattering inward.

Maybe that was why the gods, or whatever made this cursed bond, gave me a witch mate. Maybe Fabian was supposed to teach me what to do with this madness in my veins.

The thought barely had time to land before something else did.

A tremor. Subtle at first, like the moment before a violin string snaps.

It rose from my spine, curling through me like smoke. Goosebumps chased it up my arms. My fingers tingled.

The lights flickered overhead, then dimmed and flared again.

The map on the table stirred. Not from wind; there was no wind. But still, the corner of the parchment lifted, curled in on itself like something unseen had brushed past.

Kael’s gaze dropped to my hands again.

So did mine.

The veins in my wrists were glowing gold and pulsing like they were catching the last light of a dying sun from under my skin.

He didn’t speak right away. When he did, his voice was stripped of everything but command.

“Marrick will escort you back to my residence.”

I didn’t argue.

“You’ll stay there throughout the summit. Do not leave unless I send Damien to you.”

He didn’t need to say why.

Because whatever I was becoming” it was no longer safe out here.

Not for me, or anyone else.