Chapter 17: What remains after the name is taken
685 Words
(Selena’s POV)
Exile does not happen all at once.
It begins with silence.
The moment they marked me, the pack’s scent fell away not erased, but severed, like a limb that still ached even after it was gone. The boundary shimmered faintly as I crossed it, ancient runes burning briefly beneath my feet before dimming into nothing.
No howls followed.
No calls.
Just wind.
The southern lands stretched wide and empty before me, unfamiliar and indifferent. The trees here grew twisted by harsher soil, their branches reaching skyward like questions no one bothered to answer.
I did not look back.
Not because I was brave.
Because if I did, I might have collapsed.
I walked until night swallowed the horizon, my boots worn thin, my cloak heavy with dust and resentment. Only when my legs finally trembled did I stop, pressing my back against the trunk of a dead tree and sliding down until I sat on cold earth.
Stripped.
That was the word the elders had used.
Stripped of rank.
Stripped of name.
Stripped of protection.
But what they truly meant was forgotten.
The pack had erased me in a single breath.
I laughed softly, the sound brittle.
“So this is justice,” I murmured to the dark.
No one answered.
Hunger crept in slowly, joined by thirst, but neither frightened me as much as the emptiness inside my chest where identity used to live. A wolf without a pack was not just alone.
She was undefined.
Sleep came in fragments, haunted by memories I had no permission to keep.
The stone circle.
Liam’s eyes not cruel, just final.
And her.
Calm.
Unmoved.
Watching me fall the way storms watch fields drown.
I woke just before dawn with my claws embedded in the dirt.
The mark on my wrist burned faintly, a constant reminder that every boundary would know me now and reject me.
Good.
Let them try.
I rose and tested the air.
Foreign scents drifted through the trees: old rogues, distant packs, unfamiliar hierarchies. Danger, yes but danger I understood. Fear I could wield again.
By midday, my thoughts sharpened.
They thought exile was the end.
That stripping me of name would make me smaller.
They never understood what gave me power.
It was never the pack.
It was observation.
I had watched them all for years learned what frightened them, what rules they pretended were sacred, what instincts could be bent without breaking.
Even her.
Especially her.
She believed restraint made her strong.
She believed power shown carefully would be respected.
Perhaps it would.
In the short term.
But packs forget slowly, and fear mutates.
They would remember the tremor in the ground one day differently. Not as control but as threat.
And Liam?
I smiled faintly.
He had chosen balance over dominance. Choice over tradition.
Alphas like him burned out eventually.
Leaders who hesitated always did.
By nightfall, I found shelter a shallow cave near a dry stream, its entrance hidden by thornbrush. I built a small fire, careful to keep the smoke low, and tended to my wounds with efficient, practiced hands.
Survival was not new to me.
Isolation was simply honesty without witnesses.
As the flames danced, I pressed my fingers against the mark again and allowed myself one truth I hadn’t dared face before.
I had lost.
Not today.
Not at the council.
I had lost the moment she chose patience instead of anger.
That was the move I hadn’t anticipated.
But loss was not the same as ending.
It was instruction.
The world beyond pack borders did not run on ancient laws or pure instincts. It ran on bargains, shadows, and grudges carefully cultivated over time.
And I had nothing but time now.
When the fire finally died, I stared into the dark and whispered the name they had taken from me.
Not in grief.
In promise.
Someday, the pack would speak it again.
Not as leader.
Not as traitor.
But as the woman who refused to disappear simply because they told her to.
Exile had taken my place.
It had not taken my will.
- Writer
