Chapter 1After I died, my spirit didn't fade. I drifted into the living room.
Clara's face was pale, almost gray. Her lips had lost every trace of color.
A three-tiered cake sat in the middle of the dining table, frosted in pink cream. "Happy Birthday, Little Wolf" scrolled across the top in silver icing.
Mom had her arms wrapped around Clara from behind, chin resting on top of her sister's head. Dad sat across from them, both hands shoved into his hair, frozen still.
"I thought I heard Claire calling from the cellar just now." Clara's voice came out so faint it barely existed. "Can someone go check on her?"
Mom pulled her in tighter. "She's fine. You know how she gets. Every single birthday of yours, she pulls something. Every time."
"But what if she's really - "
"That's enough." Dad finally spoke, his voice low and controlled. "Tonight's your last moonrise. No one's going to ruin it."
He choked on the word last.
Mom buried her face in Clara's hair. A tear slipped from the corner of her eye, tracing down her cheek.
Clara didn't argue. But she glanced toward the cellar door with worry in her eyes, then quietly cut a slice of cake and set it aside.
For me.
...
Clara never took the favoritism for granted.
If anything, she understood better than anyone what it meant - every good thing that landed on her plate was something taken from mine.
So she'd been quietly trying to make it up to me.
Winter nights, when Mom only brought extra furs to Clara's bed, she'd creep over barefoot in the dark and tuck the edge of her own blanket around me. Then she'd crawl back and shiver under a thin sheet until dawn.
When pack guests came with sweets and left them all in front of Clara, she wouldn't touch a single one. She'd stuff them in her pockets and press the whole pile into my hands after Mom and Dad had shifted down for the night.
Every time I got sent to stand in the corner, Clara would rush over and grab my arm. "I made her do it. Punish me instead."
She always said the same thing: "Claire, I'm sorry. If it weren't for this curse, they wouldn't treat you this way."
But Mom and Dad never saw it like that.
"She's always hated seeing you happy." Across the table, Mom's voice came thick with tenderness. "You took her entire curse onto yourself, and she can't even be grateful. How can you still worry about her?"
Mom's expression hardened. "Have you forgotten what happened when you turned twelve?"
I hadn't forgotten.
That was the first time I really understood what Clara's curse mark actually meant.
On Clara's twelfth birthday, Dad took a rare half-day off from the pack's hunting rotation. Mom had been up since moonset, making rich bone broth, roasting wild boar, filling the table with everything Clara loved.
Dad also brought home a delicate moonstone pendant, forged by one of the old silver-smiths in Silverleaf Town. It cost him two months' worth of pack shares.
He bent down and clasped it around Clara's neck himself. Mom stood nearby filming on her phone, face wet with tears.
I watched from the kitchen doorway.
I can't say exactly what I was thinking. I just remember running forward and sweeping the whole table clear with my arm.
Bowls shattered. Broth splashed over Mom's feet. She hissed and bared her fangs in pain.
"It's my birthday too! Why does she get everything!"
I stood there screaming in the middle of the wreckage, like something feral and cornered. My claws had come out without me noticing. My eyes were burning gold.
It wasn't just jealousy - not entirely.
It was because I'd suddenly seen it clearly: Dad saving two months of pack shares for a pendant, Mom up before dawn cooking, both of them crying while they filmed her.
They weren't celebrating a birthday. They were counting down the moons she had left.
But I was too young. The real words were jammed somewhere in my chest, and I couldn't get them out. All that came out was the ugliest version.
Dad's face went dark. His eyes blazed amber. He picked me up, threw me into my bedroom, and locked the door from the outside.
No one brought me food for the entire day.
In the middle of the night, the lock clicked.
Clara crouched in the doorway, holding a cold bread roll and half a cup of water. The bread was hard as stone, and both her knees were scraped raw.
I found out later she'd climbed on a stool to reach the key in Mom and Dad's dresser drawer. The stool tipped. She fell straight down and hit the floor hard enough to bruise bone.
She pressed the bread into my hand, crouched beside me, and used her sleeve to wipe the dried tears from my face.
"Stop crying, okay?"
She smiled a little. Her eyes were so red they looked like they might bleed.
"When I'm gone, everything will be yours. Boar roast whenever you want. Pendant whenever you want. Okay?"
At the table, Mom was still talking.
"Claire's ungrateful. After everything Clara's done - bearing the whole curse for her - and Claire still resents us for loving Clara. She's always been that way."
I floated in the air above them, unable to argue.
She wasn't entirely wrong. I was jealous.
Jealous that when Clara got sick, someone held her all night. Jealous that she could say "Mom" and get a hug. Jealous of eighteen years of being cherished while I screamed until my throat gave out and nobody came.
I drifted toward Clara. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to tell her I really was sick, my stomach really did hurt, I wasn't lying.
But my fingers passed right through her shoulder.
I looked down at my hand. Transparent.
I drifted through the cellar door and looked at the girl curled up in the corner.
That was me.
I was already dead.
And the one who had taken the full weight of the curse in the end - was me.
Chapter 2
Before I was six, I hated my sister.
Even though we were twins, I always lived in her shadow.
Every morning, there was only one cup of moonflower tea in the house. It always went to Clara's side of the table.
The living room walls were covered in her photos: newborn, first moonrise, first shift when her fur came in silver-white. An entire wall, floor to ceiling. Not a single picture of me.
The worst was the nights.
Every evening before bed, Mom would sit at Clara's bedside and teach her how to braid runic charms. Silver thread. Gold thread. Beads of crushed gemstone. One charm after another until Clara's windowsill crowded with them in every color, brighter than a jeweler's display.
I used to crouch in the doorway and watch.
I'd see Mom holding Clara's hands, guiding her through the loops and knots.
"Wind this one more time, yes, exactly like that."
Clara would hold up a lopsided little charm. "Is it pretty, Mom?"
"It's beautiful." Mom kissed her forehead.
The cub crouching in the doorway was never looked at - not once.
The thing that pushed me over the edge was a pair of boots.
One winter when I was nine, Clara's boots wore through. Mom took her into Silverleaf Town that same day to buy a new pair. White leather, with soft fur trim at the ankle. Clara wore them home and kept spinning in circles around the house, bouncing with every step.
I looked down at mine. They were Clara's old pair from two years ago. The soles were ground down to almost nothing. The fabric split open at the big toe. Every rainy day, water seeped in.
"I want new boots too."
Dad was crouched in the doorway fixing a chair and didn't look up. "Yours are fine."
"The sole is gone! Rain gets in! My feet are soaking wet every day!"
"Stuff some rags in." His voice was completely flat, like he was commenting on the weather. "Your sister has a weak constitution. If her paws get cold, she ends up at the healer's. You're tough. You'll be fine."
You'll be fine.
Those words broke the last thread inside me.
I ran into Clara's room and threw myself at the windowsill. I swept every single runic charm to the floor. Grabbed them in my fists and stomped on them one by one.
"I hate you!"
I stood in the wreckage of shredded thread and screamed at Clara, who'd come running in after me. "I hate that you were born into this pack! If it weren't for you, the boots would be mine! The moonflower tea would be mine! Mom would be mine!"
Clara stood in the doorway, her face white as bone. Her tears fell - one drop, then another - but she made no sound. She just slowly crouched down and started picking up the pieces from the floor. One by one.
Mom burst in from the kitchen and grabbed my arm, fingers digging in hard. She didn't hit me. She just pointed at the ruins on the floor and said, word by word, "Do you have any idea who those were for?"
I went still.
"Your sister made every single one for you." Mom's voice was shaking. "She said the charms would keep you safe. Make sure the curse never touched you. So when she was gone, you'd have these. You wouldn't forget her."
The windowsill was empty. The floor was full of broken thread. Clara was still picking up pieces, head down, shoulders shaking.
"Mom, don't." Her voice came out muffled. "It's fine. I'll make more."
Dad made me stand on the balcony all that night as punishment. December. Well below freezing. In just a thin shirt.
By the middle of the night I'd lost all feeling in my hands and feet. My thoughts were coming apart. Through the wall, I heard my parents talking.
"What did the healer actually say? Last visit?" Dad's voice.
Mom didn't answer for a long time. "At most... eighteen."
"Eighteen." Dad repeated it. He sounded like he'd just caved in.
Outside on the balcony, the winter wind filled my shirt like a sail. But I couldn't feel the cold anymore.
Eighteen.
Clara was nine.
So it was real. Clara was actually running out of time.
Later that evening, after the birthday cake had been eaten, Mom and Dad helped Clara toward the bedroom.
Even for a wolf, Clara had always been fragile. Sick more times than I could count. By now, even walking a few steps made her stop to catch her breath.
"Should we look in on the cellar?" At the bedroom doorway, Dad suddenly lowered his voice.
Mom settled Clara into bed, tucked the furs in tight, then leaned against the doorframe and closed her eyes for a moment.
"In the morning."
She finally spoke, her voice so raw it was barely sound. "Just tonight, let Clara have this birthday in peace. Tomorrow it'll all be over."
A beat. Then she added, like she was trying to convince herself:
"Claire is strong. She can make it through one night."
Dad moved his lips, then swallowed whatever he was going to say.
He stood there a few seconds, then turned and went to the kitchen. Rummaged deep into the back of the cold storage. Found a half-empty bottle of healing tonic. Scraped out a pot of cold honey-oat porridge.
And started walking toward the cellar.
Chapter 3
He crouched at the cellar door and set the bowl of porridge and the healing tonic side by side on the stone floor.
"Claire."
He tapped on the door with his knuckles, barely making a sound. "Your stomach's bothering you, right? I found some tonic. Drink a little first, then eat the porridge."
I was floating about half a meter above his head, looking down at him.
The set of his shoulders. The white hairs at his temples catching the hallway light. He looked so much older than I remembered.
"Dad. I'm right here. I'm already gone. Open the door and look inside. Please."
He couldn't hear me.
After a while, no sound came from behind the door.
Dad sighed.
"Fine. Be angry all you want." His voice had gone rough. "Once tomorrow's over, Dad'll take you up to Silverleaf Town for mushroom cream noodles. That new place you've been talking about for ages."
His knees crackled as he stood, one hand against the wall. He turned the corner of the hallway and was gone.
I stayed there, looking at the bowl of honey-oat porridge and the little bottle of tonic on the floor.
It's okay, Dad. You'll never get the chance to make that trip.
The hallway was quiet for about ten minutes.
Then came Mom's footsteps - lighter than Dad's, more hesitant.
She stood at the door for a long time before crouching down. Both hands wrung together like she didn't know where to put them.
"Claire. Mom knows you're upset."
"I know every hurt you've ever carried. I always have." She stared at the moss-stained wood of the door, one hand drifting absently to the curling edge of the frame, peeling at it. "But Clara's curse takes effect tomorrow. What am I supposed to do?"
I crouched in front of her.
She was crying. Not breaking down, just the kind of crying where someone's been holding it back so long the redness has soaked all the way in.
She sniffled, and then her voice suddenly picked up speed:
"You always wanted your own room, right? After tomorrow, Clara's room can be yours. Mom will repaint the walls. Hang those string lights you liked."
"And the art lessons. I looked into it. Starlight Academy runs a class in Silverleaf Town every Saturday. One term is three thousand. Mom's saved half already."
"And you're always complaining Mom never gave you a real birthday. You'll be fifteen next moon. We can invite your friends over. Get a big cake. Three tiers - "
Her voice broke apart. Tears came hard and fast, hitting the stone floor in dark drops.
"Mom will make it all up to you. Every single thing. So just get through tonight, okay? Just tonight."
I reached out, trying to catch her tears. My hand went through.
The door stayed silent.
Mom waited for a long time.
Slowly, the guilt on her face got buried under a thin layer of something sharp.
She stood up fast. Stepped back. Fists clenched.
"What do you want from me!" she hissed, voice shrill and unsteady. "Clara is dying tomorrow. You're seriously going to sulk right now? She took the whole curse for you, and you can't even try to understand?"
She started shaking the moment the words were out. She covered her mouth and walked away, shoulders heaving.
The hallway emptied again.
The honey-oat porridge and the tonic were still sitting at the base of the door.
Dark fell fully.
In the living room, Mom sat at the coffee table with streamers and a bag of balloons in front of her. She'd blow one up, stop to blot her eyes, then blow another one. She was making decorations for Clara. They were hoping she'd still be alive to open her eyes and see them in the morning.
The doorbell rang. Dad answered.
Grandpa was standing at the door.
He'd come from deep in the forest. Carrying two pairs of vine-woven shoes and a pot of cream mushroom soup - my favorite.
"For Claire and Clara." He handed them over, his voice catching. "Drink the soup while it's warm. And the shoes - their grandmother made them before she passed. She wanted the girls to have them for their eighteenth birthdays."
"Dad, sit down, let me warm the soup." Mom's eyes reddened. She set down the half-inflated balloon.
"No rush."
Grandpa settled onto the sofa. His gaze swept the room: streamers half-hung, balloons scattered across the floor, Clara's door shut, the far end of the hallway dark.
He frowned.
"Where's Claire?"
Mom and Dad both went still at the same time.
