She woke up tired, unaware when she had come to bed.
She wordlessly prayed that yesterday was just a nightmare.
The sting on her skin and the ringing phone beside her head told her it wasn't. Her eyes ached, every limb felt like heavy, as if exhaustion had settled into her bones.
Her phone rang again and again.
After a while, the door banged... till it stopped.
Then it banged several times throughout the day. Sally and Lily shouted and threatened at the door. Their noise would wake her up, grating into her head till she would drift again.
When it all fell silent, she woke up again feeling drained.
Then stared blankly at the ceiling she had seen all her life. A tear slipped and disappeared in her hair, paving the way for several more. Her chest felt like it had splintered.
The whole pack would be talking about it in hushed whispers. The humans would be clicking their tongues, lycans scoffing. She felt like she was naked for all to see.
Tears gushed out, but she wiped them angrily, pressing the heels of her hands, trying to hold in the sobs.
Hours bled through. Her phone still rang.
She sat up abruptly, jaw clenched. Her throat stung from holding everything in. Everyone had seen it.
Everyone! The faces blurred in her mind — their laughter, their silence.
They'd watched her humiliated, and not one of them had done a thing to stop it. There was Damian, the Alpha's second son, but even he...!
She recalled his disdainful glare like he had seen something disgusting. Her hands curled into fists, nails biting into her palms.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck them all!"
She swung her legs off the bed; the floor was cold under her feet, but she barely felt it — her whole body was burning inside out.
Her reflection caught in the hallway mirror — her eyes, swollen and raw, her mouth trembling from rage she couldn't swallow. She turned away before she broke the glass.
After her mother left, she lived every day trying to be happy, avoiding even thinking about things that made her depressed, not to lose her sense of self, but it took barely ten minutes for a boy to strip her of all dignity.
Just ten minutes!
Breathing hard, she knelt, clutching her knees. It felt suffocating. The house felt like it was closing in on her. She frantically ran into the damp air of late summer.
A while of running made her ribs hurt so much she couldn't walk. She had nowhere left to go anymore, but... she didn't want to go back to that house.
She remembered getting lost in her childhood and finding an abandoned cabin nearby, and before she knew it, her shoes were slapping against the wet, muddy paths as she fled to the forest. Her chest ached, her legs burned, but she couldn't stop.
The pack's territory was vast, with posh houses, and a vast wildlife sanctuary bordered it on three sides. The higher you were in rank, the closer your residence was to the Duskbane's Estate property.
Just then, her foot caught on a root, and she pitched forward, hitting the dirt hard. Pain jolted up her knees. She groaned, pushing herself upright, brushing soil from her palms.
Silence pressed heavily around her.
'CRACK!'
She froze, listening, the night was too still.
Another crack—closer this time.
She wasn't alone.
'How could she forget, lycans weren't the only predators in these woods!'
She limped fast, as fast as she could.
A decision she regretted the moment she found the cabin. It was nothing like what she remembered. The roof sagged in places, and the walls were grayed with moss.
Sighing, she slipped inside. It was shelter she desperately needed now that her foot was messed up, too. The wooden door groaned on its hinges. She quickly locked it, looking for things she could use with her phone light.
The sink was rusted, the pipes crying when she turned the tap, but a thin stream of cold water spluttered out. Letting it run for a minute, she cupped water in her hands, splashing her face, wiping mud from her arms and legs. Her skin went numb under the chill, and her knuckles were raw, streaked with blood.
"Oh, God...!" She couldn't afford an infection now!
She stripped off her soiled dress, wrung it out under the stream until the water pooled, brown at her feet. The forest smell clung to her—wet leaves, soil, rot—and no matter how she scrubbed, it stayed.
Thankfully, there was a musty mattress in the corner. The dusty blanket was just as scratchy, but warm enough. She pulled it tight around her shoulders.
She was... tired.
She had no screams left.
She couldn't even cry anymore.
All she wanted to do was disappear and run away from this reality.
As the first warmth enveloped her, her eyes grew heavy despite her effort to keep them open.
....
'Argh... gurg... akh!'
Unnatural shrieks echoing in the quiet forest jolted her awake.
She jolted up but didn't dare breathe.
Did a wild animal find her?
Reaching for her phone, Elara pressed her back against the cabin's wooden wall, the musty blanket still tangled around her legs, then the sound came again—wet, ragged, and wrong.
A strangled cry split the night. At first, she thought it was an animal caught in a snare, but then she heard the voice, human, breaking apart in terror.
She bit her lip to stop her own scream.
Creeping toward the cracked window, she pulled herself high enough to see without being seen. Wrapping the blanket on her underwear-clad body, she tried to make out what was going on in the dark.
Moonlight cruelly played peek-a-boo through the clouds, and there—just beyond the clearing—the creature stood with its back to her. She was about to step back when something gleamed in his claw turned her blood cold.
The ring...! A wolf head crafted in silver.
The creature raised its bloodstained victim, its claw deep in the man's throat, gurgling blood. The lycan's attention, wild and feral, was fixed on the body as it relished how its prey dangled in its claws, desperate for life.
The creature loomed upright, like a twisted, horrifying version of man, with fur that ruffled in the night breeze and a spine that arched like a bow.
"...Argh...Ple-Pleas..."
Her hand slapped over her own mouth before she even realized she'd moved. Her pulse thundered against her palm.
The ring was in Luke's finger... It was Luke!
His head lolled, his eyes—fading, panicked—jerked toward the cabin. Toward her. For one breathless second, their gazes locked. His lips barely moved, shaping a silent plea.
"Sa-Sav...me..."
Elara willed her limbs to move. Her shaky hands tried to speed-dial her friends, but in seconds, she was too late.
Luke's bare torso thrashed, his boots kicking helplessly in the air, his hand scratching at the massive claw wrapped tight around his throat. The sound he made wasn't even human anymore—just wet gurgles choked off by the pressure.
The lycan's claws sank deeper, puncturing skin. Blood slicked down the body, dripping onto the dirt below. His face purpled, eyes bulging, mouth working uselessly for breath.
Then came the 'SNAP!'
The victim's body went slack. His chin fell to his chest, and the lycan let him dangle there a moment longer as if savoring the kill.
Elara's stomach twisted so violently, her hand pressed harder against her mouth, nails digging into her cheek to keep the scream trapped inside as she slid to the floor.
Her chest heaved silently, as tears clouded her vision. Slowly, she willed herself to push away from the window on shaking knees, inch by inch across the floorboards—
'CREAAAK!'
"No, God, no!"
A single groan escaped her.
The forest outside went dead silent. Even the wind seemed to vanish.
Silence followed.
Then—slowly, too slowly—the creature's head turned.
Elara's breath froze in her lungs.
Gray eyes.
It was smirking. A jagged, blood-slick grin, in sick delight. And the eyes—she knew those eyes. That shade, that sharpness. Only three men in the pack bore them.
When the shadow engulfed her, she didn't look up.
He was here.
The low ceiling forced his monstrous body to crouch, but even hunched, he filled the cabin. Blood dripped from his claws in slow, deliberate beats onto the wood between them.
Her heart stuttered, then roared so loud she was certain he could hear it.
His eyes glowed faintly in recognition, catching her in their unnatural light. His grin widened, fangs bared, breath reeking of iron and rot.
"Baambiii..."
Blood slicked down his chin and chest in thick gushes. Each drop hit the floor with a wet pat, sharp against the silence.
Elara stumbled back on her elbows, clutching at her mouth.
The creature tilted its head, lips peeling away from bloody teeth in something that looked like a smile.
"Run…" it rasped—voice broken, guttural, barely human. The sound of it slithered down her spine like ice water. Then the last word hissed out, sharp and deliberate—
"…Bambiiii, run."
It took a second for her world to turn dark.