I have seen a first shift before.
I was seven the first time — my cousin, in the back garden of the estate, dropping to his knees in the grass while the adults stood around him in a loose circle and my father put his hand on my shoulder and said watch, this is what we are.
I have seen it dozens of times since. Betas, omegas, even one other alpha heir whose shift came late and left him shaking in the mud of the training ground for twenty minutes before it released him.
I have never seen anything like what just happened to Ava.
I am still thinking about that when I reach her at the base of the oak — the speed of it, the force, the way the shift moved through her like something had been waiting behind a locked door for eighteen years and had finally broken it down.
