The forest outside Drakenfell’s eastern wall was thick enough that the canopy devoured the afternoon light and turned the air into something green and private and old.

Dex had her pressed against a tree, mouth on hers, one hand cupping the back of her head and the other braced against the bark beside her shoulder. The kiss was slow and thorough and designed to unravel her, which it was doing, because Dex kissed the way he fought: with focus, precision, and the absolute certainty that he had already won.

Serena was still upset with him. The ambush in their chambers, Fin and him presenting a united front she hadn’t been invited to, the charges, the friendship decree. It was all still sitting in her chest, unresolved and simmering. Her body, however, had received a different memo entirely, and the memo said: kiss him back.

She did. Because she was a woman of contradictions and Dexmon Drakenfell was her favorite one.

Aegon: She’s mad and kissing us. This is the best day of my life.

Dex: We’re here to train her, Aegon.

He pulled back just enough to look at her, lips swollen, eyes bright, that devastating grin already forming.

Dex stepped back, letting the air fill the space between them. The transition from kissing her against a tree to training her in wolf combat required a gear shift that his body was actively protesting.

"Alright, Frostborne. No more distracting me." He flashed a grin that usually worked like a charm on her. It did not this time.

He squared his shoulders. "Shift when you’re ready."

Serena drew a breath. Reached inward for the place where Aurelia lived, the warm, golden thread that connected her to her wolf, and pulled.

Nothing happened.

She pulled again. Harder. Her brow furrowed. Her jaw tightened. The thread was there, she could feel it, but it moved without catching, like a rope with no anchor.

Aurelia: I’m trying.

Serena: I know. What’s wrong?

Aurelia: The instinct is missing. I had it the other day. Today it is gone.

Serena: When Guinevere shifted, you were ready. I felt you.

Aurelia: I don’t know. Anger opened the pathway and right now I can’t find it.

Serena’s irises were flickering, gold bleeding into silver and back again in rapid, uneven pulses, the visual equivalent of a radio scanning for a signal it couldn’t lock.

Dex watched it happen. The gold surged, retreated, surged again, each flicker carrying the effort of a wolf clawing at a surface that wouldn’t give.

She bit her lip. Exhaled. "I can’t figure out how to initiate it and neither can my wolf."

Dex’s brows knit. The way she said ’my wolf’ like Dexmon didn’t know who her wolf was.

"Aurelia, Serena. You can refer to her by her name."

Serena swallowed, really not wanting to have to ask for help because she was still upset and this was the last thing she wanted to be doing. But she also knew she needed it.

"Could you use an Alpha command? That’s what we had to do last time."

That was news. Dex absorbed it without letting it show, but the implication filed itself into a compartment he would examine later: Fin’s Alpha command worked on her. His fated mate responded to another Alpha’s authority. The wolf law was clear on that, and the reasons it worked were the same reasons Dex’s fist clenched once before he released it.

He closed the distance, pulling her back in his arms, and pressed a kiss to her ear. "Don’t worry, baby. We’ll get you shifting in no time. Relax for me."

Attempting to shift while her body was that tense would do her no favors.

He held her for a full minute until all of her muscles relaxed into him, and he could feel her nerves calm through their matebond.

He didn’t let go when he commanded it.

The shift in his vocal register was physical. It traveled through the air between them like a current through water, carrying the weight of an Alpha bloodline that predated every throne in Skardos. His eyes flared molten gold and spoke the command.

"Shift, Serena."

White light detonated from her body.

A whimper escaped her mouth, but she didn’t scream. The sensation that slammed through him through their matebond was something he hadn’t prepared for. Pain. The deep, structural pain of a body being rewritten at the molecular level, pathways that the silver had burned to ruin being forced open by magic that refused to accept the damage as permanent.

It was a slow, grinding agony that felt longer than it lasted, worse than his first shift, worse than any shift he had ever experienced or witnessed, and it moved through him with the clarity of a matebond that held nothing back.

He grunted. A sound punched from his chest before he could cage it, his knees dipping once before he caught himself.

When the white light faded and the pain stopped, his breath caught.

She was beautiful.

White fur, luminous even in the filtered forest light, catching every stray beam and holding it. She was smaller than he expected, lean and narrow in the way that reflected the body she shifted from, but built for speed in a way that was immediately obvious. Gold eyes, enormous and unblinking, staring at him with the wide, searching expression of a creature experiencing the world through new senses and finding every input overwhelming.

Her legs were shaking.

Dex didn’t have time to blink. Aegon ripped through the shift with a violence that was usually reserved for battlefields, and by the time Dex registered what was happening, he was already on four paws, his human consciousness shoved into the passenger seat with the door locked.

Dex: That was unnecessary.

Aegon: Everything I do is necessary.

The black wolf crossed the distance to Aurelia in three strides. He pressed his nose into her scruff first, then her neck, then along the ridge of her spine, scenting her with the methodical thoroughness of a wolf conducting a medical examination and a territorial survey simultaneously.

Aurelia’s legs were still trembling. Her gold eyes went wider, if that was possible. She leaned away from him, instincts too raw to process the proximity.

Dex: You’re scaring her.

Aegon: She does not remember me yet. But she will, and I will not be patient about it.

He nuzzled into the curve of her neck and held there, pressing the warm flat of his muzzle against her pulse point. His breathing was deliberate, slow, communicating safety through the only language her wolf understood right now: proximity, warmth, and the specific scent of a mate her body recognized even when her mind couldn’t.

Aurelia’s trembling eased. Fractionally. One degree at a time, the way a wild animal decides, against every instinct, that the thing beside it is safe.

Dex: Serena. Baby, can you hear me?

No response. The mindlink reached into the space where her thoughts should have been and found only Aurelia’s quiet, gold-eyed awareness.

Aegon: Only Aurelia right now. The pathways between wolf and human are still rebuilding.

Dex: Alright. Just run with her this time. Get her comfortable with you.

Aegon nudged Aurelia forward with his nose. A gentle, insistent push against her ribs that communicated a single instruction: move.

She took a step. Then she took another step. And another. Then she ran.

The acceleration was sudden, decisive, the flip of a switch between cautious exploration and something ancient that woke up in her hind legs and said go. She tore through the underbrush, white fur flashing between the dark trunks, legs stretching into a stride that was uneven at the edges but faster than Dex had anticipated.

Dex: She’s fast.

Aegon: Of course she is fast. She is ours.

Fin had told him she could barely walk for the first thirty minutes of her first shift. That her legs buckled repeatedly. She was running now within minutes. The stride was rough, the coordination still being negotiated between instinct and damaged pathways, but she was covering ground at a pace that was closer to Alpha speed than it had any right to be this early.

Aegon: I am going to catch her now.

Dex: She’s training, Aegon. Let her run.

Aegon: I am training her. The exercise is called running from me and losing. It is the most important drill in existence.

Aegon launched after her with the focus of a predator who had been waiting thousands of years for this specific moment and intended to treat it with the gravity it deserved.

He ran like the forest owed him a debt. Every stride was calculated, every turn anticipated before she made it, and when she cut left through a gap in the trees, he adjusted trajectory mid-sprint with the fluid precision of a wolf who had been chasing things for longer than most bloodlines had existed.

He caught her within forty seconds.

His body pressed against hers, shoulder to shoulder, slowing her momentum by matching it and then redirecting it until they were both standing in a small clearing, sides heaving, breath visible in the cooling air.

Then he licked her face.

Not once. A thorough, comprehensive licking that covered from her jaw to the crown of her skull and included both ears, which flattened in protest and then perked back up in confusion. She blinked. She looked at him. She looked away. He licked her again.

Dex: Aegon. That’s enough.

Aegon: She needs more of our scent.

He nuzzled into her neck, pressing his scent into her fur with the subtlety of a battering ram wrapped in affection. His chest was making a sound that Dex refused to call purring because it was undignified and beneath a wolf of Aegon’s stature, but was, by every acoustic definition, purring.

Dex: You’re purring.

Aegon: I am vibrating with purpose.

Dex: We’ve talked about this.

Aegon: I never agreed to stop.