Of Ashes and Vows

CHAPTER 1

"I... died."

The words came in pieces, fractured things, slipping between gasps that tasted like blood. Too much blood. My throat... my throat was wet. Hot. The commander's fangs were still buried there, not tearing free, just... holding. Letting me feel it. Letting me choke on it. His claws…(Grunts) …inside me, between ribs, twisting slowly like he wanted to count each bone as it broke. My hands claws retracted, human again, trembling as they pressed against my unmarked chest.

"You...you will...regret this."

The words turned to wet iron in my mouth. A cough ripped through me, not a sound, but the convulsion of my body betraying me one last time. Hot blood flooded my tongue, spilled over my lips in a dark rush. It painted the commander's furred muzzle as he leaned in close.

"The pack comes first," he growled.

I knew that tone. The same one he'd used when kneeling to my father.

The blood came faster now, bubbling up with every ragged breath. I tried to speak...to tell him how wrong he was, how the prophecy lied, but all that left me was a choked "I will...kill you..." before the cough took me again. This time it hurt. This time it burned.

I saw the moment he understood I was dying. His golden eyes widened, just slightly, as my knees gave out. The snow beneath me wasn't cold anymore. Just red.

Always so much red.

The last thing I tasted wasn't fear. Wasn't rage.

Just blood.

And the sour taste of the truth that my own pack had made sure I'd die choking on it.

I blinked.

The forest swayed around me, too bright, too loud. Pine needles pricked my bare arms. The scent of damp earth filled my nose, not the copper-stink of my own spilled blood.

I... fought. I think. My jaws moved. My claws… (why won't they move?) …scraped dirt. Useless. The pack's snarls melted together, voices bleeding into one long, dying howl, chanting as the commander made sure I wouldn't live to become their Alpha. I tried to breathe but there's only blood - thick and copper-bitter, flooding my mouth, drowning my last words.

The pack circled closer. I knew each of their scents,

Jarek's pine-and-iron musk. Lysa's frostbitten sweetness. Tessa's sharp wintergreen.

They smelt like home.

They smelt like betrayal.

The commander's boot presses between my shoulders, grinding me deeper into the earth. His voice rumbles above me: "You were always too stubborn to listen…much more to run."

The light began to dim. Die so dim.

It flickered. Shadows eating the edges of everything. The pain...the pain was...gone?

No. Not gone. Just... far away now. Like it belonged to someone else. My body... wasn't mine anymore. The commander's eyes, last thing, gold; burning.

I should have been afraid. I wasn't. Just tired.

Forest. Cold. Alive.

"My... home..." Each word a stone on my tongue. "I... I sh-should have"

Run.

A bitter laugh caught my throat.

The snow tasted like burial salt. I laughed, or tried to but my lungs were too busy drowning. The commander’s face swam above me, blurred at the edges like a half-remembered dream. “You’re dying wrong,” he muttered. No ceremony. No howls. Just a knife in the ribs and my own blood turning the world red. Pathetic. My father’s ghost would’ve spat on me.

I felt nothing now. Just a slow, creeping numbness that starts in my fingers and spreads upward. My claws retract without my permission. My heartbeat stutters - once, twice - then goes quiet. The light began to bleed away.

The last thing I see?

My own blood, black in the moonlight, soaking into the same soil where I'd buried my father's bones.

Then-

GASP!

I'm alive.

Kneeling in dry dirt, untouched but shaking. The scent of pine and damp earth replaces the memory of blood. My hands fly to my chest - no wound, no dagger, just sweat-slick skin and a heartbeat that won't steady.

"My home..." The words taste like ashes. Like regret.

The wind carries the first howl - high, mournful, close.

Too close.

"I died."

The words left my lips in a whisper, but inside my skull, they screamed.

My hands flew to my chest—no wound, no blood, just sweat-slick skin and a heartbeat hammering like a trapped thing. The forest tilted around me, trees swaying too fast, moonlight too bright.

This wasn't right.

I had just been dying.

The commander's silver dagger between my ribs. The pack's teeth at my throat. The slow, suffocating dark as my vision narrowed to nothing.

Yet here I was...kneeling in the dirt, unharmed. All pine scent and none of blood.

A growl rumbled behind me.

I knew that sound.

I'd heard it before—seconds ago, minutes ago, in that other place where I'd taken my last breath.

My head snapped up.

The pack surrounded me, their eyes glowing in the dark. Jarek's claws already red. Lysa's muzzle wrinkled in a snarl. The commander stood at the front, his hand resting on the hilt of his dagger, the same dagger that had just killed me.

My breath caught.

This wasn't a memory.

It was happening, again.

The same moment. The same snarls. The same flicker of torchlight catching the silver of the commander's blade as he stepped forward.

"You were warned, Caelan."

I knew those words.

I'd died to those words.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. The world felt too sharp, too real, the rough bark against my back, the iron tang of blood in the air, the way the commander's fingers tightened on his dagger, just like before.

This wasn't possible.

Yet here it was.

Happening.

Again.

"Kill the bastard!"

A yell came from the crowd tearing through the night as others roared in agreement.

The command tore through the night. My pack's voices rose together, a chorus of snarls and snapping teeth. Claws raked across my skin, drawing hot lines of blood that dripped into my eyes. The metallic taste filled my mouth as I struggled to stay upright.

A brutal shove sent me crashing into the stone walls of the den. My vision blurred from the impact. Rough hands grabbed my arms, hauling me toward the treeline where the pack disposed of problems like me.

"You'll never be one of us, Caelan." The commander's voice, second to the alpha, was colder than winter ground. "Not like this."

I spat blood at his feet. "I never asked to be your problem." It happened differently now, I saw the patterns it was unlike before.

A kick to my ribs stole my breath. "You were born the problem. No mate. No power. Just a walking curse."