Chapter 20: The Second Trial
The second trial came in the spring.
I did not expect it. I was walking the borders with Lira, the first flowers blooming at our feet, the sun warm on our faces. The pack was healing. The cubs were laughing. The war seemed far away, a story that had happened to someone else.
And then the world fell away.
I was standing in a place I had never seen. A hall of stone, vast and empty, its walls lined with windows that looked out on nothing. And in the center of the hall, waiting for me, was the wolf.
"You have returned," it said.
"I have."
"The second trial. Are you ready?"
"I am."
It looked at me with those burning eyes, and for a moment, I saw something I had not expected. Sadness.
"This trial will ask you to give up the thing you love most. Do you understand what that means?"
I thought of Lira. Of the pack. Of the life I had built.
"I understand."
"Then let us begin."
The world shifted. I was no longer in the hall. I was in a place I knew, a place I had been a thousand times. The village. The longhouses. The oak at its center.
And Lira was there. She was standing in the clearing, her hair bright in the sun, her eyes warm. She was smiling. She was waiting for me.
I walked toward her. I wanted to run, to hold her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right. But the wolf was there, its voice in my ear.
"She is the thing you love most. The pack is the thing you love most. The life you have built is the thing you love most. And to become what you must become, you must give them up."
I stopped. "Why?"
"Because the wolf king does not fight for one pack. He does not fight for one woman. He fights for all wolves. For all packs. For the future of our kind. And that future requires sacrifice."
I looked at Lira. She was still smiling, still waiting, still the center of my world.
"I can't."
"Then you are not worthy."
I turned to the wolf. "You're wrong. I am worthy. Not because I can give her up. Because I won't. Because the wolf king does not fight alone. He fights with his pack. With his mate. With the wolves who stand beside him. That is not weakness. That is strength."
The wolf was silent. Its eyes burned.
"You would defy the ancestors?"
"I would defy anyone who tells me that love is weakness. That caring for my pack is weakness. That being a wolf is about being alone." I stepped closer, my voice rising. "I was alone in my first life. I had no pack, no mate, no one to stand beside me. And I died. I died alone, afraid, full of regrets. I will not make that mistake again."
The wolf smiled. "Then you have passed."
The world shifted. I was back in the clearing, the wolf before me, the sun setting behind it.
"The second trial was not about giving up what you love," it said. "It was about understanding what you are willing to fight for. You have passed."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. "What is the third trial?"
The wolf looked at me, and for a moment, it almost looked sad. "The third trial is the hardest. It will ask you to become what you have always been. To accept the power that sleeps in your blood. To become the wolf king."
"When?"
"Now."
The world fell away.
---