Chapter 2: The Awakening of the Void
476 Words
My eyes snapped open.
Dirt. That was the first thing. The taste of wet, sour dirt in my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but my tongue felt like a piece of dry wood. My face was buried in the muck near the creek, and for a second, I didn't even know who I was.
Elena?
The name felt foreign. Like a dress that didn't fit anymore.
I tried to move my arm. c***k. My shoulder popped so loud I thought a branch had snapped. I groaned, a low, ugly sound that rattled my ribs. Everything hurt. Not just the "I fell down" kind of hurt. The "my bones were melted and poured into a new mold" kind of hurt.
I pushed myself up. My hands... they weren't human. Not exactly. My nails were jagged, black, and caked with dried blood. Not mine. Someone else's? No. It was the earth's.
I looked at my reflection in a stagnant puddle.
God.
My eyes. They weren't brown anymore. They were two glowing pits of violet fire. I looked like a demon. A ghost. Something the Alphas tell their pups about to make them stop crying at night.
"Killian," I whispered.
Saying his name felt like swallowing a handful of rusted needles. I remembered it all. The hall. The rejection. The way he held Sarah—his real Luna—while I was being torn apart by the Moon Goddess.
He thought I was dead. He thought the rejection would kill a weak Omega like me.
I stood up, my legs shaking like a newborn fawn. I was naked, covered in mud and blood, but I wasn't cold. That was the weird part. The air was freezing, the frost was biting the leaves, but inside me?
Inside me, there was a furnace. A dark, oily heat that smelled like ancient smoke.
Elena...
It wasn't Luna. My wolf was gone. Something else had taken her place. Something that didn't whimper. Something that didn't beg for a mate.
Let them sleep, little shadow, the voice inside my skull rumbled. It felt like a landslide of heavy stones. Let the Silver Moon celebrate their new Queen. They have no idea what they woke up in the dark.
I turned my back on the pack lands. I didn't cry. Crying is for people who have something left to lose. I had nothing.
I started walking. Every step was a battle. Every breath was a curse. I headed for the Neutral Lands—the place where the monsters live.
"I'm coming back, Killian," I growled, my voice sounding like gravel grinding together. "But not as your mate. I'm coming back as the thing that haunts your dreams."
The forest swallowed me whole, and for the first time in my life, I felt safe. Because I was finally the scariest thing in the woods.
- Writer
