A Witch’s Promise

Chapter 8:Leaving

Naomi didn’t sleep that night.

She sat on the edge of her bed until the sky outside the pack house lightened from black to gray, watching the faint shift of morning like it belonged to someone else’s life. Everything hurt in a way she couldn’t name properly anymore.

Not just Chris’s rejection. Not just Sarai’s cold certainty. Not even the woods, or Angela, or the thing inside her that no one would explain. It was the simple fact that no matter where she turned, she didn’t belong anywhere she stood. By sunrise, she made her decision.

If the plan was for her to be human… then she would be. And if she left, the rogues would have to stop coming. In the human world, Naomi could just be. Not a wolf. Not a witch. Not whatever dangerous middle thing everyone seemed to fear she was becoming. Just Naomi. If she had to disappear to become that, then she would.

Naomi didn’t tell anyone she was leaving. There was no dramatic confrontation, or tearful goodbye. Who would really, truly care anyway? She had failed at every turn to be accepted into the pack. The only person who would truly care she was gone is Elijah and soon enough he would be away at college making friends and focusing on his Gamma duties. He would eventually breathe a sign of relief as well.

Naomi moved through the pack house like a shadow. She was quiet, careful, already half-gone in the way she carried herself. By the time anyone noticed she was missing from morning roll call, she was already miles away. She ditched her phone at a nearby diner after using the tap to pay function to empty her bank account. Her name stayed off everything she could control.

NYU was the first thing she let go of. While it’s a great school, she was never dead set on going. NYU was her choice when she thought she would be going with Elijah. It was her choice back when she dreamed of living in Brooklyn with friends like Regine, Max, Khadijah, and Sinclair. Naomi realized; she could live without it. Unfortunately, life wasn’t a sitcom.

The acceptance letter sat folded in her bag for a while, untouched, until she finally opened it once on the bus out of state. She read it once. Then again. Finally, she closed it and didn’t look back. New York felt too loud for someone trying not to exist. So, she chose somewhere smaller. Quieter. A place where no one would look twice at a girl who kept to herself and never talked about her past.

North Carolina.

Flat Rock, felt like the kind of place people ended up in by accident and stayed in on purpose. It remained tucked into the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, barely touched by time. The winding roads curved through dense forests of pine and oak, opening unexpectedly to white fences, old stone walls, and little houses with deep porches wrapped in climbing ivy. The mountains burned gold and crimson beneath cold blue skies in the evenings in a way that reminded her of the Blood Howler Pack. It is quiet here. It’s peaceful in a way Naomi had forgotten places could be.

The mornings arrived slowly in Flat Rock. Fog drifted low through the hills before sunrise, curling through the trees like smoke while tiny cafés along the main street switched on warm amber lights one by one. Locals waved at each other from pickup trucks. Wind chimes clinked softly outside small bookstores and antique shops. People still said good morning to strangers there like they genuinely meant it. Right away Naomi noticed she was different. There didn’t seem to be many people here who looked like her. Surprisingly, the locals didn’t seem to mind. And that alone made her want to cry.

Luckily, she made it to the school two days before the registration deadline. Blue Ridge Community College sat just outside town, surrounded by rolling hills and tall trees that turned silver-green in the wind. It wasn’t impressive in the way NYU would have been. There were no towering buildings or crowded city streets buzzing outside classroom windows. Despite this, Naomi found she liked the smaller classrooms. She enjoyed listening to the professors lecture with thick southern accents. She liked the familiarity of seeing the same faces every day, even if she was an onlooker from the edges of society.

It felt safe. Or at least safe enough to pretend. And Naomi clung to that feeling desperately. Flat Rock was the first place she had ever lived where no one looked at her like a burden, a danger, or someone they needed to protect. Here, she had the freedom to just be.

After a brief search, Naomi found a small apartment above the little corner bakery. The floors creaked when she walked too quickly, and the kitchen window overlooked a narrow street lined with flower boxes and old brick storefronts. Every morning before dawn, the scent of fresh bread drifted upstairs and settled into the curtains.

She didn’t unpack everything when she moved into the small apartment above a corner shop. Some boxes stayed sealed for days. Others never got opened at all. She didn’t want reminders. She wanted distance. A clean slate that didn’t ask questions.

Thankfully, nobody asked where she came from unless she volunteered it. Nobody pushed when she didn’t. She became just another student who kept her head down, did her work, and left quickly after class. In a strange way, that anonymity felt like relief. Like breathing without being watched. She slowly began to build her own routine.

The preschool job came almost by accident. One September, Naomi noticed a large, colorful, flyer on the community dashboard in the financial aid department. After a brief interview, she was offered the job the next day.

The children didn’t care about her past. They didn’t know about wolves, witches, pack politics or anything that had ever made her feel like she was something too complicated to exist safely in one place. They only saw her as someone who tied shoelaces, read stories, and kneeled down to their level when they talked.

For the first time in a long time, Naomi found something close to peace in that simplicity.

But even there—quiet moments between nap time and finger painting—she still felt it sometimes. That strange pressure in the air. Like the world hadn’t fully let her go. Like something far away was still looking for her.

And she had no idea yet that choosing to disappear… didn’t mean she had stopped being found.