Luna's POV
The mirror exploded with light.
One second I was frozen on Olivia's bedroom floor, paralyzed by that horrible whistle. The next, Alpha Kieran grabbed my wrist and yanked me straight into the glowing glass. The world spun like I was tumbling down a hill, colors blurring together, my stomach lurching into my throat.
We crashed onto solid ground so hard my teeth rattled.
"Move!" Alpha Kieran dragged me to my feet. We were back in the Sacred Grove, but something was wrong. The air crackled with energy, and the ancient trees swayed even though there was no wind. "The barrier is collapsing. We destabilized it by crossing over."
"But Olivia—her mother was going to—"
"Olivia is human. She'll be fine. We need to hide the crystal before—"
A scream tore through the forest.
Not a wolf's howl. Not an animal's cry. A human scream, high-pitched and terrified and getting closer.
Alpha Kieran's eyes went wide with shock. "That's impossible. No human has crossed into our territory in fifty years."
But the scream came again, along with the sound of someone crashing through undergrowth, branches snapping, feet pounding against earth.
A girl burst into the Sacred Grove.
She was human—I could tell by her scent, by the way she moved, by the strange clothes she wore. She was maybe sixteen, with dark hair tangled with leaves and tears streaming down her face. Blood dripped from cuts on her arms and legs.
She saw us and stumbled to a halt, her chest heaving. For a long moment, we all just stared at each other.
Then she dropped to her knees. "Please," she sobbed. "Please help me. I don't know where I am. I don't know how I got here. But my brother is dying, and I need the Silverheart bloom, and—" Her words dissolved into crying so hard her whole body shook.
My heart twisted. I'd never seen anyone look so desperate, so broken. Without thinking, I started toward her.
Alpha Kieran grabbed my shoulder. "Don't. She's human."
"She's hurt!"
"She's dangerous." His voice was hard. "All humans are dangerous."
But the girl looked up at us through her tears, and I saw something in her eyes that made my chest ache. She looked exactly how I'd felt when the pack banished me—alone, terrified, with nowhere else to turn.
"My brother is eight years old," she whispered. "He has silver fever. The doctors said he has three days left unless I find a Silverheart bloom. I was researching old legends, trying to find any cure they might have missed, and I found a book about a Moon Mirror that could take you to a magical forest where the flowers grow. I thought it was just a story, but I was so desperate I tried it anyway, and suddenly I was here, and—" She covered her face with her hands. "Please. I'll do anything. Just help me save him."
Silver fever. I'd heard the pack elders mention it before. It was a human disease that had no cure in their world. But here, in the wolf territories, Silverheart blooms grew wild in certain valleys. The flowers were sacred to us, but not rare.
"We have to help her," I said to Alpha Kieran.
"Absolutely not."
"But her brother—"
"Is not our problem!" Alpha Kieran's voice rose to a shout. "Luna, every time you've shown kindness to humans, it's brought disaster to our pack. Your curiosity led you to that mirror. The mirror brought us to the human world. Now a human has crossed into ours. Don't you see the pattern? Your actions have consequences!"
His words hit me like a slap. He was right. Every choice I'd made tonight had made things worse.
But looking at this crying girl, I couldn't just walk away.
"What's your name?" I asked her softly.
"A-Aria," she stammered. "Aria Martinez."
"I'm Luna." I knelt beside her, ignoring Alpha Kieran's frustrated growl. "How did you use the Moon Mirror to get here?"
Aria pulled a small leather pouch from her pocket with shaking hands. She opened it, and my blood turned to ice.
Inside was another crystal disk. The third one.
"It was with my great-grandmother's things," Aria explained. "The book said if I held this and looked into any mirror under the full moon while thinking about the magical forest, it would take me there. I didn't really believe it would work, but—" She looked around the Sacred Grove, her eyes wide. "It did."
Alpha Kieran snatched the crystal from her hands before she could react. He held it up to the moonlight, his face grim. "Three crystals. Three Bridges. The prophecy wasn't just about two people—it was about three."
"What prophecy?" I demanded.
Before he could answer, the ground shook violently. Trees groaned and tilted. The crystal disk I'd hidden in the roots earlier burst out of the earth, floating into the air. Aria's crystal tore itself from Alpha Kieran's grip, floating up to join the first one.
They began to spin around each other, glowing brighter and brighter.
"Where's the third crystal?" Alpha Kieran shouted over a sound like thunder.
My stomach dropped. "Olivia has it. In the human world."
"Then we're in serious trouble," Alpha Kieran said grimly. "Because the three crystals are calling to each other. And when they reunite—"
The air split open with a sound like reality tearing in half.
A doorway appeared between the trees—not a mirror this time, but a swirling portal of silver light. Through it, I could see Olivia's bedroom. She was fighting with her mother, trying to grab something from her hands. The third crystal.
"Let it go!" Olivia screamed. "You don't understand what you're doing!"
Her mother held the crystal high above her head. "This ends tonight. No more bridges. No more wolves in our world."
She threw the crystal straight at the portal.
It flew through the opening between worlds, spinning end over end, heading straight for the other two crystals.
"Everyone down!" Alpha Kieran tackled both me and Aria to the ground, covering us with his body.
The three crystals collided in mid-air.
The explosion of light was so bright it turned night into day. Power rippled out in waves, and I felt something fundamental change in the world around us. The barrier between the human realm and the wolf realm—the ancient wall that had separated our species for centuries—shattered like glass.
When the light faded and I could see again, the portal was still open. But it wasn't the only one.
Dozens of portals had opened throughout the Sacred Grove, each one showing a different location in the human world. Through one, I saw a busy city street. Through another, a hospital. Through a third, a school.
And humans were starting to notice.
A woman on the city street pointed at the portal, her mouth forming a perfect O of shock. In the hospital, a doctor dropped his clipboard. In the school, children pressed their faces against the swirling light.
"What have we done?" I whispered.
Alpha Kieran's voice was hollow. "We've destroyed the barrier completely. The human world and the wolf world are merging."
A howl rose from somewhere deep in our territory—the pack's alarm call. They'd felt the barrier break. They'd seen the portals open.
Through the main portal, Olivia's mother appeared, a silver weapon in her hands. Behind her, a dozen more people in black uniforms emerged—the Hunters.
"There!" Olivia's mother pointed straight at us. "The three Bridges. Take them down before more damage is done!"
The Hunters raised their weapons.
But before they could fire, something else came through the portals. Something none of us expected.
Wolves from our pack began pouring through, drawn by the alarm howl. But they didn't attack the Hunters. They stopped, staring in confusion at the humans who stared back at them.
For the first time in centuries, humans and wolves faced each other with nothing between them. No barrier. No protection. No rules.
Just fear, curiosity, and loaded weapons.
Elder Frost pushed to the front of our pack, her face twisted with rage. When she saw me, her eyes blazed with fury. "You!" she snarled. "This is all your fault, Luna! You've doomed us all!"
"Wait!" I tried to stand, but Alpha Kieran held me down. "Nobody has to get hurt! We can talk! We can—"
A gunshot cracked through the air.
Everyone froze.
A young wolf from our pack—barely more than a pup—collapsed to the ground, a dart sticking out of his side. He whimpered once, then went still.
The silence that followed was worse than any scream.
Then chaos erupted.