The refreshing night breeze was a cooling balm on my blazing cheeks. It was the stark opposite of the choking heat of shame that still lingered around me like a pall. Every breath I took seemed to be sucking in ash, the acrid taste of betrayal clinging to my tongue.
I stumbled, or rather, walked, through the well-known routes of the Crescent Moon lands. The routes familiar to me since I was a puppy now seemed foreign and unfriendly. Each leaf rustle, each twig snap, echoed with a voice of condemnation.
I was no longer Elara, daughter of Beta Theron. I was just 'the rejected one,' an outcast in my own household. Denied my self and my future, I was a ghost in my own existence.
My family, once a source of unshakable security, now gave me only turned-away eyes and tense silences. I caught a glimpse of my father, Beta Theron, at the very edge of the training fields, back tensed, shoulders dipped. The sun cast long shadows, and he seemed even more formidable.
I stalled, then moved a cautious step forward. My heart thundered, a frantic hope beating in my chest. Maybe he would provide comfort, a phrase of understanding.
"Father?" I breathed, my voice no louder than the faint noises of the pack that echoed in the distance. He turned, his face a cloth of dismay, creased with lines of concern and something that resembled shame.
"Elara. You shouldn't be out here," he told her, his tone flat, without the normal warmth. "You bring shame to this family, to this pack. Your behavior. it reflects badly on us all."
His words, while anticipated, still stung like a physical blow. They echoed the rejection from Kael, reaffirming my valuelessness. "I... I didn't do anything wrong," I stuttered, my voice shaking, tears welling up in my eyes. "It was Kael. He rejected me. He chose her!"
His face went rigid, a muscle spasm in his cheek. "And you, in your weakness, let it occur," he snapped, his voice icy and unyielding. "A true Luna would have kept her mate. You have shamed us all. Leave. I do not want to look at you. Not now. Not until you comprehend the seriousness of your failure."
I jumped back as if hit, my heart breaking into a million even more pieces. The force of his disapproval was a weight, a heavy burden to carry. I turned and ran, crying, through the blur of water-soaked eyes, the pain of his words biting harder than any bodily pain.
I discovered my mother in the gardens, hands full with the roses, their thorns a bitter irony for my present life. She moved slowly, her usual exuberant vitality dulled. Her eyes were far away, her face worn, a mirror of my own.
"Mother?" I implored, my throat clogged with unshed tears, searching for a scrap of solace, a touch of the warm love I once knew.
She gazed up, her sweet face a mask of pity now, her eyes wide with a helpless despair. "Oh, Elara," she breathed, her voice a gentle whisper, hardly more than a murmur. "My poor, poor child. What have you done? What has become of us?"
"I did nothing!" I wailed, my anger in rising in protest, the injustice of it all seething within me. "Why does everyone blame me? Why is it always my fault?"
"Hush, child," she told her, her gaze looking frantically around the room as if she feared being heard. "Don't make a scene. You have to be brave. You have to get through it. This is your life now. We can't alter what has occurred. We just have to endure."
Her words brought me no solace, but a verification of my complete solitude. I was alone, really alone, in a world that had previously been my own. The pack, my pack, they had all turned their backs on me. I was like a ghost, moving through a life that wasn't mine anymore.
I was attracted to the isolated periphery of the territory, where the old trees provided a semblance of comfort. The raw, unbridled aroma of the forest was an antidote to my hurt soul, a direct counterpoint to the claustrophobic condemnation of the pack. I could not endure the stifling environment of the pack house, the intrusive observation, the unvoiced recriminations that pursued me wherever I went.
I had to catch my breath, to get out from under the crushing weight of their disapproval. Far back in the dark forest, I constructed a small shelter, a rough lean-to made of broken limbs and dense leaves. It did not keep out the wind or the rain, but it was mine, free of the disappointments and expectations of others. It was a sparse life, but it was sanctuary.
Days merged into nights, punctuated only by the growling hollowness in my belly and the nagging pain in my heart.
My body, previously used to the steady meals and luxuries of the pack house, now attuned to the rough realities of survival. I hunted small animals, my instincts honed with each day, a primal urge for survival glossing over the suffocating burden of my despair.
A rabbit, a squirrel, some wild berries, every sparse meal was a triumph, a victory over my growing resilience.
I learned to read the forest, to follow the faint trail of prey, to hear the whispers of the wind. The wilderness, which had once been a place of idleness for me, was now my severe but efficient instructor. I was alone, really alone, for the first time in my life, and the isolation was both frightening and curiously exhilarating. It compelled me to depend upon myself, to find a reservoir of strength within me which I did not know I had.
My mental dialogue was a frenetic, raging hurricane of feeling. Rage, fiery and intense, at Kael's betrayal, at his cold dismissal of our destined connection. Despair, icy and weighty, at the destruction of my future, the aspirations I had carried since I was a child. Bafflement, a nagging buzz, at the unexplainable strength that had burst forth within me in the rogue assault.
I questioned my own value, my own sanity. Was I so unlovable? Was the Goddess of the Moon punishing me? I ranted at the unfairness, at the unforgiving traditions that permitted an Alpha to break a destined bond with such ease.
I ached for answers, for comprehension. I cried out for a sign that my pain served a purpose greater than brutal malice. And then, one night, there swept a raging storm, lashing rain against my fragile hut and shaking the gnarled trees with rage. The wind screamed like a bereft wolf, echoing the emptiness within my heart.
A starving wolf, gaunt and desperate, staggered into my glade. Its fur was muddy and smeared with blood, its eyes feral with hunger and madness, its gaze locked on me with a glint of predator. It was an animal of sheer desperation, driven purely on instinct. Cold, sharp fear jabbed through me, a primitive fear that threatened to freeze me stock.
I was weak, isolated, and bereaved, but under the fear, something else was kindled, a fierce, protective urge. I would not be prey. Never again. I had been a victim before, but not now.
As the rogue attacked, a raw, feral snarl ripping from its throat, a burst of uncontrolled, raw energy burst out from inside me. A thousand lightning bolts roaring through my veins, a blinding flash of white light that radiated outward from my very center, pushing the rogue back with an unseen power. The air was charged with static electricity. The ground beneath me seemed to shudder in protest.
The rogue, whimpering, scurried away, its tail between its legs. It vanished into the storm-battered night as suddenly as it came. I stood shivering, my body resonating with a strange power. My hands, so normally steady, trembled like leaves.
What was that? What had just occurred? The encounter left me bewildered, a jarring combination of fear and thrill. It was something I couldn't comprehend, a power that had long slept inside me. Now, it was waking up to desperation. It was a wild, unbridled thing.
It both fascinated and scared me. The world, I then understood, was much bigger than I ever thought it would be. My position in it was soon to be altered in ways that I could not yet fathom.
But as the storm died down and the adrenaline wore off from my body, I saw something else. My reflection in a puddle of standing water reflected eyes that glowed with an otherworldly silver color. They were significantly brighter than they had ever been before.
And in the distance, just audible above the fading wind, I heard something that made my blood go cold. The howl of multiple wolves. Not rogues, but disciplined, deliberate. They were hunting something. They were hunting me. The power that I had just unleashed, whatever it was, had not gone unseen. And now, something much more perilous than a desperate rogue was on its way for me.
The forest darkness closed in, no longer refuge but snare. My heart was racing, not with fear of the rogue, but with a cold intuition of what these new, organized hunters could mean. My newfound power, my silver eyes, had set me apart. And the hunt was on.