The snow fell quietly in the clearing, muffling the sound of skin hitting stone.
Arielle didn't cry when her back slammed against the frozen wall of the training pit. She never did anymore. Crying only made them hit harder.
"Again," spat Beta Corwin, towering over her like a shadow carved from ice. "On your feet, omega."
She swallowed the blood in her mouth, tasting metal and dirt. Her limbs ached from bruises stacked on bruises, but she stood. Slowly. Silently.
The Blood Ash Pack didn't train omegas. Not unless they needed entertainment.
She was their entertainment.
The wolves circled the pit, smirking, snarling, laughing under their breath. Her own pack. Her own people. Though Arielle never truly felt like one of them. Not even when she was a child.
Especially not since her shift failed to come at sixteen.
No wolf. No scent mark. No status. Just an empty girl in a world ruled by bloodlines and beasts.
But she had learned something important in those years of silence: pain could be hidden, and fire could be quiet.
She raised her fists again, even though her fingers trembled.
Corwin sneered. "You're not a wolf. You're a ghost."
Then he lunged.
She didn't block fast enough. His fist struck her ribs, hard, knocking air from her lungs. Arielle collapsed, curling instinctively—but no tears fell.
Corwin turned to the crowd. "This is what happens when you let weak blood fester in the pack."
Laughter rippled like a sickness through the others. Someone threw a stone. It missed. Barely.
She didn't lift her head.
But she heard it. Soft. Barely a whisper.
"You are not what they see."
Her breath caught. She lifted her head sharply, scanning the pit. No one had spoken. No lips had moved. No eyes had softened.
But she had heard it. A voice in the shadows of her mind.
"You are not what they see."
---
That night, her body ached as she curled beneath the worn fur blanket in the pack's servant quarters. She shared the room with three others, but they slept soundly. They always did.
Arielle stared at the cracked ceiling, fingers tracing a faint scar along her wrist.
She remembered the dream again. The one that kept coming.
A man in silver armor. A sword burning blue. A woman screaming her name — not in fear, but power. "Arielle!"
And wolves. Dozens of them. Bending their heads before her.
She always woke before the end.
Tonight, she didn't want to.
---
Outside, the blood moon began to rise, bleeding red over the snow-covered trees.
In the distance, howls echoed across the mountain. But these weren't from her pack.
These were darker. Wilder. Wrong.
She sat up, heart pounding.
A scent drifted through the open window. Crisp and foreign. Ash and nightshade.
A rogue?
No… not a rogue. Something worse.
And for the first time in her life, Arielle's wolf stirred.
Just once.
Just enough to whisper:
"He's coming."