My wolf does not sleep.

  I do.

  When I wake, heat is already crawling beneath my skin. Not pain exactly, more like pressure. Like something pacing inside my ribs, testing the walls. My muscles ache in places I did not know could ache, deep and dull, as if I ran for days instead of hours.

  I sit up slowly.

  The cave is quiet. Morning light spills in thin bands across the stone floor. The fire has been banked low but not allowed to die. Someone tended it.

  Azrael.

  The thought settles in me with more weight than it deserves.

  My wolf stirs instantly at his name, stretching, pushing, demanding space. Not to shift. Not yet. Just to exist. Her frustration bleeds into my limbs, making my fingers twitch.

  Stop, I tell her.

  She does not.

  I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and stand. The motion sends a wave of dizziness through me, brief but sharp. I brace a hand against the stone wall until it passes.

  This is wrong.

  The stories never sounded like this. Wolves were supposed to settle after their first change. Find balance. Find harmony. My parents said the tension faded with time.

  This does not feel like fading.

  It feels like escalation.

  I take three steps before my knees buckle.

  I catch myself, breath coming too fast, heart hammering as if I have been running again. My wolf surges in response, offended by my weakness.

  You had your run, I snap internally. It’s my turn now.

  She presses harder, a low, wordless insistence that makes my vision edge-soft.

  “Had enough?”

  Azrael’s voice cuts clean through the noise.

  He stands near the cave entrance, arms crossed, watching me with that unreadable calm that makes it impossible to tell whether he has been there for seconds or hours.

  “How long have you been awake?” I ask.

  “A while.”

  I straighten, bristling. “Were you watching me?”

  “Yes.”

  I wait for embarrassment. It does not come. Only irritation. Maybe because part of me is relieved someone noticed how wrong this feels.

  “You’re shaking,” he adds.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You aren’t.”

  I glare at him. “Do you enjoy contradicting me, or is it just a habit?”

  A corner of his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile.

  “Sit,” he says.

  “I don’t take orders.”

  “I know.” He gestures to the stone bench near the fire. “Sit anyway.”

  I hesitate, then obey, mostly because my legs are still unreliable. The moment I lower myself, my wolf surges again, furious at the submission.

  Azrael notices.

  His gaze sharpens, not on me exactly, but through me, as if he can see the strain pulling my seams apart.

  “She’s loud,” he says quietly.

  My breath catches. “You can feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not normal,” I snap. “Wolves don’t fight like this.”

  “No,” he agrees. “They don’t.”

  Cold crawls up my spine, slow and slick.

  “So what is wrong with me?” I ask.

  He studies me for a long moment before answering.

  “Nothing.” he says finally.

  My mouth opens, already forming a demand, but he continues.

  “You’re trying to dominate her.”

  “I’m trying to function.”

  “She isn’t meant to be suppressed.”

  “I’m not suppressing her,” I argue. “I’m trying to control my own body.”

  “That’s the same thing,” he says.

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  I push to my feet, anger flaring fast. “You don’t get to lecture me about my own wolf.”

  “No,” he says again, calm as stone. “But I do get to keep you from tearing yourself apart.”

  My wolf recoils at that, then lashes out. A pulse of irritation hits so hard my vision blurs at the edges.

  Azrael steps closer instantly.

  “Breathe,” he says, firm now. Not commanding. Anchoring. “Don’t fight her. Listen.”

  “I don’t want to listen.”

  “I know.”

  The words hit like a hand pressed to a bruise.

  His voice softens just a fraction. “That’s why this feels like torture.”

  The pressure eases slightly when I focus on my breath. In. Out. In. Out. The world steadies.

  “She doesn’t want control,” Azrael continues. “She wants acknowledgment.”

  “And if I give that?” I ask tightly.

  “Then you stop bleeding strength.”

  I swallow. “You make it sound simple.”

  “It isn’t,” he says. “That’s why we start small.”

  “We?”

  He nods once. “You don’t know how to exist in two skins yet. I do.”

  I search his face. “Is this training?”

  “No,” he replies. “This is survival.”

  The fire crackles softly between us.

  “Stand,” he says.

  I hesitate.

  “Not to shift,” he adds. “Just stand.”

  I do.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I don’t.

  “Lirian.”

  I grit my teeth and comply.

  “Now,” he says, “let her step forward. Just a little. Not to take over. Not to run. Just to be heard.”

  I shake my head. “If I do that, she won’t stop.”

  “But you will,” he counters. “You’re stronger than you think. You’re just…out of alignment.”

  My wolf presses forward tentatively, curious now instead of furious. The sensation is strange. Warm. Like loosening a fist I didn’t realize I’d been clenching.

  My shoulders drop.

  The pressure lessens.

  For the first time since my change, my body feels like it belongs to me again.

  I exhale shakily.

  “There,” Azrael says quietly. “That’s the line. Learn it. Guard it.”

  I open my eyes.

  He is watching me closely, not with hunger or judgment, but something like relief.

  “What happens if I cross it?” I ask.

  His expression darkens.

  “Then she will too,” he says. “And neither of you will know how to stop.”

  The weight of that settles deep in my chest.

  For the first time since the shift, I feel it.

  Control.

  It is faint, fragile, but unmistakably mine.

  My breathing steadies. The constant pressure beneath my skin eases just enough that my shoulders lower and my fingers stop twitching. My wolf retreats a fraction, watchful but no longer clawing.

  I let out a slow breath and almost laugh.

  “Well,” I murmur inwardly, exhausted and a little smug, that wasn’t so hard.

  The response is instant.

  White-hot pressure detonates inside my chest, ripping the air from my lungs. My vision blurs as my wolf slams forward, furious, offended, unleashed.

  “Oh gods,” I gasp.

  My knees buckle violently.

  I barely register the stone rushing towards my face before strong arms catch me, hauling me upright. Pain flashes through my legs as they fold uselessly beneath me, my body shaking as if it is trying to split itself open from the inside.

  “Lirian,” Azrael snaps. “She’s not your enemy. Stop treating her like one.”

  “I’m not,” I choke, clutching his forearm as another surge hits. “I’m trying. She’s going to rip through me.”

  “She won’t,” he says sharply. “Not if you stop pushing her away.”

  My wolf roars inside me, wild and desperate, flooding my senses with heat and need. My muscles seize, my back arching as the pressure spikes again.

  I cry out as my legs finally give.

  Azrael catches me fully this time, one arm locked around my waist, the other bracing my shoulders, holding me upright when my body refuses to cooperate. I can feel him everywhere. Solid. Unmoving. Inescapably close.

  My wolf surges at the contact.

  No shame. No restraint.

  She revels in it.

  The heat of him. His scent. The steady beat of his heart behind his ribs. She presses hard against the surface, demanding more. More closeness. More him.

  “Breathe,” Azrael says near my ear. Low. Steel-threaded. “Slow. Deep. Acknowledge her.”

  “I am,” I gasp. “I swear I am.”

  “Not with words,” he says. “With presence.”

  Another tremor tears through me. I cling to him without thinking, my fingers twisting into his shirt as my body shakes.

  “She doesn’t want control,” he continues, voice lower now. “She wants to be seen.”

  Panic rises like bile in my throat.

  Fine, I whisper inwardly, raw and desperate. I see you. Just…stop hurting me.

  The pressure shudders.

  Not gone.

  But contained.

  My breathing evens in ragged increments. The burning in my limbs recedes enough that I can stay upright, even as my weight remains pressed into him.

  Azrael does not loosen his hold.

  He lets me endure the closeness.

  My wolf hums, satisfied, curling against the warmth she’s been denied.

  I hate how much it works.

  “I don’t like this,” I mutter weakly.

  “No,” he says quietly. “But you needed to feel her. To understand what you’ve been doing to her.”

  I swallow, cheeks hot, painfully aware that if he let go right now, I would probably collapse.

  When he finally eases his grip, it is slow and deliberate, only stepping back once my legs stop trembling.

  My wolf sulks.

  I glare at the floor, breath still unsteady.

  “I was kidding,” I mutter. “She didn’t have to…”

  “She did,” Azrael cuts in, calm and certain. “Because you challenged her.”

  I look up at him, exhausted and shaken. “So what, I can’t even think at her wrong?”

  “You can,” he says. “You just can’t pretend she isn’t listening.”

  The truth of that settles heavy in my chest.

  Outside, the wind shifts. Somewhere distant, a wolf howls.

  My wolf lifts her head inside me, alert and restless.

  Azrael turns toward the sound.

  “That,” he says quietly, “is why we start today.”