Page 161 of Empowering the Wolf's Heart

A howl echoed in the dark. A roar of pain and fury. The mark on my wrist glowed. My wrist, which had once borne the Mark of Dishonor, was now a seething mass of swirling darkness. Darkness that even this emptiness couldn’t conquer.

The darkness on my wrist was the purple-blue hue of a night sky. It was shaped like a hemisphere with rain falling from a cloudless night sky over a teeming valley of mountains and rivers. If you looked close enough, you could see a werewolf howling up at the moon. On one side, there was the top of a willow tree and the other where roots branching up into the sky.

“Mate?” Kingpin hissed. “No, you are not his. You are my granddaughter, mine to kill.”

No,a voice boomed into the echoing caverns of Kingpin’s dark soul. A streaming light emerged from the mark at my wrist, coalescing into a werewolf with glowing red eyes and all-white fur—a complete inverse of his physical form. The heart on his hindquarters was black, as was his tail tipped in black.

She ismine,Shen and Lycus growled as one, their voices a promise, a certainty, a declaration.

The werewolf launched at Kingpin, knocking her back to the chains at her feet.

Something tugged at me from within. I touched my glowing wrist where I saw a living tether of black and blue and gold entwined. Shen used it like a rope, tugging me, pulling me, and with a pop, the emptiness lost its hold on me. The last thing I saw was the wolf winking at me before he faded into bright mist and followed me out of the caverns of death.

I was ejected from Kingpin’s being. It felt as if I’d been riding Ran backward in a downward spiral, and we landedhardon a rock. But the metaphorical rock was my physical body, so I didn’t die.

It justhurt.

I plopped back into the physical world with a jolt. My mouth felt dry and my tongue clung to the roof of my mouth. My arms shook as I sat upright.

Shen was beside me, handing me a water canteen. I took it and he helped me ease it to my lips. His concern shone through both the bond and his eyes, but he held back the questions as I recovered, my arms and legs feeling odd. As if they weren’t my own. As if my soul were still left tethered to that monster.

Something felt like it was… missing.

“What did you do?” Mom whispered, staring in front of her.

I peeked around Dad and saw Kingpin. She was glowing with an inner light. One hand was glowing with a ball of starlight, and the other was wreathed in swirling darkness.

She smiled, half her face wreathed in light from my Gift and the other half shadowed like some sort of demon. Her eyes were reversed, one light and one dark, but they swirled with either darkness or light depending on the base. She laughed, her voice two in one.

“I am free at last!” she said, tilting her head back to the skies.

But then her smile dropped.

“What… no,NO!” she screamed, backing away and swatting in front of her as if something were assaulting her. She beat against her chest, tearing at it with her claws. Her eyes met mine and they darkened.

I stood, walking the ten feet to her as she fell to her knees. “What is this?” she whimpered.

“A Gift. And a Curse,” I said, staring down at her. I then glanced around.

The battle was done. Most of the mages Ahhanhi had freed of the darkness had fled, those who remained in darkness had been slain.

The rogues who hadn’t been killed had run off, their appetites for carnage satiated in both friend and foe. I would need to hunt them down and release them in the coming days.

But for now, I stood before the woman who had trained me and betrayed me. How she clung to the empty blackness as if it were her very child. She couldn’t release it to embrace the light.

Then I understood.

Anyone can heal, but they have to choose it for themselves. And you first had to be humble enough to admit you were broken.

Grandmother was trying to cling to the Gift she stole from me while holding to the darkness inside her.

And I finally knew my Gift’s Curse.

It was brokenness.

Seeing other people’s needs left you broken. Aching. Filled with sorrow.

Theneedsof the people all around her were stabbing into her soul. I knew because I’d felt it. But I’d had years to learn how to put up boundaries around my soul so theneedsdidn’t shred me to pieces. Many still got through to shred my soul. To make mea scared, broken creature within. A creature I loved. A soul that had borne other people’s pains and helped them through it. That had mourned those we lost, rejoiced with those who healed, and brought justice to those who harmed.

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