🗡️ Chapter 01🗡️

Zelda's POV

I slept through the entire flight.

Twelve hours, seat 14A, silk mask over my eyes and my noise-canceling headphones doing God's work blocking out the world.

Dark lo-fi, the kind with no lyrics and too much bass, the kind that makes your brain go quiet whether it wants to or not.

Four years.

Four years of grey skies and university libraries and a city that didn't know my name or my nature. Four years of being just a girl, just Zelda, forensic criminology student.

Four years of living in the UK had turned me into a professional at disappearing into myself. I was good at it. Arguably my best skill.

A gentle tap on my shoulder pulled me back.

I pushed the mask up. A flight attendant was smiling down at me with the particular expression of someone who was professionally kind and also needed me to leave.

"Miss. We've landed. You're one of the last passengers on board."

"Sorry. Yeah. I'm going." I mumbled, my voice thick with sleep.

I wasn't graceful about it. I shoved my tablet and my sketch notebook into my bag with the energy of someone who absolutely had not set an alarm and was not about to admit it, and I shuffled off the plane into the humid night air of home.

Home.

It smelled exactly the same. That thick, warm air that hits different after a European winter. It should have felt like relief. Instead it felt like a word in a language I used to speak fluently and had slowly been forgetting.

I stood on the jetway for exactly two seconds just breathing it in.

Then I checked my phone.

No messages. No missed calls. No we're outside, hurry up! text from my mother who was constitutionally incapable of being subtle about anything.

I frowned at the screen.

Weird.

My parents had practically marched me onto the plane to the UK four years ago, they had been calling, texting, video calling with embarrassing regularity ever since. Every week without fail. Sometimes twice a week.

We had spoken just this morning.

Can't wait to see you, my father had said. Your mother is already planning what to cook.

I told myself it was nothing and walked to baggage claim. I told myself it was nothing while I waited for my suitcase. I told myself it was nothing while I dragged said suitcase to the arrivals lounge, found the least uncomfortable bench available, which, for the record, was still deeply uncomfortable, and sat down to wait.

One hour.

Two.

I called my mum. Voicemail. I called my dad. Voicemail. I called my mum again because maybe she just hadn't heard it the first time, which was a lie I told myself and didn't believe for a single second.

My wolf was pacing. That's the only way I know how to describe it, that low, restless energy behind my ribs that isn't quite anxiety and isn't quite instinct and is somehow both at once. She does it when something is wrong. She'd been doing it since the plane touched down and I hadn't wanted to acknowledge it because acknowledging it meant taking it seriously and I wasn't ready to take it seriously.

By the third hour, the airport started to quiet down. The bustling crowds thinned out into a few tired travelers and janitors buffing the floors.

I looked at my reflection in the dark glass of a shuttered coffee shop across the way.

I looked older. Four years will do that. My face had settled into something more certain than the eighteen-year-old they'd pushed out the door with it's for your safety, Zelda and you'll understand when you're older, Zelda.

My gaze was more guarded. My jaw was set like I'd learned at some point to hold it that way and never quite unlearned it.

By nine o'clock I couldn't sit still anymore.

"Fine," I said quietly to nobody, grabbing my suitcase handle and standing up. "I'll get there myself. And you two better have the most spectacular excuse in the history of excuses."

********

Finding a cab at that hour was its own special kind of misery.

I stood on the curb feeling completely lost, waving at cabs like a lunatic as they sped past. My patience was wearing thin; I just wanted to get home, walk through those doors, and give my parents a piece of my mind

What could possibly be so important that they’d forget their only daughter was returning today? Especially after we’d talked just this morning. The irritation was bubbling up, masking the fear that tried to take root in my gut.

I waved at every set of headlights that came my way.

Most of them didn't stop. One stopped and then drove away when I started walking toward it, which felt personal.

As if the heavens finally took pity on me, a taxi rolled to a hesitant stop at the curb. The driver leaned out the window, squinting at me through the humid air.

"Where to, miss?"

I quickly rattled off the address. It was my parents' estate, a magnificent place tucked away from the prying eyes of the city, usually buzzing with servants coming and going.

The driver gave a slow nod, agreeing to the trip. We negotiated a price that was probably too high, but I didn't care. I just needed to get there. I hauled my suitcase into the trunk, climbed into the back seat, and watched the airport lights fade into the dark distance.

-----

The ride was dead quiet, the only sound being the low hum of the tires against the asphalt. I couldn't stop myself, I kept dialing my parents' numbers over and over, the phone pressed so hard against my ear it started to throb. Still nothing. Just that empty, mechanical voicemail greeting that made my skin crawl.

The estate was on the far edge of the city, past where the roads get quieter and the streetlights thin out. I'd grown up there my whole life and I still never quite got used to how far removed it felt from everything. My parents had liked it that way. No pack, no territory, no entanglements, that had been the operating principle of my entire childhood.

After what felt like hours of driving deeper into the outskirts, the taxi finally slowed to a crawl, stopping a good distance away from the estate's main entrance.

I paid him and got out. I hauled my luggage out of the trunk and dropped it onto the gravel. The taxi didn't waste a second; it pulled a sharp U-turn and zoomed off, the red taillights disappearing into the darkness.

I took a deep breath, the humid night air feeling heavy in my lungs, and started rolling my suitcase toward the gate. The wheels made a loud, rhythmic clack-clack against the ground that seemed way too loud in the silence. When I reached the massive iron gates, the security camera swiveled, scanning my face. With a heavy mechanical groan, it clicked open, and I slipped inside.

The place was brutally quiet. Like,too quiet. Usually, you’d hear the wind through the trees or the distant sound of the staff, but tonight? Nothing. I walked for a while, my heart starting to drum a frantic beat against my ribs. This whole estate was private, no neighbors, no through-traffic, just my parents and their life.

The driveway curved through the trees and I couldn't see the house yet, just the path ahead of me and the dark between the branches overhead. My wolf had stopped pacing.

She'd gone very, very still.

Which was worse.

I rounded the last bend in the drive and stopped walking.

The light hit me first. Wrong colour, wrong quality, not the warm gold of the house lights but something orange and violent and alive, flickering against the trees in a way that made my brain stutter before it caught up with my eyes.

I dropped the suitcase. I didn't decide to. My hands just let go.

And then I was running.

I came around the corner at full speed and skidded to a stop on the gravel and stood there with the heat rolling off the blaze in waves and black smoke swallowing the stars above my childhood home.

The mansion was on fire.

My parents.

Everything else, logic, caution, the four years of careful living I'd spent learning how to keep the wolf quiet, all of it went silent.

There was only one thought left and it wasn't even a thought, it was just a direction. In. Forward. Through the heat and the smoke and the roar of the flames eating everything I'd ever known.

I ran straight to the fire.