Thor’s wolf went down. Back to the dirt. Legs scrambling. His body hit the ground with a thud that echoed across the training field, six hundred pounds of midnight-coated muscle toppled by a white wolf half his size who had been slapping him like a kitten for sixty seconds and then detonated into a takedown that belonged in a different weight class.

Aurelia landed on top of him for a fraction of a second. Long enough to establish the pin. Short enough to make it look effortless.

Then she pranced away.

Chin lifted. Tail high. Gait unhurried. The walk of a wolf who had knocked a man twice her size onto his ass and was already over it. Her glow pulsed once, bright, the white light flaring with what could have been pride or satisfaction or just the ambient luminance of a wolf who had decided she was done and the deciding was final.

Thor’s wolf lay on the ground. Blinked. Blinked again. His legs were still in the air. His brain was several seconds behind the event, buffering, trying to reconcile “she was hitting me with her paw” with “I am now on the ground” and finding no logical bridge between the two states.

He blinked a third time. Slowly rolled onto his stomach. Stood up. Shook the dirt off his coat.

His tail was still wagging. Because Thor’s tail was always wagging and the wagging was constitutional.

Halvek blew the whistle.

“SHIFT, Serena.” Tiberon’s command cracked across the field.

White light erupted from Aurelia’s body, blinding, violent, the shift slamming through her in reverse, bones reshaping, fur receding, the agony contained entirely within the necklace’s radius, silent to both matebonds, loud to every nerve in her body.

Serena landed on her hands and knees.

Her head was down. Her hair fell around her face. Her breathing was ragged, each exhale costing effort, her body absorbing the transition the way it always absorbed the transition, which was badly and painfully and with the specific grace of a woman who had been unconscious for the performance and was now dealing with the physical receipt.

She stayed on her knees for two seconds. Pushed herself up. Stood. Her hands found her thighs and she leaned forward, panting, sweat already forming at her temples.

The crowd was silent.

Some soldiers were silent because they watched a princess finish a slow, obviously agonizing de-shift and were baffled why. A smaller amount wore ’oh fuck, I get it now’ expressions. That explained the Alpha command. It also turned the silver rumors into cold fact.

But most were still trying very, very hard to keep a straight face because of what they just witnessed. The trying was losing.

Serena did not know what to make of that bit of it. She blinked a few times. Looked at Tiberon.

It was their system. She came out of a shift with zero memory of what Aurelia had done, and Tiberon’s face was the first thing she checked for data. His expression would tell her whether the session went well or poorly, whether adjustments were needed, whether Aurelia had performed or embarrassed herself or done something that required a conversation.

Tiberon’s face gave nothing.

Absolute zero. A wall of composure so perfectly constructed that the construction itself was suspicious, because, when it came to this specifically, Tiberon Drakenfell was quick to give feedback every time.

“Crushturn, you are offense. Engage on contact,” Captain Halvek boomed.

Thor’s wolf wagged his tail once, sat up straight, and lifted the paw again. The salute. Round two. Same angle, same commitment, same delusional ceremony that nobody had validated the first time and nobody was going to validate now.

Halvek did not look at the paw. Halvek had developed the ability to erase Thor from his peripheral vision through sheer force of professional will, and the will was ironclad.

Serena was still panting. Still on her feet, barely, her lungs doing math on how much oxygen they could process before the next command.

“SHIFT.”

Tiberon’s voice hit her chest before her breathing had leveled. She was still winded, still processing, still running a deficit on air and recovery time that her body was tracking and her king was ignoring because her king did not train wolves on their schedule. He trained them on his.

White light erupted.

Six seconds of agony.

The light was still fading at second six when Aurelia exploded out of it.

She did not wait for the glow to clear or for her vision to adjust. She did not wait for the crowd to finish gasping or Thor’s wolf to finish his salute or Halvek to blow his goddamn whistle. Her paws hit dirt and her legs were already driving, already churning, her small white body firing out of the tail end of the shift like a bullet.

Thor’s wolf had approximately half a second to register that the white light had produced a wolf and the wolf was sprinting directly at him.

He used that half second to blink.

Aurelia hit him like a freight train with a grudge.

The tackle was identical to the first two. Low. Fast. Center mass. The physics of a wolf half his size generating enough force to topple a wolf twice hers by converting raw speed into impact, and the impact was devastating, and the devastation was becoming a pattern, and the pattern was three for three.

Thor’s wolf went down. Again. His back hit the dirt. Again. Dust billowed. Again.

Then the paw came.

Aurelia stood over him and swatted his snout. Right across the muzzle. Same catlike precision. Same casual, dismissive flick of the wrist that communicated zero urgency and total confidence and a complete absence of anything resembling standard wolf combat technique.

Thor’s wolf stared up at her from the ground.

The confusion had evolved. The first time, it was surprise. The second time, it was bewilderment. This time, it was existential. His ears were plastered against his skull. His eyes were wide and searching, darting between Aurelia’s face and her paw and her face again, trying to locate the logic in what was happening to him and finding the shelf where the logic should have been completely fucking empty.

He was a trained military wolf. He had drilled with the best fighters in Drakenfell. He had sparred with Alphas, tangled with Betas, gone jaw-to-jaw with wolves who outranked him and outweighed him and outskilled him.

None of them had ever pawed him in the face.

None of them had looked at him afterward with the serene, golden-eyed indifference of a wolf who was absolutely certain she was winning and had no interest in hearing a counterargument.

His tail wagged.

Aurelia hit him again.