Silver arrows hissed through smoke-thick air, tips leaving trails of pale light in the darkness. Bran dodged another. He'd been doing this for what felt like hours now. His bare feet were bloodied and bruised from the sharp stones and bushes he'd run through. Normally, his wolf senses would have kicked in and provided a better path but he was too tired to care.

Behind him, Ariana's pants came in ragged bursts, her white-tipped tail visible in brief flashes as they wove between burning trees. Bran's own lungs were baked inside out, burning as he ran, each breath and each cough tasting of ash and fear. He gripped Ariana's wrist, carefully avoiding the rope-scarred flesh where Meera had bound her last moon for sharing food with the younger pack members. All he ever wanted was to see her free, and now, she was going to die and it was all his fault.

"You said we would be safe!" Kira's voice cracked behind them, the young she-wolf stumbling over roots as she ran. Running on two legs was slow. They would have been faster if they turned completely wolf, but then the hunters would track their prints and so, this half form would do.

 "You promised if we left Meera—"

"I know," Bran choked out, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his face. The empty spaces in his mind where half his packmates should be screamed louder than the dragons overhead. "Just keep running. We're almost far enough. We'll regroup with the others." The lie tasted bitter on his tongue. There were no others left to regroup with – he could feel the pack bonds snapping one by one, each death a fresh wound in his soul.

Mace, the older male running beside Kira, snarled. "There is no pack left to—"

A scream pierced the night – high and primal, cutting off in a wet gurgle. Kira's packbond vanished like a snuffed candle. Bran didn't dare look back, but Mace's howl of grief told him enough. The blessed silver had claimed another.

Above them, the hunters' dragons circled, giant wings beating against the smoke-stained sky in a rhythmic pattern. The rhythm of death. Their fiery breath ignited new fires in the canopy. The forest was crying in pain and burning branches crashed down around them, forcing Bran to leap sideways, dragging Ariana with him. Her bones felt too delicate under his grip. He couldn't tell if he was protecting her or crushing her.

"Keep moving," he growled, the words coming out in their guttural beast-tongue. The human hunters would hear only animal sounds, but Ariana and Mace would understand the fear beneath them. It was just just the three of them again like always. Maybe, he should never have involved anyone else. Did he think he was some kind of hero? Did he think he could really make a difference? Save them from Meera and her constant abuse of the pack? What a joke.

By the time they broke through the wall of smoke into momentary clarity, their legs had almost given out and they had slowed to a limping jog. Moonlight silvered the ground, and for one heartbeat, Bran saw the full scope of their disaster. Bodies lay scattered through the underbrush – beastkin, their blood black in the darkness. Some faces he recognized. Most he didn't. The ones from his pack were dead because he'd convinced them that freedom from their alpha was worth the risk. The rest were dead because that's what humans do.

A dragon's roar shattered the moment. Heat bloomed overhead as another gout of flame turned night to day. Before he could think, Mace had already pushed him and Ariana out of the way. Mace stumbled, silver arrow sprouting from his half burned thigh. Bran hesitated, torn between helping and keeping Ariana safe. Mace met his eyes and nodded once, understanding. Then he turned, bursting into full wolf form in an explosion of fur and charged at the hunters with his last breath, buying them precious seconds.

They ran again, Bran's feet digging into dirt and stone, grip tight on Ariana. His muscles screaming with each bound. The smoke was thick again, filling his sensitive nose with the stench of burning fur and flesh. Through the chaos his mind instinctively called to the beast King for help. But when he felt the distant gaze the Beast King – a looming awareness spread in the back of his mind: the king was watching but offering no aid to rebels who had defied their pack.

Something whistled past his ear – another arrow, too close. Then Ariana cried out. He spun, heart stopping, but she was still running. Just grazed. The silver hadn't taken her. Not yet.

The trees thinned ahead, and Bran's stomach dropped. Water scent cut through the smoke. River. They'd been herded and he realized too late. Driven exactly where the hunters wanted them.

They burst from the treeline onto a rocky shore. The river rushed past, too wide to leap, too fast to swim. Bran whirled, pushing Ariana behind him as shadows detached themselves from the burning forest. Two hunters emerged, crossbows raised, dragon-light casting their faces in hellish orange.

"No escape now, beasts," one called out in their human tongue – meaningless sounds to Bran's ears, but the intent was clear enough in the silver-tipped bolt aimed at his heart.

Bran backed up, feet scraping on loose stones. His mind raced. Maybe if he turned full wolf and charged, created an opening, Ariana could–

A shadow moved behind the hunters. A figure in black, stepping through their ranks like smoke through trees. No crossbow. No visible weapons. Just presence, heavy as storm clouds.

The two hunters noticed the movement too late. Silver flashed in moonlight – once, twice. They dropped without a sound, throats opened to the night air. The figure stood still, blank cloak and black mask with its strange triangular symbol reflecting dragon-fire.

"You'll do nicely," the black-clad figure said, voice neither male nor female.

Bran didn't understand the words, but something in that voice made his fur stand on end. Wrong. Everything about this was wrong.

The figure moved with impossible speed. Silver flashed. Pain bloomed in Bran's shoulder, and suddenly he couldn't move. Blessed silver. The blade pinned him like a moth to parchment, its touch burning through muscle and bone.

Ariana snarled and leaped, but the Hunter in Black swatted her aside with casual brutality. She hit the ground hard, skidding on the rocks, bleeding from the side of her head. When she tried to rise, another silver blade appeared in the hunter's hand.

"Stay down, little one," the figure said. "Your part comes later."

The hunter pulled something from beneath black robes. A vial, contents swirling with unnatural light. Bran tried to resist, but fingers like iron gripped his jaw, forced his mouth open. His fangs, strong enough to bite through bone couldn't penetrate the hunter's gloves. Liquid burned down his throat, tasting of metal and something ancient.

Words filled the air – not human speech, not beast-tongue, but something older. Something that made reality shiver like heat waves over summer stones. The hunter's free hand traced symbols in the air that left burning afterimages in Bran's vision.

Through it all, Ariana watched with wide eyes. She could run now, while the hunter was occupied. Save herself. But she wouldn't. Bran knew she wouldn't. That's why he'd wanted her safe in the first place.

The chanting reached a crescendo. The hunter's blade withdrew from Bran's shoulder, but he still couldn't move. The figure turned to Ariana.

"The price must be paid," the hunter said, and the blade plunged down with a crunch. Precisely through her back and into her heart.

Ariana didn't cry out. Didn't whimper. Just stared at Bran with those golden eyes as her lifeblood poured out onto the stones. The hunter caught the flow in cupped hands and flung it across Bran's face.

The world exploded.

First he turned full wolf. Not by choice- a forced turn, the kind that only the Beast King should be able to force. Next, his bones liquified, reforming with excruciating slowness. Each vertebra in his spine cracked and reshaped itself, forcing him to arch backward until he thought his back would snap. Fur didn't just retreat – it burned away like paper in flame, leaving his skin raw and exposed. His skull collapsed inward, reshaping itself as his muzzle crumpled and reformed. Claws tore free from fingers that felt like they were being flayed. His tail ripped away as if yanked by an invisible hand. Organs shifted and twisted, some withering away, others expanding to fill new spaces. Even his eyes changed, the world's colors dulling and darkening as his wolf's vision died.

But worse than the physical agony was the mental severing. The pack bonds, already weakened by death, snapped completely. The Beast King's constant presence in his mind vanished like a star going dark. The hollow emptiness that replaced them was deafening – a silence so profound it felt like going deaf and blind at once. Was this how humans lived? This terrible isolation, this disconnection from everything and everyone? The loneliness crashed over him like a physical weight, threatening to drive him mad.

When the agony finally ebbed, Bran found himself on hands and knees – human hands, human knees – in the ruins of what had once been a small shrine or temple on the riverbank. He hadn't even noticed it before. The Hunter in Black was gone.

His first breath with human lungs felt like drowning. Too shallow. Too weak. Everything was wrong – smells reduced to almost nothing, sounds muffled as if his head were wrapped in wool. The night around him had gone from sharp clarity to a murky soup of shadows. Even the air on his bare skin felt wrong, too sensitive without fur to buffer it.

"Ariana!" The word came out in human tongue, wrong and clumsy on his new lips. He crawled to her body, still warm but empty of life. His reflection in a pool of blood stopped him cold – a human face stared back. He still looked like himself in the half form but now there were no wolf ears, no tail, nothing of what he had been. He tried to shift, to call upon the complete wolf form that had been as natural as breathing. Nothing happened. His body remained stubbornly, horrifyingly human.

Voices approached – human hunters, their boots crunching on stone. The sound was barely audible with his useless new human ears. Bran looked up with new eyes as they emerged from the smoke.

"Seven confirmed kills," one was saying. "Not counting the ones that went into the river."

He...he understood them. The meaningless sounds had become words, crystal clear in his transformed mind.

"Eight," another corrected. "Found another by the ridge. Young female. Clean shot through the throat." Kira. They were talking about Kira.

"Hells, what happened here?" A third voice, noticing the blood-stained rocks. "And who's this?"

"Boy in the forest? Must've gotten caught in the hunt. Lucky we found him."

"Jim and Oscar are dead though. Must've been the dead wolf girl over there. At least they took care of her before kicking the bucket."

Bran wanted to laugh. Or scream. Or tear their throats out with teeth that were now too dull for the job.

"Can you stand, lad? The guild's not far. We'll get you sorted."

Bran rose on shaking legs, and immediately vomited. The hunters took it as shock at his "rescue." They couldn't see him staring at Ariana's cooling body in the shadows of the shrine. Couldn't know that the tremors wracking his frame weren't from fear but from the effort of not killing them all.

"Easy there. What's your name, boy?"

Bran opened his new mouth, tested his new tongue. "Bran," he said, the human word feeling like wet mud on his lips. His first words with a human voice.

One of the hunters draped a cloak around his shoulders, covering his nakedness. Another offered a waterskin. They spoke of safety, of shelter, of the guild's protection. Bran let them lead him away from the river, away from the shrine, away from everything he'd been.

Behind them, the forest burned, and with it, the last traces of his old life. But the Hunter in Black's words echoed in his mind, clear now in his new understanding: "The price must be paid."

It had been. In blood and bone and betrayal. But as Bran walked on human legs toward human shelter, he made a silent vow in the language of wolves that he could no longer speak: this was only the beginning of the payment. And when accounts were finally settled, there would be nothing left to pay with. 

The smoke rose higher, and somewhere in the darkness, dragons circled like stars fallen to earth, hunting for survivors that no longer existed.