Chapter 3: Cast Out With Nothing but Blood on My Hands
1533 Words
The road goes on forever.
I've been walking for hours. Maybe longer. The sun climbed and fell behind the clouds without ever breaking through, and now the sky is fading to a bruised purple. My legs ache. My feet are blistered inside my thin boots. The cut on my palm has stopped bleeding, but it throbs with every step, a dull reminder of what I lost.
I don't know where I'm going. I just know I can't stop.
The human world looks different from this side. The pack's territory borders a small town—the kind with a gas station, a diner, a handful of houses strung along a two-lane road. I've been here before, for supplies, for work. But always with the knowledge that I had somewhere to go back to. Now I have nothing.
I pass the gas station first. The lights are bright and buzzing, and through the window I see a cashier slouched behind the counter, scrolling through his phone. I think about going in. Asking for help. Using the bathroom, maybe, or buying something cheap with the few crumpled bills in my jacket pocket. But I don't. I don't know what I'd say. I don't know how to explain that I'm not human, not really, and that the only family I've ever known just threw me out like garbage.
So I keep walking.
The diner is next. Warm light spills out of the windows, and I catch the smell of coffee and frying bacon. My stomach twists with hunger. I haven't eaten since yesterday morning. I press my hand to my belly and keep moving.
The houses thin out after that. The road becomes a highway, dark and empty, with nothing but trees on either side. The wind picks up, cutting through my jacket like it isn't there. I start to shiver. My teeth chatter, and I clench my jaw to stop them, but it doesn't help.
I walk until my legs give out.
I don't remember falling. One moment I'm standing, the next I'm on my knees in the gravel at the side of the road. My palms scrape against the stones, and the fresh wound on my hand splits open again. I feel the sting, but it's distant, muffled, like it's happening to someone else.
I stay there for a long time. Maybe minutes, maybe hours. The cold seeps through my jeans, through my jacket, through the thin skin over my bones. I think about lying down. Just curling up in the ditch and closing my eyes. It would be so easy. So warm, finally, if I just let go.
But something keeps me upright. Some stubborn thread of survival that refuses to snap.
I get to my feet. Slowly, one hand braced against a tree trunk, my knees shaking under my weight. The world spins, then steadies. I take one step. Then another.
I don't know how I make it to the next town. I don't remember most of the walk. There are patches of darkness, gaps in my memory where I must have kept moving but can't recall how. The cold has numbed everything except the ache in my chest, the hollow place where the bond used to be.
The town is bigger than the last one. Streets with names, streetlights, a bus stop with a bench. I sink onto the bench and let my head fall back against the cold metal. There's a sign above me advertising something I can't read. My eyes won't focus.
I close them. Just for a moment.
I wake to someone shaking my shoulder.
"Hey. Hey. You okay?"
A woman's face swims into view. Middle-aged, dark hair streaked with grey, worry lines around her mouth. She's wearing a fluorescent vest—some kind of uniform. A bus driver, maybe, or a crossing guard.
"I'm fine," I say, but my voice comes out cracked and barely audible.
"You don't look fine. You're pale as a ghost. When's the last time you ate?"
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. I can't remember.
She doesn't wait for an answer. She grabs my arm, pulls me to my feet, and half-walks, half-drags me to a small café on the corner. The bell above the door jingles as we enter. Warm air hits my face, and I almost cry at the feeling of it.
"Sit," she says, pushing me into a booth. "Don't move. I'll be right back."
She disappears behind the counter and returns with a cup of tea and a sandwich wrapped in paper. She sets them in front of me and sits down across the booth, watching me with sharp, concerned eyes.
"Eat," she says. "Slowly. You'll make yourself sick if you rush."
I pick up the sandwich. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely hold it. I take a bite. The bread is soft, the meat is salty, and it's the best thing I've ever tasted. I eat the whole thing in four bites, then drink the tea in three scalding gulps.
"Better?" she asks.
I nod. My throat is too tight to speak.
"Where are you headed?" she says. "You got family around here?"
I shake my head.
"Somewhere to stay tonight?"
Another shake.
She sighs. Her face softens with something that looks like pity, and I brace myself for the inevitable lecture about shelters or social services or calling someone. But she doesn't offer any of those. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, and slides it across the table.
"It's not much," she says. "But it'll get you a motel room for the night. There's one two blocks west. Tell them Marge sent you."
I stare at the money. Then at her. "I can't—"
"You can." She closes my fingers around the bill. "And you will. We all need a hand sometimes. Don't be too proud to take it."
I want to thank her. I want to say something that captures how much this means, how she's the first person to show me kindness in years. But all I manage is a whisper: "Thank you."
She nods, pats my hand, and stands. "Stay warm. And get some real sleep. You look like you haven't had a good night's rest in a decade."
She leaves before I can say anything else. The bell jingles behind her, and then she's gone, and I'm alone again.
The motel is exactly what I expected: cheap, dingy, with a flickering sign and a lock on the door that doesn't quite work. But it has a bed. It has heat. It has a bathroom with running water.
I lock the door behind me and lean against it, sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor. The carpet is stained. The room smells like stale smoke and bleach. I don't care.
I look at my hand. The cut is still there, pale and puckered, the skin around it red and swollen. No golden rim. No heat. Nothing but an ordinary wound that will heal into an ordinary scar.
I press my palm to my chest, over my heart, and wait for something to happen. Anything. A spark. A pulse. A sign that I'm still connected to something.
Nothing.
I lie down on the bed, still in my jacket and boots, and stare at the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster look like rivers on a map. I trace them with my eyes until they blur and disappear.
I don't sleep. Not really. I drift in and out of consciousness, caught between exhaustion and the terror of being alone in a strange place with nothing but the clothes on my back and a twenty-dollar bill that's already spent.
But I don't cry. I promised myself I wouldn't.
In the middle of the night, something changes.
I don't know how to describe it. A shift, a loosening, as if something deep in my chest has been locked tight for so long and suddenly decided to breathe. I sit up in bed, heart pounding, and look around the dark room.
Nothing moves. Nothing's changed. But I feel it—a warmth spreading from my core, slow and steady, like a candle being lit in a room I didn't know existed.
I look at my palm. The cut is gone.
Not healed. Not scarred. Gone. The skin is smooth and unmarked, as if I was never cut at all.
My hands start shaking. I press them flat against the mattress and try to breathe. The warmth grows, spreading up into my chest, my throat, my jaw. I feel something in my gums—a pressure, a lengthening—and I taste metal on my tongue.
I stumble to the bathroom and flip on the light.
My eyes are silver.
Not amber. Not gold. Silver, like the moon, glowing faintly in the cracked mirror. My pupils are slit, vertical, like a cat's. Like a wolf's.
I open my mouth. My canines are longer. Sharper. Fangs.
I don't recognize the face staring back at me.
"Human," I whisper to my reflection. "You're human. You're Luna. You're nothing."
But my reflection doesn't answer.
And the warmth keeps spreading.
- Writer
