Aveline Rowena Ashford would never forget the moon on the night of her tenth birthday.

The full moon hung high above Ashford Manor, like a giant silver eye, staring unblinkingly at the pack gathered in the courtyard. The air reeked of roasted meat, ale and earth, and everyone had come. Every member of the Ashford pack wore their finest clothes; children chased one another across the lawn, while the elders sat around the long table, laughing and chatting.

Aveline sat beside her mother Vivienne, her legs swinging restlessly on the chair, unable to stay still.

“Sit still,” Vivienne murmured, one hand pressing down on her knee.

“I can’t help it.” Aveline grinned, revealing two baby teeth she had not yet lost. “Mama, what colour do you think my wolf will be? Edwin says his will be black, just like Papa’s. But I think mine will be white, like the moon.”

Vivienne’s hand stiffened slightly.

“We shall see soon enough.”

“I’m so nervous.” Aveline turned her head toward her twin brother Edwin, seated at the far end of the table. He was talking to their father Weston, and their profiles were nearly identical — sharp, proud contours. Edwin felt her gaze and lifted his head to pull a face at her.

Aveline giggled.

“Quiet,” Vivienne said again, her voice softer and tighter than before.

Aveline did not notice the trembling in her mother’s fingertips.

Nor did she notice Grandmother Beatrice, standing at the edge of the crowd, hands folded before her, gazing at her with heavy eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line.

At eleven forty, Weston Blake Ashford stood.

He was the Alpha, leader of the Ashford pack: a tall, imposing man who never showed emotion in public. He raised his goblet, and the courtyard fell silent at once.

“Everyone,” his voice carried far on the night wind, “tonight is a great day for House Ashford. My son Edwin and my daughter Aveline will undergo their first shift this night.”

Cheers and applause erupted together.

Aveline’s heart felt ready to burst from her chest. She had waited ten long years for this day. Every wolf child shifted for the first time on their tenth birthday. It was their birthright, a gift bestowed by the Moon Goddess. From that moment onward, they would no longer be merely human — they would be true werewolves.

“Edwin.” Weston nodded toward his son.

Edwin stood and strode to the centre of the courtyard, chest held high. The shift had already begun. Muscles rippled beneath his shirt, his shoulders broadened, fingers lengthened, nails turning to black claws before their eyes. His eyes shifted from blue to yellow, then to deep gold.

“Arooo —” Edwin threw back his head and howled.

The sound reverberated, sending a tingling sensation through Aveline’s chest and stirring the blood of everyone present.

Claps, whistles and cheers mingled together.

“Well done, Edwin!”

“That is Ashford blood for you!”

Edwin reverted partially, breathing heavily as he walked back to his father. Weston clapped him on the shoulder, cracking a rare smile.

“Your turn, Aveline,” Weston said.

Aveline practically leapt off the chair.

She ran to the centre of the courtyard, standing exactly where Edwin had stood. The soil beneath her still held the warm impressions of his claws. She lifted her face to the moon and drew a deep breath.

Come, she thought. I am ready.

She closed her eyes.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

Nothing happened.

No sickening creak of bones, no prickling burn across her skin, no lengthening nails, no sharpening fangs. She held out her hands, turning them over beneath the moonlight. They remained the small, plump hands of a ten-year-old girl, her fingertips still stained with the blue paint she had used to draw that afternoon.

“Aveline?” Weston’s voice came from behind her, with barely concealed tension.

“Wait a little longer,” Aveline said, squeezing her eyes shut harder. “Maybe I’m just slower.”

She waited on.

Seconds stretched into a minute, then five minutes. The courtyard fell utterly quiet. Even the children had stopped making noise. Only the rustle of wind through treetops remained, alongside Aveline’s quickening breaths.

“Aveline.” This time it was Vivienne calling her, her voice strange, half fear and something else. “Come here.”

“No.” Aveline planted her feet firmly. “Just a little longer. The books say everyone is different; some children take more time —”

“No child takes more time.” Edwin cut her off, confusion mixed with faint disdain in his tone. “Everyone shifts on their tenth birthday. No exceptions.”

“Then today is the exception.” Aveline shot him a glare.

“That is enough.” Weston stepped before her and knelt, his large hands resting on her shoulders. He stared into her eyes for a long moment, long enough for fear to creep over Aveline.

“Papa?” she whispered.

Weston did not answer. He stood, turned toward the crowd and spoke a sentence that sliced through the moonlight of that night like a blade:

“This ends here. Everyone, go home.”

The crowd dispersed. Not a single person glanced back at Aveline. They walked past her as if she had suddenly turned to stone or a tree, unworthy of another look.

That night, Aveline lay in her bedroom and heard Edwin’s steady, even breathing from the next room. She rolled over to face the wall and pulled the blanket over her head.

“You are special,” she whispered to herself. “You are just slower than the others.”

But no one came to wish her goodnight.

No mother, no father, no grandmother.

Curled alone in bed, she tasted abandonment for the very first time. It tasted like rust, bitter and astringent, spreading from the tip of her tongue all the way down into her stomach.

What she did not know was that at the end of the hallway, Weston’s study door was tightly shut. Three people were inside — Weston, Vivienne, and Grandmother Beatrice.

“I told you we should have taken her to a healer long ago,” Vivienne’s voice seeped through the crack, lowered to a hush. “You kept delaying, and now everyone knows.”

“A healer cannot fix this.” Weston’s voice was cold as iron. “It is not that she has no wolf; it is that she —”

“Do not speak of it here!” Beatrice interrupted sharply, her voice cracking. “Walls have ears.”

Silence fell inside the room for several seconds.

Then Beatrice spoke again. Most of her words were swallowed by the heavy oak door, but a fragment slipped out beneath the frame and drifted into Aveline’s ears:

“…The child is innocent. You cannot —”

The door clicked fully shut.

Aveline pulled her blanket tighter around herself.

She did not know who “the child” referred to. Nor did she know that locked inside her father’s study safe lay a two-hundred-year-old contract. Beneath the signatures of every Alpha of House Ashford ran the final line: *Every Ashford bloodline that fails to awaken shall belong to Mordecai.*

All she knew was that from this night onward, her moon would never shine as brightly as it once had.

The Fugitive Golden Wolf — Chapter 10: The Road West

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