3.
889 Words
I didn’t sleep again after the forest.
Not really.
Sleep implied peace, rest, recovery—things my body didn’t seem to understand anymore.
Instead, I drifted in and out of a strange half-awareness, like my mind was trapped just above my body, watching it struggle to become something it didn’t recognize.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw it again.
Kael Draven’s face.
Not when he rejected me.
But after.
That blank look.
Like I had already stopped existing for him before I even fell to the ground.
My chest tightened at the memory, and for a moment I thought the pain of the bond would return.
But it didn’t.
That was the strangest part.
The pain was gone.
Not healed.
Not faded.
Just… missing.
Like something had been cut out of me and forgotten.
I sat up slowly on the cold forest ground, my fingers brushing against the dirt beneath me. The night air was still heavy with moisture, and somewhere far away, wolves howled—but none of them felt close enough to matter.
I should have been afraid.
I should have been running.
Instead, I felt something worse.
Stillness.
Inside me, my wolf was awake.
But she wasn’t speaking the way she used to.
No panic. No fear. No submission.
Just… watching.
Waiting.
“What did they do to us?” I whispered into the dark.
For a moment, I thought I heard an answer.
Not in words.
In pressure.
In awareness.
Like something inside me had turned its head slightly when I spoke.
I swallowed hard and pushed myself to my feet.
My body felt different when I moved.
Lighter.
Stronger.
Wrong in a way I couldn’t explain.
The ground beneath me didn’t feel stable anymore—not because it was unstable, but because I was sensing it differently. Every step sent faint ripples through my awareness, like I was touching more than just earth.
I reached the edge of a shallow stream without remembering walking there.
The water reflected my face.
I froze.
For a second, I didn’t recognize myself.
My eyes were the same… but not.
There was something faint inside them.
A thin shimmer of silver light that came and went like a heartbeat.
My breath caught.
“No…” I whispered.
I knelt quickly and splashed water onto my face, as if that would erase what I saw. But when I looked again, it was still there.
Faint.
But real.
A crack in what I used to be.
Behind me, a branch snapped.
My body reacted instantly.
I turned—
Too fast.
Far too fast.
My movement didn’t feel like mine.
A man stood between the trees.
Not Kael.
Not a pack warrior.
Someone else.
Older. Calm. Watching me like I was something that had finally been found after being lost for a long time.
I instinctively stepped back.
“Don’t come closer,” I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
He didn’t move.
Instead, he tilted his head slightly.
“You shouldn’t be alive,” he said quietly.
That made my stomach tighten.
“…Excuse me?”
His eyes narrowed, not in aggression, but in recognition.
“No,” he corrected softly. “That’s not right.”
A pause.
Then:
“You shouldn’t have awakened this early.”
My pulse spiked.
“What are you talking about?”
He stepped forward one pace.
The forest around him seemed to shift with that movement. Not physically—but like the atmosphere itself acknowledged him.
“You felt the bond break,” he said. “And it didn’t die.”
My throat tightened.
“How do you know that?”
His gaze sharpened slightly.
“Because it didn’t break for people like you.”
I felt a chill spread through my chest.
“What people like me?”
Silence stretched between us.
Then he said it.
“Moon-Blood line.”
The words hit differently than anything I had heard before.
Not just information.
A recognition.
Like my body understood it before my mind did.
I took a step back without realizing it.
“I don’t know what that is,” I whispered.
He studied me for a long moment, and for the first time, something like hesitation crossed his face.
“You will,” he said finally. “Sooner than you want.”
A sharp pain suddenly flickered through my chest.
Not like before.
This wasn’t heartbreak.
This was awareness.
Like something far away had just shifted.
Like a thread had tightened.
My breath caught.
And then—
I felt him.
Not physically.
Not through sound or sight.
Somewhere deep inside me.
A pressure.
A presence.
Kael.
My knees nearly gave out.
“What… is that?” I gasped.
The man’s expression darkened slightly.
“He felt you,” he said quietly.
My blood ran cold.
“That’s impossible,” I whispered. “He rejected me.”
A pause.
Then the man said something that made my entire world tilt again.
“No,” he said. “He only broke what he thought he could control.”
Another pulse hit my chest.
Stronger this time.
Like something inside me had responded.
Like something inside him had answered back.
Far away.
Through distance.
Through rejection.
Through silence.
The bond was not gone.
It was listening.
And so was he.
- Writer
