Rosari’e

Chapter 2 :a warrior with a secret identity

Rosari’e’s POV

My childhood was a total fairytale.

No… scratch that. It was better than a fairytale.

I was the apple of my father’s eye, the jewel of my mother’s heart. To my dad, I was his little warrior. To my mom, I was her spoiled princess. Sometimes I swear they argued more about me than about ruling the pack. Who got to braid my hair. Who got to train me. Who got to tuck me in at night. And even though they carried the weight of an entire kingdom on their shoulders, somehow they always found time to drown me in love.

The outside world only knew them as wolves made of steel. My father—the Alpha, cold-blooded and feared by all. My mother—the Luna, a queen who commanded respect like the moon commands the tides. But behind closed doors? They turned into clowns. They laughed, they bickered, they doted on me like I was the only thing in existence.

And maybe to them, I was.

But my father… he gave me more than love. He gave me strength. In secret, he taught me combat, discipline, strategy. Nights when the pack thought their Alpha was buried in council meetings, he was in the training yard, showing me how to fight like a wolf even in human skin. He taught me how to strike, how to bleed, and how to never, ever lose.

If my mother had found out, she would have had his head on a silver platter. Don’t get me wrong—my father feared nothing. Not enemies. Not death. Not the gods themselves. But when it came to my mother? That mighty Alpha wolf of mine became a terrified puppy. And he loved her all the more for it.

I used to laugh at that. I used to think love was simple. That it was soft, safe, and endless.

But that was before I learned that fairytales don’t last

Back at the battlefield

The snow was no longer white. It was trampled into mud, blood, and ashes. The battlefield stretched before us like a graveyard painted in crimson. The wind carried the stench of wet fur and iron, of half-shifted bodies that would never rise again.

I bent to retrieve a blade, the metal still warm, and tossed it onto the growing pile of enemy weapons. Around me, my soldiers moved with practiced precision. Some gathered our fallen sisters, laying them gently on blankets of furs to be carried home. Others dragged enemy corpses into heaps, preparing them for fire. The crack of shifting bones echoed as the wounded reverted to human form, groaning with pain but alive.

Smoke rose thick and black against the pale sky, curling through the winter air. The sun pushed weakly over the horizon, its light filtering through the haze like a reluctant witness. The crackle of flames mixed with the chatter of soldiers—low voices, laughter, curses, and the muttered retelling of close calls. It was always like this after battle: grief and relief tangled together, survival whispered like a prayer.

“Rosie,” Iris muttered, stepping over a fallen spear, her jaw tight. Her ponytail—what was left of it—swung unevenly. “Don’t you ever pull that laser stunt again.”

I rolled my eyes, kneeling to wipe blood from my blade. “C’mon. I was quick. Nobody saw anything.”

Her glare could have frozen the flames themselves. “You don’t know that. You never know that. One second too slow and half the damn battlefield would be whispering ‘curse’ behind your back.”

I smirked, though my chest tightened. “And when have whispers ever stopped me?”

“Rosari’e, I swear—” she snapped, but cut herself off, shaking her head. “One day, it won’t be me watching your back. One day, your power is going to burn us both.”

I said nothing. I only shoved another sword into the pile and kept walking, the snow crunching beneath my boots.

That was when the chief commander approached, flanked by two guards. Her expression was carved from stone, her voice steady but clipped. “Alpha Rosari’e, you have to come see this.”

I straightened, masking the flicker of unease that stirred in my gut. “What is it, Omega?”

Her hand trembled as she pointed to a body near the fire pits. A wolf, or what was left of him, split cleanly in two. His blood still steamed against the snow.

“I think we have a cursed in our pack,” she whispered.

The word hung in the air like poison.

Selene—my second, my shadow in battle—stiffened at my side. Her eyes darted to mine, sharp with the same warning thought: they can’t know.

“A cursed?” I repeated, my voice cool, bored even. “No. This looks like the work of a blade.”

The commander’s eyes widened. “Alpha, with respect—no blade cuts like this. This was no steel. If a cursed walks among us, we are all doomed for death.” Her voice rose slightly, fear sharpening her tone.

I met her gaze with a look so steady, so cold, it silenced her instantly. “Don’t say a word of this. Not here. Not now. We will conduct an investigation back at the quarters. Until then…” I leaned closer, my wolf flashing just beneath my skin, “…you saw nothing. Do you understand?”

The Omega swallowed hard, nodded once, and stepped back into the shadows.

Selene exhaled beside me, her hand brushing mine as if to anchor us both.

But in the pit of my stomach, I knew the truth: no amount of smoke, no weight of snow, no walls of stone could hide what had happened here forever.

And when the whispers came, they would not stop until they swallowed me whole.