The howl tore through the night like a blade drawn across bone.

It was not the cry of any wolf Zelda had ever known—not rogue, not pack, not even the warped, half-dead things Morgana sometimes summoned from the veil. This sound carried the weight of starlight and judgment, of moons that had watched empires rise and fall. It vibrated in the stones of the mansion, in the blood still drying on the courtyard below, in the tether that bound Zelda to the small body in her arms.

The pup stirred against her chest, green eyes snapping open. For a heartbeat they flashed silver—Selena’s silver—before settling back into the soft, human...