Chapter Five :-The Ashes That Answered Me
769 Words
(Idris’s POV)
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I was packing when the world ended.
My armor lay open on the bed. New. Untouched. Polished silver clasps catching the early light. My future folded neatly in a travel bag Alpha Training College, the final step before becoming what everyone had already decided I would be.
Indra was restless.
Not pacing. Not growling.
Listening.
There’s something wrong, he murmured inside my chest.
I paused, one hand gripping the strap of my bag. The air felt thick, heavy in a way I’d learned to respect.
Then the pack link shattered thesilence.
Not a formal call.
Not a council summons.
A scream disguised as words.
“Blood Moon… Blood Moon is gone.”
The sentence didn’t make sense.
Gone meant moved. Gone meant migrated. Gone did not mean erased.
My heart skipped.
Indra surged forward, claws scraping against my ribs.
Gone how? he demanded.
But the link was already dead.
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We didn’t wait for orders.
Three patrol units shifted and ran with me across borders that usually took hours by air. The wind carried it before we arrived the scent of death, thick and bitter.
Ash fell from the sky like gray snow.
Indra slowed.
No wolves howled to challenge us.
No guards stood at the gates.
The pack wasn’t silent.
It was hollow.
Burned homes collapsed into themselves, charred bones of what used to be laughter and dinner tables and family. The infirmary lay in ruins, its roof melted into black stone.
I remembered standing outside it once during a rescue mission some months ago.
A small omega girl had been inside. Watching through broken glass.
I hadn’t even known her name.
But the memory struck me like a blade.
She was here.
She was from here.
Indra growled low.
This place was alive once.
Survivors emerged slowly.
Not running.
Not crying.
Just… existing.
Warriors with missing arms. Elders wrapped in burned cloth. Mothers staring at empty spaces where their daughters should have been.
No young girls.
Not one.
I counted again.
And again.
My breath turned shallow.
Indra’s voice dropped into something darker.
They didn’t lose a battle, he said.
They were harvested.
A woman grabbed my arm. Her hands were shaking so badly I thought she might collapse.
“They came at midnight,” she whispered. “Rogues. Mercenaries. Wolves from strong packs too.”
My jaw clenched.
“They didn’t want land,” she continued. “They went straight to the houses. Straight to the girls.”
Her eyes filled with tears she couldn’t shed anymore.
“They knew their names.”
Something inside my chest tore.
Indra growl
I stood in the center of Blood Moon, surrounded by smoke and ghosts.
This wasn’t war.
War had rules.
This was a hunt.
And I had seen one of the hunted once.
Quiet eyes. Soft voice. A girl who looked like she believed the world was still safe.
I didn’t know her name.
But I knew she was gone.
I knelt in the ashes and pressed my hand into the burned earth.
Indra mirrored the movement inside me, bowing his massive head.
I spoke aloud, to the Moon, to the dead, to whatever power still listened.
“I will find them,” I said.
“I will tear through every pack, every territory, every hell between here and wherever they are.”
My voice broke.
“Not as an Alpha. Not as a prince.”
Just a wolf.
A hunter.
A man who refused to let the world keep this kind of crime.
Indra’s voice was steady.
We will bring them home.
Or we will burn the world trying.
The elders of Silver Claw confronted me at sunset.
“You leave for Alpha College in two days,” one of them said. “This is not your war.”
I looked at my armor.
Then at the ashes still clinging to my boots.
“This isn’t a war,” I replied quietly.
“It’s a grave.”
Silence fell.
Indra stood tall inside me.
So I didn’t go to Alpha Training College.
I went into darkness.
Tracking blood trails across borders. Interrogating mercenaries. Raiding rogue dens. Crossing into lands no future Alpha was allowed to touch.
Not for glory.
Not for politics.
For girls who didn’t even know my name.
And for one girl…
whose eyes I would recognize the moment I saw her again.
Even if the world had changed her.
Even if I hadn’t known she was mine yet.
The Moon had taken something from me that day.
And I would spend the rest of my life taking it back.
- Writer
