Chapter Forty-Eight: The Bestiary of the Eclipse
Caleb's POV
I knew something had changed the moment I saw her smile.
Not the small ones Hazel used to wear like armor—tight-lipped, cautious, held together by sheer will. This was different. This was unguarded. Bright. Alive in a way that didn't ask permission.
She stood near the central fire, morning light spilling through the trees and catching in her hair, tears still drying at the corners of her eyes—but she was laughing.
Laughing.
The sound carried. It wasn't loud, but it spread. Like warmth. Like something remembered rather than learned.
For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
She looked… younger. Lighter. Like someone had lifted a weight I hadn't even realized she'd been carrying since childhood. Flora's presence hummed around her, visible now in the way Hazel moved—confident, playful, whole.
Lucien said something to her. I didn't hear what.
She snorted.
Actually snorted.
Then shoved a piece of bread into his mouth when he kept talking.
"Eat," she told him. "You think too much when you're hungry."
Lucien choked. Half the wolves around them burst into laughter.
And just like that, the tension snapped.
The United Packs—wolves who had arrived wary, bloodstained, and exhausted—began to loosen. Armor came off. Someone started a sparring ring. Another group clustered near the cooking fires. Even the Elders looked… less ancient. Less burdened.
Hazel moved through them like sunlight.
She trained with the younger wolves first, patient and encouraging, correcting stances with light touches instead of barked commands. When one stumbled, she laughed and helped them up. When another landed a solid hit on her, she whooped like she'd won.
I watched her spar with a veteran Alpha twice her size and flip him clean over her hip.
The clearing erupted.
She bowed theatrically. "Again?"
Gods help me—I loved her.
She sat with us to eat. Not at the head. Not elevated. Cross-legged in the dirt, sharing meat and bread, listening more than she spoke. At one point, Lucien was too busy arguing strategy with an Elder to notice his plate was empty.
Hazel noticed.
She tore off a piece of meat, dipped it in sauce, and held it out to him without looking.
Lucien froze.
"You're staring," she said mildly. "Eat."
He did.
The wolves around them went feral with amusement.
I should have gone to her.
I wanted to. Every instinct screamed to close the distance, to anchor this moment, to apologize again, to tell her how seeing her like this felt like oxygen after drowning.
But I didn't.
Not yet.
I stood on the edge of the clearing, watching, committing every second to memory—because something in my chest warned me not to trust peace when it came this easily.
That was when the air changed.
It wasn't sudden. Not dramatic.
Just… wrong.
Flora's head snapped up first.
Hazel stilled mid-laugh.
The forest went quiet—not empty quiet, but listening quiet.
I felt it then. A pressure behind my eyes. A low vibration beneath the earth, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to this world.
"Horns," someone muttered.
Then the scent hit us.
Rot. Iron. Old magic soured by blood rituals and something far worse.
Hazel rose slowly to her feet.
The sky dimmed.
Not clouds—eclipse.
A shadow crawled across the sun, and with it came the sound.
Footsteps.
Too many.
They poured from the treeline like a nightmare unspooling.
Onis first—towering, red-skinned brutes with horns curling from their skulls, muscles corded with stolen strength, mouths split into grins full of tusks and hunger. Their weapons were crude but soaked in enchantments that made the air hiss around them.
Between their legs came the Draugr—rotting corpses in broken armor, eyes glowing cold blue, moving with relentless, unnatural purpose. Each step left frostbitten grass in its wake.
Then the Rakshasa.
Gods.
They moved wrong—limbs bending at impossible angles, faces shifting between human beauty and animal monstrosity. Illusion magic shimmered around them, distorting distance, sound, reality itself. Wolves flinched as familiar faces flickered where enemies stood.
The Hollowed followed.
Once-wolves.
Once-people.
Now empty shells animated by necromancy, eyes black pits, mouths slack. They wore pack markings from clans long destroyed.
A collective snarl tore from the United Packs.
And then—
The Skoll-kin.
White-furred. Massive. Their forms warped by Helena's corruption, eyes burning with silver-red madness. Power radiated from them in waves, crushing and feral and wrong.
The battlefield filled too fast.
Too many kinds of death. Too many rules broken at once.
Orders rang out. Lines formed. Spells flared. Claws met flesh.
And still they came.
The variety was the horror.
Onis smashed through shields. Draugr refused to fall. Rakshasa turned allies against each other with whispered lies and mirrored faces. The Hollowed didn't scream—they just kept walking.
We were strong.
But they were endless.
For the first time since Hazel had been crowned, I felt it—the edge of panic curling up my spine.
I turned to find her.
She stood at the center of it all, calm settling over her like a mantle. The Red Wolf light stirred beneath her skin—not raging, not restrained.
Ready.
Her eyes met mine across the chaos.
No fear.
Only resolve.
Helena hadn't come with an army.
She'd come with a bestiary.
And suddenly, I understood.
This wasn't a battle.
It was a test.
And the eclipse hadn't reached its darkest point yet.