CHARACTER 2: Another Part Of Me
1965 Words
The healer had been called away.
“Alpha’s orders,” Kade lied. “Emergency on the north border.”
It left me alone.
Bandaged. Drugged. Helpless.
That was what Selene counted on.
She slipped through the back window—no wolf-sound, no warning—just silk and poison. A silver blade gleamed in her hand. One cut to the throat. Fast. Clean. Then she would wail to the pack, The
human died of her wounds. Such a tragedy.
I lay on the cot with my back to the door, breathing shallow.
Selene smiled and lifted the knife.
My eyes snapped open.
She froze. “You should be asleep.”
“So should you,” I rasped. My throat was sand-dry, but my mind was sharp—too sharp for someone dosed with pain tonic. “Here to finish the job?”
Selene recovered quickly, lips curling. “The Alpha is confused. I’m just helping him see clearly.” She stepped closer, the blade angling toward my neck. “Humans don’t survive in our world, little maid.
You’re an infection. And I’m the cure.”
The blade descended.
I moved—
not like a human.
Not like prey.
My hand shot up and caught her wrist. Bone met bone with a crack that echoed off the healer’s walls. Selene’s eyes widened.
“What—”
I twisted.
Pain screamed through my lash wounds, but beneath it was something else—heat. Strength. As if my blood had caught fire. I flung her arm sideways and rolled off the cot, landing in a crouch.
I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that.
Selene staggered back, the knife clattering to the floor. “How are you—”
“I don’t know,” I gasped—and I meant it. My hands shook, but they didn’t feel like my hands. They felt… awakened. Like they’d slept my whole life and just now remembered what they were.
“How can I fight a wolf?” I whispered, more to myself than her.
Selene’s shock melted into rage. “Lucky trick.” Her nails lengthened into claws. “Let’s see you block this, human.”
She lunged.
I didn’t think. I reacted.
I ducked under her swipe, grabbed the edge of the cot, and swung it like a shield.
Wood met ribs.
Selene flew back with a snarl, crashing into the healer’s shelves. Jars shattered, glass and herbs scattering across the floor.
For three heartbeats, we just stared at each other.
Selene—bleeding, furious, disbelieving.
Me—panting, terrified, disbelieving myself.
“You’re not human,” Selene hissed. “What are you?”
I opened my mouth, but I had no answer.
Selene’s head snapped up. Her nostrils flared.
His scent hit the room like a warning—pine, snow, Alpha.
Him.
Selene went pale, then vicious. “He’s coming.” She scrambled to her feet, abandoning the blade. “You think this changes anything? You think he’ll choose a freak over his Luna?”
I backed up until the wall met my spine. The heat in my blood was already fading, leaving me cold and trembling. “I’m not—”
“I don’t care what you are,” Selene spat. “Whatever it is—when I find out—I’ll kill you slower.”
The door blew inward.
Darius filled the frame, eyes burning Alpha-red. He’d run here in a partial shift—claws out, fangs down, shirt ripped—his beast whipped into a frenzy by the scent of blood and struggle.
He saw Selene.
He saw the shattered shelves.
Then he looked at me—pressed to the wall, holding my ribs—
standing.
Standing after fighting a wolf.
For a moment, his face went blank, like his mind couldn’t make the image fit reality.
“Selene.” His voice wasn’t human. It was gravel and growl. “Explain. Now.”
Selene was crying already—perfect tears, perfectly timed.
“She attacked me! I came to check on her and she—” She pointed at me with a trembling hand. “She’s not human, Darius. Look at her! She threw me—a wolf!”
Darius didn’t look at Selene.
He looked at me.
At my shaking hands. At the way I held myself—like a soldier, not a maid. Like someone who’d been fighting their whole life and had just remembered how.
“Elara,” he said, and my name in his mouth sounded like prayer and accusation. “How did you—”
“I don’t know!” Tears finally came, hot and helpless. “I don’t know. I should be dead. I should be…” My voice broke.
Darius crossed the room in one step. He didn’t touch me—but he placed himself between me and Selene, back to the false Luna, facing only me.
His beast went quiet.
Not peaceful—reverent.
Like it was staring at something sacred and terrifying.
Then the silence cracked, and I felt it: his beast screaming beneath his skin.
Mate. Protect. Ours.
But Darius’s eyes flicked to Selene’s split lip. To the wrecked shelves. To the “human” maid who had taken lashes and drugs and still stood upright.
Humans couldn’t do that.
The thought landed in him like a stone.
“Selene,” he said again, colder now. “Explain. Now.”
Selene crawled forward on her knees, tears tracking down her cheeks. “She attacked me, Darius. I came to check her wounds, like a true Luna should, and she—” She held up her wrist, already bruising.
“No human can do that. She’s something else. Something… dark.”
Darius’s head snapped to me.
I shook my head frantically, shoulders pressed hard to stone. “I didn’t— I mean, I did, but she had a knife. She was going to—”
“She was going to what?” Darius’s claws flexed. “Kill you? And you stopped her? While drugged? While bleeding out?”
His gaze dragged over me—meant to be unconscious, meant to be broken.
Instead, I stood there trembling… but defiant.
Dangerous.
The word settled behind his eyes.
Selene seized his boot as if she belonged at his feet.
“Think, my Alpha. A human maid who can fight a Luna-born wolf? Who calmed your beast when no one else could? Who you can’t stop protecting?” Her voice dropped, sharp as a whisper. “What if she was sent here? What if she’s a weapon?”
Kade appeared in the doorway, going rigid. “Darius, don’t—”
“Quiet, Beta.” Darius didn’t look away from me. His beast clawed at his ribs, howling no, no, no—but his mind, his Alpha mind, trained by elders who feared weakness, was louder.
A threat to the pack is death.
“Elara,” he said, and my name tasted wrong in the air. “How did you throw her?”
“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “It just happened. One second I was dying, the next—” I doubled over, clutching my stomach. “It was like fire. Like something woke up.”
Fire.
Woke up.
Rogue magic. Witch blood. Curse.
Every elder’s warning about “unnatural mates” rose like a chorus in Darius’s head.
He took one step back.
Away from me.
My face crumpled. “No,” I whispered. “You don’t… you can’t think I—”
“I think,” Darius said, and now his voice was purely Alpha—cold and final, the voice that sentenced rogues, the voice that ended lives. “That anyone who can hurt my Luna on her deathbed is a danger to this pack.”
The silence went absolute.
Kade’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. Selene’s crying stopped.
I stared at him, stunned. “Your… Luna?”
Darius didn’t look at Selene. Couldn’t. If he did, he might see the triumph in her eyes—and realize he’d been played.
Instead, he looked at Kade. “Lock her up. The dungeons. No windows. No visitors.”
“Darius!” Kade grabbed his arm. “You saw her back—she’ll die down there! She saved you!”
“She fought a wolf while human,” Darius snarled, ripping free. “If she isn’t a threat now, she will be. I won’t risk my pack for—” He stopped himself.
For a maid, he’d almost said.
His beast wailed.
I didn’t fight when the warriors seized my arms. I didn’t even look at him. I only whispered—so quietly I knew only he would hear:
“You were hurting. I didn’t want you to hurt.”
The same words as the war room. The same reason I’d touched him in the first place.
Darius’s claws dug into his palms until blood spilled.
Selene rose and brushed off her skirts, sliding her hand into the crook of his arm like she belonged there. “You made the right choice, my Alpha. The pack comes first.”
Darius let her.
He watched them drag me out. Watched my bare feet stumble on stone. Watched me never look back.
And his beast—his terrifying, possessive beast—went silent.
Not peaceful.
Dead.
The dungeon was cold and wet. It smelled like despair.
I sat with my back against the wall because lying down made the lashes scream. I wasn’t crying.
I was empty.
The door at the top of the stairs groaned open.
Boots.
Not Kade’s. Not the healer’s.
Darius.
He didn’t come down. He stayed in the shadows, staring through the bars as if the iron could keep him safe from what he’d done.
I lifted my head.
In the torchlight, my eyes weren’t brown.
They flashed silver—only for a second—then faded back to ordinary.
Darius’s jaw tightened.
“Where would I go?” I said softly. “My Alpha threw me in a cage.”
He turned as if to leave.
“Darius.”
He stopped.
“If I’m dangerous,” I whispered, “why keep me alive just to make me suffer?”
He didn’t answer.
He couldn’t.
Because he didn’t know—and not knowing terrified him more than any rogue army.
The door slammed shut.
Darkness swallowed me.
And upstairs, Selene smiled into her wine.
Serving an Alpha and being mistreated was one thing.
Dying in a dungeon was another.
- Writer
