Chapter Two: The Mark She Left Behind
The forest smelled of ash and iron.
Smoke from the burned bodies still lingered in the early dawn air, curling through the trees like ghostly fingers. King Aldric stood a little apart from his men, his armor smeared with dirt and blood. The silver pendant—cool now—rested in his gloved hand.
He'd said nothing about it. Not when he found it, not when the others questioned how they survived. The truth was something he didn't know how to say aloud.
They'd been saved by a woman with the eyes of a beast.
And now, she was gone.
"Your Majesty," General Caer spoke quietly behind him. "We've lost eight men. The rest are rattled. They want to know what we saw."
Aldric's jaw tightened. "We saw assassins."
"They don't believe that," the general said. "And neither do you."
Aldric turned, his eyes sharp. "What do you mean?"
"I saw her too," Caer said, voice low. "She wasn't human. Not fully."
A silence fell between them, heavy and strange.
"You think I don't know how that sounds?" Caer continued. "But she moved like a shadow. Her hands—claws. And her eyes…" He shivered. "I've only ever seen eyes like that in stories."
Aldric looked down at the pendant in his hand. It was a small circle of silver, etched with ancient runes he didn't recognize. Foreign. Old. Powerful.
"She saved us," he said softly.
"She killed ten men," Caer replied.
"They were trying to kill me."
Caer didn't argue. Instead, he asked, "What do you plan to do?"
Aldric slipped the pendant into the inner pocket of his tunic. "I plan to find her."
The castle of Eldwyn was a fortress carved into the cliffs—white stone towers overlooking the dark forests like silent sentinels. But even within its strong walls, Aldric felt uneasy. The weight of what he had seen pressed against his chest like a second armor.
He spent the next few days in silence, withdrawing from meetings, ignoring the squabbles of the court. Instead, he studied.
He poured over old books, scrolls locked deep in the royal archives. Myths and whispers. Folklore of the northern wilds. Creatures half-man, half-beast. Women with cursed blood who roamed the woods by moonlight.
He found stories of werewolves.
And in the oldest book, faded by time, he saw a drawing—delicate ink and charcoal—of a woman standing in a clearing beneath the full moon, her golden eyes bright, silver hair wild, and runes etched into the skin around her wrist.
It was her.
No name. No origin. Just a title in an ancient language: *Lunaris ferox.* The Fierce Moon.
He ran his thumb over the page, lost in thought, when a soft voice interrupted.
"Your Majesty."
He looked up to see Lady Maren, his most trusted advisor. She wore her usual dark green robes, her lips pressed into a tight, polite smile.
"You've missed three council meetings," she said. "Is everything all right?"
Aldric offered a nod. "I've had... other matters."
Her eyes flicked to the book in his hands. "Myths? Unusual reading for a king."
He closed the tome slowly. "Sometimes truth hides in stories."
Lady Maren didn't argue, but something shifted in her gaze. A curiosity sharpened to suspicion.
Far from the castle, Elara sat in a cave deep within the forest, wrapping a strip of cloth around her arm. The wound burned where a blade had grazed her during the ambush—silver-laced, no doubt. Her skin would heal slower now.
She winced, teeth clenched.
The cave was quiet except for the crackle of a small fire. Her companion, Riven, stirred a pot of herbs, his expression unreadable as ever.
"You should not have interfered," he said finally.
"He was going to die," Elara replied.
"He is a king, Elara. Their kind hunted ours for centuries."
"I'm not them," she said. "And neither is he."
Riven handed her a mug of bitter liquid. "That's what they all say. Until they see the monster beneath your skin."
She drank, even though the taste made her gag. "He didn't look at me like that."
"Not yet."
Elara stared into the fire. The heat reminded her of that night—the king's eyes wide with confusion, but not fear. Of how, for just a second, she had felt... seen.
Not as a creature.
Not even as a savior.
Just... as someone.
Her hand went to her neck, fingers brushing empty air. The pendant was gone. Taken.
"He has it," she murmured.
Riven looked up.
"The king," she said. "He has my pendant."
Riven's brow furrowed. "Then you must retrieve it. That charm holds more than memory."
Elara nodded. She would go back.
But not just for the pendant.
That night, the castle guards reported a disturbance in the southern wing—nothing stolen, but a tapestry torn from the wall, footprints across the polished marble.
In the morning, the pendant was gone from Aldric's chamber.
He barely noticed the loss. He'd been staring at his own reflection, running the night over and over again in his mind.
And when he opened his window, he found something resting on the sill.
A single white flower.
Wolfsbane.
His heart skipped.
She was watching.
Three nights later, Aldric left the castle alone.
No guards. No horses.
Just a lantern in his hand, and the silver pendant now returned—warm again—hanging around his neck.
He walked deep into the forest, to the very place the ambush had occurred. The moon was only half-full, but it lit the trees with a quiet glow. The same mist that had swallowed her before crept along the ground like a secret.
And then he heard it.
The softest sound.
Breathing.
He turned.
She was there.
Dressed in black, a hood over her head, face half-shadowed. But her eyes—the gold he couldn't forget—caught the light.
"I wasn't sure you'd come," she said.
"I wasn't sure you'd let me see you again," he replied.
They stood there for a long time, silent except for the wind between them.
"You left the flower," he said.
Elara's lips curved faintly. "You understood the message?"
"That you're dangerous?"
"That I'm cursed."
Aldric stepped closer. "Is it true?"
She looked down. "Yes."
"What are you?"
Her eyes lifted, and in them was pain—old, buried deep. "I was born human. But when the northern villages were attacked years ago, something... found me. A wolf spirit. It merged with my blood. It saved me. But it changed me."
"And now?"
"Now I carry it," she said softly. "Every full moon, I fight it. Sometimes I lose. Sometimes I don't remember what I've done. People fear me. So I hide."
Aldric's breath caught. "You saved me."
"I didn't know if I would regret it."
"You don't trust humans."
"I trust very few things." She took a breath. "But when I looked at you that night… I didn't feel fear. I felt—"
She stopped.
He closed the distance slowly, as if afraid to spook her.
"Elara," he said, her name tasting like something remembered.
She blinked. "You know my name."
"I asked the trees."
She laughed. It was low, almost bitter. "They must like you."
He stepped closer. "What if I don't care what you are?"
"You should," she whispered. "Because the next full moon is in six days. And if I lose control again… I might not recognize you. I might hurt you."
"I've fought wars. Faced assassins. Sat on a throne built from blood. But I've never feared anything more than losing what I don't understand."
Their eyes met, and for the first time, there was no mist. No sword between them. Just the wild, aching quiet of two people lost in the in-between.
"I want to see you again," he said.
"I want that too."
He touched her hand.
And for a moment, the forest was still.
The king and the werewolf.
A beginning born in blood.
To be continued....
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