CHAPTER 112: CHAPTER 112: PRISON BREAK

ARIA POV

He pressed a button on a device in his hand.

The entire building began to shake. Cracks emerged in the walls as a deep rumbling sound filled the air.

"What did you do?" I shouted.

"This facility sits on an old silver mine," Elder Malin laughed. "I just sparked the explosives Vincent keeps for emergencies. In five minutes, this whole place will fall into the mine shaft. Along with everyone in it."

The rumble grew louder. Pieces of the ceiling began to fall.

"Including you!" I pointed out.

Elder Malin’s smile widened. "Small price to pay for stopping the Silver Alpha. If I can’t control you, no one can."

As the building shook itself apart around us, I realized we were all about to die.

And Elder Malin was perfectly happy to die with us.

The roof crashed down inches from my head as I rolled behind an overturned table.

"We have four minutes!" Kael shouted over the rumbling blasts. "Maybe less!"

I scrambled to my feet, silver eyes burning with desperate power. The building was shaking itself apart, but I wasn’t going without the other prisoners.

"Marcus, get the Fire Wolves out through the east corridor!" I commanded. "Frost, take the Ice Pack through the window!"

"What about you?" Jaxon yelled, avoiding falling debris.

"I’m getting Vincent," I growled.

The wealthy collector was trying to escape through a secret door behind his desk. But I reached him first, taking his expensive suit jacket and slamming him against the wall.

"You’re not going anywhere," I growled.

"You’re insane!" Vincent gasped. "The building is falling! We’ll all die!"

"Then you better talk fast. Why did you really want me?"

"I told you, Silver Alphas are valuable—" I pressed my claws against his throat. "The truth. Now."

Vincent’s eyes went wide with fear. "It’s not just about money! It’s about your mother!"

My world stopped. Even with explosions going off around us, everything went quiet.

"What about my mother?"

"She was here," Vincent whispered. "Twenty years ago. The most powerful Silver Alpha I’d ever seen."

My grip relaxed in shock. "That’s impossible. My mother was human."

"Your mother was Luna Selene, the Lost Alpha of the Northern Packs," Vincent said quickly. "She came here looking for something. A cure."

The building shook so hard I almost fell. Cracks were spreading across the walls like spider webs.

"A cure for what?" I asked.

"The Silver Curse. She said it was killing her slowly. Making her too powerful to control."

My heart stopped. The same thing that had been happening to me during the Hunter’s Moon.

"She made a deal with me," Vincent continued desperately. "Information about the cure in exchange for her freedom. But she never got the chance to use it."

"Why not?"

"Because Elder Malin killed her before she could escape."

Rage burst through me like lightning. My silver light grew so bright it lit up the entire falling room.

"You’re lying," I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I knew he wasn’t.

"She hid you before she died," Vincent said. "Made everyone believe you were just an everyday omega. But I knew. I’ve been looking for Luna Selene’s daughter ever since."

A huge chunk of roof crashed down between us. When I looked up from the rubble, Vincent was gone. But something else caught my eye.

A metal bag sat on his desk, somehow untouched by the destruction. My mother’s name was written on it in worn letters: "Luna Selene - Project Moonlight."

I grabbed the suitcase just as Lucien appeared beside me.

"Aria! We have to go now!"

"My mother was here," I said in shock. "She was like me. She was—"

"Tell me later!" Lucien hauled me toward the exit. "The whole place is coming down!"

We ran through passageways filling with smoke and falling stone. Behind us, I could hear the deep groaning sound of a building about to fall completely.

The other prisoners were already outside, gathering in the forest clearing. Marcus had his arm around a young fire wolf who looked barely sixteen. Frost was helping an old ice wolf who could barely walk.

"Is everyone out?" I asked.

"Everyone except Vincent and Elder Malin," Jaxon reported.

As if called by his name, Elder Malin stumbled out of the building. His clothes were torn and he was bleeding from a cut on his scalp.

"You," I snarled, moving toward him.

But before I could reach him, the entire building collapsed. The ground shook like an earthquake as tons of stone and metal fell into the old silver mine below.

The noise was deafening. When it finally stopped, nothing left but a giant crater filled with rubble.

"Vincent," Frost whispered. "He didn’t make it out."

I felt a strange mix of happiness and regret. Vincent had been evil, but he’d also been the only person who knew the truth about my mother.

Except for Elder Malin.

I whirled on him, silver eyes burning. "You killed her. You killed my mother."

Elder Malin wiped blood from his face and smiled that horrible smile. "Luna Selene was a threat to the natural order. Just like you."

"She was looking for a cure!"

"She was looking for power," Elder Malin amended. "The Silver Curse isn’t a sickness, you foolish girl. It’s growth. She wanted to become something beyond werewolf. Something godlike."

"You’re lying."

"Am I? Tell me, Aria, have you felt it yet? The hunger for more power? The urge to control everything around you? The feeling that common wolves are beneath you?"

His words hit me like physical blows because they were true. I had felt all of those things.

"That’s what killed your mother," Elder Malin continued. "Not me. Her own goal. And it’s what will kill you too."

"Enough," Kael said strongly, stepping between us. "We have bigger problems."

He was right. In the distance, I could hear howls. Lots of them. Silas’s controlled dogs were coming.

"They tracked us here," Lucien realized. "We need to move."

"Where?" Marcus asked. "We’re in the middle of nowhere with no supplies and injured wolves."

"The old sanctuary," Frost said quietly. "There’s an abandoned temple about ten miles north. It’s protected by Moon Goddess power. Even controlled dogs can’t enter."

"Then that’s where we go," I decided.

But as we started to leave, Elder Malin called out one last time.

"You can run, Silver Alpha, but you can’t hide from what you are. The curse is already taking hold. Soon you’ll be just like your mother – hungry for power and ready to destroy anyone who stands in your way."

"Ignore him," Jaxon said. "He’s trying to get in your head."

But I couldn’t ignore the bag in my hands. Whatever was inside might hold the information about my mother’s fate. And maybe the key to avoiding my own.

We ran through the trees as howls grew closer behind us. The freed prisoners were slow, tired from years of captivity. Some could barely keep up.

"They’re gaining on us," Lucien warned.

He was right. Through the trees, I could see sparkling blue eyes. Dozens of them. The controlled wolves moved like a pack, coordinated and dangerous.

"The sanctuary is still five miles away," Frost panted. "We won’t make it."

That’s when I made a choice that terrified me.

"Keep going," I told the others. "I’ll buy you time."

"No," Kael said instantly. "We stick together."

"You can’t fight them all alone," Jaxon added.

But I was already turning back toward our attackers, silver light building around me like a storm.

"I’m not going to fight them," I said. "I’m going to do what my mother should have done."

"Aria, what are you talking about?" Lucien demanded.

I looked at him with eyes that blazed brighter than stars. "I’m going to embrace the curse."

The power that had been building inside me for weeks suddenly burst outward like a silver sun. Trees bent away from me. The ground cracked under my feet. The very air around me began to glow.

"Aria, stop!" Kael shouted. "You don’t know what you’re doing!"

But I did know. For the first time since this all started, I knew exactly what I was and what I was capable of.

The controlled dogs burst through the trees and stopped dead when they saw me. Even with their artificial minds, they knew power when they saw it.

I raised my hand and spoke a single word in a language I’d never learned but somehow knew: "Kneel."

Every controlled wolf dropped to the ground like they’d been hit by lightning. Their blue eyes flicked back to normal colors as whatever was controlling them simply... broke.

But the effort of using so much power at once was too much. I fell, blood streaming from my nose and eyes.

"The curse," I whispered as darkness closed in around me. "It’s already too late."

As I lost awareness, I heard Frost’s voice: "Her mother died the same way. Using too much power at once."

And then I heard something that made my blood run cold.

Elder Malin’s laughter, echoing through the trees like the sound of breaking glass.

"Just as I planned," he said. "The Silver Alpha has finally accepted her true nature. Now the real fun starts."

The last thing I saw before everything went black was the suitcase lying open beside me.

Inside were photos. Hundreds of them.

All of me.

From the day I was born until yesterday.

Elder Malin had been watching me my entire life.