The stone caught me just below the shoulder blade, a sharp, familiar pain. I didn’t cry out.
Crying out gave them satisfaction. I just kept walking, head down, toward the tree line at the edge of the clearing that was the heart of the Silverfang pack.
“Freak,” a voice hissed Mara, the blacksmith’s daughter. The word was as common as mud here.
"Like you are any better"
I muttered under my breath while rolling my eyes.
“Walking curse,” added another, younger voice. I didn’t look to see who.
I was the orphan with no lineage, no strength, no useful skill. Except the one that made my skin crawl and their eyes narrow with suspicion. The one that had earned me the scar that pulled tight over my left cheekbone, a gift from Alpha Kieran’s own claws when I was ten, for the crime of trying to stop a puppy’s bleeding paw. Unnatural, he’d snarled a perversion of the true way.
Here we go again," I said as I entered the Alpha Palace to do my daily cleaning, since this is the only benefit I can offer the pack.
Well, if it isn’t the pack’s little leech.” Lila, one of the kitchen maids tall, broad shouldered, and always eager to remind me of my place loomed over me. With her annoying British accent.
She carried a tray of breakfast scraps, but instead of setting it down, she tipped it deliberately. Cold oatmeal and greasy bacon bits splattered across the section I’d just cleaned, dripping onto my hands and knees.
I froze, jaw tight.
“Oops,” she sneered, kicking the bucket so soapy water sloshed over my skirt. You missed a spot "bitch"
“Guess you’ll have to start over.
Again. Maybe if you scrubbed harder, you wouldn’t be such a useless stain on this pack.”
Her hand shot out, grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back. Pain flared across my scalp. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, freak. Or do I need to remind you what happens to things that don’t know their place?”
She slapped me hard, across the scarred cheek. The sting bloomed hot, fresh humiliation mixing with the old ache. Laughter echoed from the doorway; a couple of other maids watched, smirking.
“Clean it up,” Lila spat, releasing me with a shove that sent me sprawling into the mess. “And do it quietly. No one wants to hear your whining.”
I swallowed the metallic taste of blood from my split lip, grabbed the rag, and started wiping. They walked away, still chuckling. My hands shook, but I kept my head down. Tears would only fuel them more.
After hours of scrubbing knees raw, back screaming, the floor finally gleaming again I slipped out the side door toward the woods.
beyond the scent-marked borders. It was the only place my lungs didn’t feel tight. Here, under the sighing pines and dappled, greyish light, I was just a shadow. And shadows could be useful.
I found the fox in its usual den, a hollow under a lightning-blasted oak. It was waiting, a flash of red against the dark earth, one hind leg held awkwardly off the ground. A trap-wound, old and festering. Its black eyes watched me, not with fear, but a weary knowing.
“Hello again,” I whispered, sinking to my knees in the damp moss.
It didn’t flinch as I reached out. My hands, always colder than they should be, hovered over the swollen, ugly gash. This was the part that shamed me in the pack clearing, but here, it was just a truth. A pull in my gut, a faint, silvery shimmer that only I could see gathering at my fingertips. It wasn’t warmth. It was more like… redirecting a current. Taking the blueprint of wholeness from the fox’s own healthy flesh and convincing the wounded part to remember.
The shimmer seeped into the inflamed flesh. I felt the echo of the fox’s pain a hot, sharp throb that lanced up my own leg. I gritted my teeth. This was the price, I feel the pain of every wound I heal for a few minutes. The wound knitted, the swelling receded, leaving behind clean, pink skin. The fox let out a soft chuff, nuzzled my still-glowing hand once, and melted into the underbrush.
“Well, look what the carrion birds missed.”
The voice, slick with malice, froze the blood in my veins. Caden. Alpha Kieran’s son, the pack’s golden heir. He leaned against a nearby birch, arms crossed, a cruel smile playing on his lips. He must have followed me.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
“I was just gathering herbs,” I said, my voice flat, the lie ash in my mouth.
“Don’t bother.” He pushed off the tree. He was bigger than me, all coiled, predatory grace. “We all know what you do out here. Playing with things better left to die. It’s disgusting.”
I stood slowly, keeping my eyes down. “I’ll head back.”
“Not yet.” He was in front of me in two strides, blocking my path. His scent, alpha-strong and aggressive, clogged my throat. “I want to see it. This… freakishness of yours,” he said lifting my face with his index finger.
“There’s nothing to see.”
“I say there is.”
He shouted, His hand shot out, not to hit me, but to grab my wrist. His grip was iron, meant to bruise. “Do it. Heal something. Or better yet,” his smile widened, “hurt something. Show me how you really work, witch.”
Panic, cold and liquid, poured into my stomach. “Let go, Caden.”
“Make me.” He yanked me closer. His other hand came up, claws unsheathing, glinting in the muted light. He wasn’t going to just hurt me. He was going to make me perform. To degrade the one thing that was mine, even if it was cursed. “Come on. Heal this.” he used a knife to cut the tip of his finger.
Please stop, I said in a whisper as I was near tears.
He brought his claw down toward his own forearm, a shallow slice meant to draw blood, to force my power into the open for his amusement.
I said "stop! " Something in me snapped.
A cord of terror and a lifetime of bottled rage. No. The word was a silent scream inside my skull. My power, usually a gentle, reluctant trickle, surged up in response not as a healing tide, but as a shield, a repulsion.
It burst from my skin where his hand gripped me. Not silver, but a violent, cold white light.
Caden’s eyes flew wide. A deafening, soundless thrum filled the clearing. He didn’t scream. He gasped, a wet, choked sound, as the light seemed to sink into him through his skin.
I felt it. Oh, Goddess, I felt it. A horrific, sucking reversal. Instead of giving, I was taking. I felt a vibrant, fiery cord of energy..... his energy, his wolf essence, his very life-force... tear loose from his core and flood into me. It was scalding, too much, all wrong, a torrent of foreign strength and pride and violence that burned through my veins.
He crumpled. Not with a cry, but with a soft, final sigh, as a puppet with its strings cut. His hand fell from my wrist. He hit the mossy ground, eyes open and staring at the canopy, but seeing nothing. His chest rose and fell in shallow, mechanical hitches. The vibrant, arrogant light that was Caden was gone. What remained was… an empty vessel.
The violent white light around me flickered and died. The world rushed back in: the sigh of the wind, the distant cry of a jay. And the horrific, numb silence of the body at my feet.
I stumbled back, tripping over a root. My hands shook violently. I could still feel it him inside me, a trapped, fading echo of a wolf howling in a prison of my own making. Nausea clawed up my throat.
Oh no, I muttered. I had killed him. No. Worse. I had… unmade him.
A branch cracked in the distance. A shout... a normal patrol call, not an alarm. Yet.
Terror, pure and mindless, overrode the shock. The Alpha’s son. I had destroyed the Alpha’s son. When they found him… when Kieran saw this…
Ohhh shit!!!! What have I Done I whispers as I staggered back.
My body moved before my mind could. I turned and I ran. Not with stealth, but for my dear life cause I know the fate that be holds me if I should stay
The phantom-like pulse of Caden’s stolen essence beat inside me with every footfall, a terrible new scar on my soul. The pack had always called me a monster.
Now, I was finally one.
