Chapter 43. Celeste’s Fire Shield

Celeste’s POV

We werewolves had occupied the very top of the food chain for centuries. Nothing could kill a werewolf except another werewolf, so it was always survival of the fittest: the strongest would rule, and the weakest would die. This brutal hierarchy gave birth to our familiar ranks—alpha, beta, delta, omega—and governed our society for as long as anyone could remember.

Then, unexpectedly, humans reemerged as a threat, galvanized by the mass slaughter carried out by the Dreadmaw clan. Humanity rallied together and fought back with a fervor we had never seen. They discovered weaknesses of our kind previously unknown to us—silver could fell us, and there were certain repulsive plants, universally dubbed wolfsbane, that weakened our bodies and minds. Faced with these new weapons, we felt our centuries of dominance slipping away.

For the first time in generations, werewolves felt genuinely threatened. A full-scale war would devastate both sides, and even