The forest swallowed me whole.
Bark scraped my palms. Pine needles tangled in my hair. Every breath I took was shallow, frantic—like the air couldn't find enough room in my chest. I didn't stop running until my legs gave out, and the earth met me like a forgotten lullaby—rough, cold, and unkind.
Smoke clung to the sky like a wound that wouldn't scab. Even here, miles from the place I once called home, I could feel it staining the air. My lungs ached with every inhale, the scent of fire still lingering in the back of my throat.
I lay still for a long time, too tired to cry, too broken to move. The blue potion had done its work. The bond was gone. Or… not gone. Just hidden beneath layers of crafted silence, tucked behind the wards etched into my very bones. I'd drunk magic, and in doing so, I'd buried something sacred.
And I hated that I mourned it.
Because the silence should have been a relief. But it only felt like another kind of death.
He was still out there. The Alpha.
Kael.
His name carved itself into my thoughts like a knife every time I breathed. My mate. My curse. The one the moon had chosen for me, as if the heavens themselves were in on the cruelty. My grandmother had warned me this might happen. That someday, fate might throw me to the wolves—literally.
But she never said the cost would be her life.
I sat up slowly, wincing at the way my limbs trembled. The earth was damp beneath me, moss-soft and ancient. Trees towered around me like sentinels, their branches filtering the pale moonlight into dappled shadows. The forest didn't speak in words, but I felt it listening. Watching.
They'd always watched over us, the trees.
Until now.
Now, even the woods were silent, as if mourning her too.
I pulled the wooden box from my satchel and set it on the ground in front of me. Five potions. Five vials that pulsed with the last of her magic, sealed with wax and grief. Each one more dangerous than the last. Weapons of desperation. A witch's legacy passed to a half-breed granddaughter too frightened to wield it.
I didn't open them. Just stared.
Her hands had made them. Her hands, now ash and bone.
She'd stayed behind. She chose to stay.
She knew what would happen when the wards collapsed. She knew they'd smell us, track us. And still, she turned to me with calm in her voice and put the vial in my hand. Told me to drink. Told me to run. Told me not to look back.
But I did.
I saw the fire swallow our little cottage.
My grandmother is dead. My home is gone. And the thing the moon gave me is a monster in human skin.
A killer.
The one who gave the order. The one who watched witches burn. The one who sent his wolves to track down every last one of us until we were nothing more than soot and memory.
And now the gods think he's mine?
No.
No, I won't accept that. I won't romanticize fate. I won't turn this horror into some tragic, twisted love story where the girl tames the beast and learns to forgive.
He is not misunderstood.
He is not worthy.
He is a murderer, and he wears his cruelty like a crown.
The bond may pull, but I am not some tethered thing waiting to be claimed.
I am what he fears.
A secret. A survivor.
The last thread in a bloodline he tried to unravel.
I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until I saw stars, until I could force the image of my grandmother's smile from the forefront of my mind. It had been soft and sad, that last smile. Full of love, and something else—something final.
"I'll see you in the next life, little wren."
Her voice haunted me more than the fire. More than Kael's face.
I curled around the box and let myself cry then. Silent sobs that shook through my ribs and into the ground. I cried for her. For every bedtime story she told while hiding the truth. For every lesson she gave me in herbs and history, knowing I might have to use it to survive. For every time she let me believe, just for a little while, that I could live a normal life.
She had carried the weight of our bloodline, of our curse. And she gave her life to make sure I could keep running.
And then the tears stopped. Not because I ran out of grief—but because something colder took its place. Something sharp and unrelenting. Anger.
A fire of my own.
I sat back and wiped my face, my fingers trembling, smearing ash across my cheeks like war paint. I would not forget this pain. I would not dull it or bury it or let it rot into sorrow. I would shape it. Harden it. Let it forge me into something the wolves could never break.
I had spent my entire life hiding. Dimming myself. Living in the shadows of her protection.
But I would not cower anymore.
Not because I wanted vengeance. Not yet.
But because I refused to let her death mean nothing.
I refused to let him win.
So I would run.
Not out of fear.
But out of spite.
Let Kael search. Let him rage. Let him tear the forest apart with his claws and command his wolves to sniff out the ashes.
He will not find me.
Not now. Not ever.
I would become a shadow, a ghost, a whisper on the wind.
I would take new names and wear new faces.
And if fate ever forced us into the same room again… I would look him in the eye and remind him what he did.
Not with tears.
With fire.
And when I burned, I would make sure he burned too.
That was my promise.
To her.
To myself.
To the moon that thought it could control me.