Chapter six;- The Year of Waiting
880 Words
(Leyla’s POV)
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Time did not pass after the night they took us It shattered, Not into days or weeks into heartbeats.
The kind that hurt when they were too loud in your chest.
The kind you started counting because there was nothing else left to count.
They did not drag us.
They did not beat us.
They spoke softly. Gave orders calmly. Moved with precision like doctors in a hospital.
That was the first lie.
Because hospitals were meant to heal.
This place was meant to decide who deserved to exist.
We were moved underground. Through tunnels that smelled of metal and damp earth. Through rooms lit by cold artificial moons. Through corridors where no windows existed, so you forgot what sky even meant.
Warda squeezed my hand the first night.
“Maybe this is temporary,” she whispered.
Her voice trembled like she was trying to convince herself.
I didn’t answer.
Because something inside me already knew Temporary things didn’t feel this permanent.
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They separated us by age.
fourteen to eighteen.
The youngest cried openly.
The oldest stopped making noise altogether.
A woman in black armor walked down our line, scanning us like inventory.
“Silence increases survival probability,” she said.
We learned quickly.
Silence meant fewer beatings.
Silence meant fewer disappearances.
Silence meant they might forget you existed.
We slept on narrow metal beds, arranged in perfect rows.
At night, the girls whispered names.
Not ours.
Our homes.
“My mother used to make bread at dawn,” one girl murmured once. “The smell filled the whole street.”
Another whispered, “I had a dog. He slept on my feet every night.”
Warda looked at me in the dark.
“Do you think our parents are still alive?”
I swallowed.
“Yes,” I lied.
Because hope was dangerous.
But hopelessness was worse.
They told us the truth after the first month.
We weren’t prisoners.
We were candidates.
“You are not here to die,” a man said, smiling gently. “Only the wrong ones die.”
None of us understood.
Then Alina turned eighteen.
She was beautiful. Brave. She used to braid everyone’s hair in the mornings.
That night they took her.
We waited.
We always waited.
When she returned, it wasn’t her.
They brought back blood-stained clothes instead.
“She’s not it,” someone said casually outside the door.
Warda vomited.
A girl screamed.
I couldn’t breathe.
That was the night birthdays became executions.
The next birthday came, it was magreth, they took all of us in ritual room,
“Observation improves psychological adaptation,” they claimed.
The room was carved in symbols. Moonlight forced through cracked glass. Wolves chanting in languages older than fear.
The girl shifted.
Her wolf was silver and perfect.
For one second, hope lived.
Then came the blade., they perform a ritual chants older that anyone present,
They tested her blood.
Her bones.
Her soul.
“She’s not the one.”
They killed her quietly, Like a failed experiment.
Not brutal.
Just… final.
Warda whispered, “They’re searching for something.”
I whispered back, “Let them never find it"
After that, we stopped counting days.
Stopped making friends.
Stopped learning names.
Because names made loss heavier.
Birthdays became death sentences.
Some girls begged.
Some fought.
Some prayed to gods that had never listened before.
None came back.
The room filled with empty beds.
Every empty bed felt louder than screaming.
One night, when fear became too heavy to carry alone, Warda whispered:
“Tell me about home.”
So I did.
I told her about the infirmary. The smell of herbs. Aunt Safiya teasing me. My brother stealing my pencils. The library where silence felt safe.
She smiled with tears in her eyes.
“I used to dream of traveling,” she said. “Seeing other packs. Other skies.”
We lay there imagining peaceful lives that felt fictional now.
Like stories written by someone else.
days grow to months and it's almost one year since that tragic day,
I was sixteen.
Sixteen and already terrified of my own birthday.
I didn’t want to be special.
Didn’t want four gifts.
Didn’t want prophecy.
I wanted to be ordinary enough to die quickly.
That’s the truth no one understands.
Hope becomes torture in places like this.
Because if you might be special…
Then you might live long enough to suffer more.
They never touched me.
Never tested me.
Never even looked at me properly.
Because I wasn’t eighteen yet.
So I lived in a room full of ghosts.
Girls who used to whisper at night. Girls who used to cry into my shoulder. Girls who used to believe.
Gone.
One by one.
And every night I whispered into the dark:
“Please Moon… let me be wrong. Let me be normal. Let me not be the one they want.”
I stopped asking when I would escape.
I started asking:
“How many days until I turn eighteen?”
Because that was the day everything would end.
One way or another.
I didn’t know Idris was searching. Didn’t know packs were fighting. Didn’t know anyone still cared.
All I knew was this:
I was alive…
only because my death was scheduled for later.
- Writer
