Chapter Two The City That Didn’t Know Her Name
1074 Words
Millie kept running and running until the forest was no longer calling to her.
She did not need words to know what was happening. It was like the wolves; they just knew. There was this feeling in her chest like a tug on a rope. This feeling had always meant she was coming home. Tonight, it meant something else. Tonight, it meant him. It made her feel really bad about herself, like her bones were filled with shame. And then there was this thing between them, it was like a voice that yelled at her every time she tried to slow down. This bond between her and him just would not be quiet. It meant him. It was not going away.
She did not look back. She remembered every word that he said that night. The way he looked at her was terrible. His eyes were full of disdain and disgust when he looked at her. She felt a lot of hurt when she heard what he thought about her. She could barely look up to face him, the man who said those things about her.
When the sun started to come up, the trees. The road turned into old, broken pavement and rusty signs. The air had a smell, like oil and metal and heat, but it was not like the air was saying she was bad. Nobody in this place knew that the Moon had just said no to her. She was in a place where it did not matter whose daughter she was. The people here did not care about what had happened to her.
That in itself was some sort of mercy.
Finally, she fell behind a bus station. Her knees were all scraped up. It hurt to breathe. Now she could think about what happened the night before. She was really happy just before everything went bad. It was the worst day of her life. She wanted to go back to how things were before all this happened. She wanted to forget she had to be with that man. Her hands were shaking a lot now because she was not scared anymore, and her body was tired. She thought about her life before that experience, and she wished she could have that life again. The bus station was a place for her to be, but she could not move her body, which was too weak, and her lungs were still burning. When she put her hand on her chest, the bond got really strong. It felt sharp and mad like it was telling her she had not gotten away from anything. The bond was acting like she was back where she started. She started shaking her head hard, the bond it was like the bond was still there, the bond was not gone.
She said quietly as she looked down to where her heart was, "This does not belong to you". She then said "This is not yours anymore".
The bond did not answer.
“She is my daughter.”
“And she’s my sentence,” he said coldly. “Or she would have been.”
The Beta’s hands curled into fists. “You humiliated her.”
“I spared her.”
The words tasted true.
“She would have broken under the weight of my name,” he continued. “Of what follows me. Of what I carry.”
“You do not know her,” the Beta snapped.
“That is exactly why she was not fit.”
A moment of silence passed between them. They just sat there without saying a word. The silence was a little awkward.
The Alpha let his breath out slowly, keeping himself under control like he always did. "The Moon made a mistake."
The Beta laughed once, it was a broken sound. The Beta said, "The Moon does not make mistakes. The Moon makes consequences."
The Alpha has finally turned.
"I will get through this time as well. This one will not be any different; I will survive it, too. I have done it before, and I can do it again. I will survive this one too", he thought.
The man walked past the Beta without saying another word.
He packed lightly. That is what he always did. You do not survive being sent by holding on to things. He left before noon, and he crossed the stones without any special goodbye.
The bond was quiet.
That was what surprised him most.
No tug. No ache. No howl tearing at his ribs.
Just…silence.
He paused once at the tree line, brow furrowing.
Nothing.
Good.
He kept walking.
Night fell. Then another.
Still nothing.
He slept under the open sky, his body aching in familiar ways, mind empty of her. When he closed his eyes, he didn’t see her face. He saw blood. Fire. The pack he had lost before he was sent away and everything was snatched from him. That scared him more than pain ever had.
She did not sleep well that week. She slept on park benches. She slept in a shelter. The shelter smelled bad. It smelled like bleach. It smelled like people were very sad. Sometimes she slept on a mattress. She got to sleep on the mattress because she cleaned floors at night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the face of the man she should not have been thinking of. His face was twisted in disgust every time she closed her eyes.
Those words were really hurtful. They kept coming to her, but she did not let them get her down. The words "you are a burden" were always popping up in her head every now and then. She was not going to let those words define her life anymore. She was done with that.
She figured out very fast how humans can make themselves invisible when they want to stay out of sight.
She cut her hair with her hands in a public bathroom. The dark strands fell into the sink. This sink had never seen wolf blood before. She got rid of her dresses and started wearing jeans. She also traded her pack ring for money. She did not even look at the ring twice. When she saw herself in the mirror afterward, the person staring back at her was a stranger. The words that had hurt her much now motivated her in this new place. These words motivated her wolf.
- Writer
