The stench of her father's blood didn't leave her, but the forest was trying its best to wash it away with the smell of rotting leaves and ancient pine. Dyla didn't know how long she had been walking. Hours? Days? Time had become a blurred mess of icy mud and raw, stinging pain. Every step felt like she was dragging a mountain behind her.
Her feet were bare, torn by thorns and numbed by the frost, but she didn't stop. She couldn't. If she stopped, the cold would settle in, and she'd never get back up. The wound on her forearm—the jagged mess where her Pack mark once lived—pulsed in time with her heartbeat. It was a hot, angry throb, a constant reminder of Vargus's claws and her own spectacular failure.
Run. Her father's last word was the only thing echoing in the hollow silence of her mind. It was a command. A lifeline. She wasn't surviving for herself anymore; she was surviving for the promise she'd made to the mud: Vengeance.
She eventually collapsed at the base of a gnarled, mossy oak. Her body wasn't just tired; it was shutting down. A human frame was never meant to endure this, not without the strength of a wolf to patch the cracks. Her stomach was a cramped, agonizing void. She hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours, and her consciousness was beginning to fray at the edges like a burnt ribbon.
She curled into a ball, trying to trap what little heat she had left. In the Crescent Moon Pack, the forest was a playground. Here, it was a graveyard. She knew history books and lineage charts, but she didn't know how to trap a squirrel or build a fire from wet wood. She was a 'defect,' a city-girl thrown into a slaughterhouse.
But hate is a powerful fuel. If I die here, Vargus gets a clean slate. He gets to win. The thought was a jolt of electricity. No. She wouldn't be the fragile thing they threw away.
The next morning was a gray, miserable affair. Dyla dragged herself toward the sound of running water. She drank from a stream, the water so cold it made her teeth ache, and scrubbed the dried gore from her face. The reflection staring back at her was a stranger: hair like a bird's nest, eyes sunken and red-rimmed, but there was a new, jagged hardness in her stare.
She spent the day failing. She tried to weave branches for a shelter, but they snapped. She tried to dig for roots, but they were bitter and made her throat swell. By the third day, the hunger was no longer a pain; it was a madness. She tried to catch a fish with her bare hands, but she was too slow, too weak. She was literally wasting away, her ribs starting to poke against her skin.
She was digging in the dirt, desperate for anything edible, when the air changed.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure. A thick, suffocating blanket of ozone and pure, unadulterated menace. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
Dyla froze. She knew rogues were dangerous, but this was different. This felt like the forest itself had stopped breathing. She backed away, pressing her spine against the rough bark of the oak, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Then came the footsteps. Not the soft padding of a scout, but the heavy, deliberate thud of a giant.
He stepped into the gray light of the clearing, and Dyla's breath hitched.
He was a monster. A wolf so large he didn't seem real. His coat was a deep, midnight black, almost blue, and muscles bunched and rolled under his fur like coiled serpents. But it was the eyes that paralyzed her: two glowing spheres of feral amber, burning with an intelligence that was ancient, cruel, and completely untamed.
This was a Savage.
The Black Wolf stopped just feet away. He lowered his massive head, sniffing the air. He didn't have to look for her; he already knew exactly where the 'runt' was hiding. Dyla didn't move. She couldn't. She was pinned by the sheer gravitational pull of his presence.
He let out a low, guttural growl that she felt in her marrow. He didn't look like he wanted to kill her—he looked like he was inspecting a curious piece of trash.
Then, he did something that broke her brain.
He turned his head, picked up a dead rabbit—fresh, still warm—and tossed it into the mud at her feet. It was a casual gesture, almost insulting. A king throwing a scrap to a beggar.
Dyla stared at the rabbit, then at the beast. It was a gift of dominance. A saving grace wrapped in a threat.
The wolf didn't wait for a thank-you. He turned and vanished into the shadows as if he'd never been there, leaving Dyla alone with the smell of raw meat and a name that burned in her mind like a brand.
Kambha.
She didn't know how she knew the name. It just... was. And with it came a terrifying, soul-deep realization: this monster was the one fate had tied to her. Her Mate.
The rabbit lay in the mud, a bloody offering from a monster. Dyla stared at it, her stomach cramping so hard it felt like it was folding in on itself. Every instinct screamed at her to run, to hide from those burning amber eyes. To accept this was to accept a bond with a creature that looked like it was made of nightmares.
But pride doesn't fill an empty stomach. Vargus will not win because I chose to starve.
With hands that wouldn't stop shaking, she dragged the carcass toward her. She didn't have a knife, only a jagged piece of slate she'd found near the stream. The work was slow, messy, and smelled of iron. She tore into the meat, the raw heat of it hitting her system like a jolt of electricity. It wasn't just calories; it was a spark. A low, primal hum started in the base of her skull—a fire she hadn't felt since she was a child.
A week passed in a blur of survival. Dyla's life became a cycle of gathering damp wood, reinforcing her pathetic lean-to, and waiting. And every evening, without fail, the shadow returned.
Kambha was a silent ghost. He never shifted. He never spoke. He would simply emerge from the mist—a mountain of midnight fur and predatory intent—and drop a fresh kill. A deer, a pheasant, sometimes just a hare. He was her provider, her silent jailer, and her only link to a world that hadn't discarded her.
"Why?" she whispered one night. Her voice was thin, scratched by the cold. Kambha only blinked, his amber eyes reflecting the dying embers of her small fire.
Finally, the frustration boiled over. The weakness, the humiliation, the memory of her father's blood on her hands—it all came out in a jagged sob.
"What do you want from me?" she screamed at him, her voice cracking. "I'm the defect, remember? The runt. I have no wolf. I have nothing!" She punched the ground, the frozen earth bruising her knuckles, but she didn't care. "Show me what they stole! Or just kill me and get it over with!"
Kambha moved. He didn't pad forward; he flowed. Before she could blink, his massive head was inches from hers. His breath was hot, smelling of the deep earth and ancient blood.
He didn't bite. Instead, he pressed his wet nose directly against the raw, jagged scar on her arm—the mark Vargus had tried to erase.
A shockwave hit her. It wasn't a gentle hum; it was a violent, electric surge that felt like molten lead pouring into her veins. It hurt. It was deep, invasive, and terrifyingly powerful.
The defect isn't in the blood. It's in the cage you built.
The words weren't heard; they were felt, hammered into her brain by the sheer force of the Mate bond. It was raw and unfiltered.
Dyla gasped, lunging back, her arm tingling as if it were on fire. "What was that?"
Kambha snorted, a sound of pure, wolfish impatience. He stepped back and gestured with his snout toward the pitch-black sky.
Your ancestors didn't pray to the moon. They owned the night.
He dropped something from his mouth. A small, jagged stone—obsidian. It was so black it seemed to drink the moonlight around it.
The Wolf is not a gift from your Pack. It is the blood of the Earth. Wake it up.
Dyla picked up the stone. It should have been cold, but it was pulsing with a rhythmic warmth, matching her own heartbeat. She realized then that the Crescent Moon Pack hadn't just bullied her; they had suppressed her. They were afraid of the Black Lineage—the original, savage wolves who didn't need a Pack to be gods.
She gripped the obsidian until the edges cut into her palm. The pain was grounding. Kambha watched her, his eyes unblinking, filled with a brutal expectation. He wasn't her knight; he was the smith, and he was throwing her into the furnace.
Without another word, he turned and vanished into the trees, leaving the forest feeling colder and emptier than before.
Dyla looked at the black stone, then at the dark woods that had tried to swallow her. The rage was still there, but it had changed. It wasn't a screaming fire anymore. It was a cold, silver blade.
Black Wolf. She whispered the name to herself. It felt right. It felt like steel. It felt like home.
"My name is Dyla," she said to the darkness, her voice no longer trembling. "And I am the Black Wolf."