Chapter Three When She Realized Herself
1011 Words
The city did not give in. The city stood strong. The city stayed that way. The city just did not bow down to anything.
It did not move at all. It also did not flinch.
It did not care if she would survive. It was not concerned about what happened to her. The woman's survival meant nothing to it. It just did not care if the woman lived or died.
So she did, she lived. She knew that she had to; she owed it to herself to turn those words, which were meant to break her, to actually mold her.
In the new city, she had to forget everything she knew about being part of a pack and start living like a human being. She worked hard until her hands got all scarred and her legs hurt a lot.
She looked for jobs. Then she also learned all about the schedules and the shortcuts, and how to keep her eyes down when she walked. She also learned how to stand up tall.
She rented a room that had a lock on the door, which was the most basic thing she needed and she paid for it herself. This was something that made her really happy, the fact that she was paying for the room herself, it felt to her like she was no longer living like one who was once part of a park life, she was now living like a human. She only ate food when she had the chance to she only slept when she could. She only cried in the shower because that was the one place where nobody was going to hear her crying.
At night, she felt the unmistakable pull of the bond.
Not gently.
Not romantically.
The pain twisted inside her ribs like a hook. Sometimes this pain woke her up and she was gasping her heart was racing her skin was slick with sweat. The pain ate at her badly. She would sit on the floor with her back against the wall, whispering nothings to herself like she was saying a prayer. The pain was really getting to her.
I am going to pick this. This is what I want. I will choose this. I really like this so I choose this.
The bond never loosened but it morphed. Its call was now quite different.
It no longer demanded obedience.
It listened.
Weeks passed. Then months.
Millie was not jumping anymore when someone raised their voice at her. She did not wait for people to say it was okay to talk. Millie stopped making herself smaller. Now she could finally begin to feel like she had found where she belonged in the city.
One evening, she stood on the balcony of her apartment, looking at the city lights that were all spread out below her. It was like a galaxy, and she felt like she was a part of it now. While the pull of the bond still existed. It felt really far away and it made her feel uneasy. She thought about the city and the connection she now had with the city while she watched the city lights. The bond did not feel right anymore. The city was still beautiful. The bond she had was not feeling like it used to; it was feeling really distant.
She realized it was not because she was running. It was something else, something she could not quite place her hands on.
He was just waking up now. This was when it started to sink in. He was starting to understand what he had done with the things that happened. The things that he had done were becoming clear to him now.
She smiled to herself, for the first time in weeks.
“Too late,” she muttered these words into the darkness of the night.
She had built a life here for herself with no group of friends, no pack, no title, no Alpha to define her worth.
She was not the Luna.
She was something far more dangerous.
She was a woman who had survived rejection and dejection and had also learned she did not need even the Moon’s approval to shine.
And somewhere far away, the Alpha had now begun to feel the first true echo of loss.
It started as irritation.
At least that was what he told himself when his chest tightened for no reason at all; it was only just a dull pressure beneath his scars, like old damage flaring in bad weather. He ignored it the way he ignored everything that didn’t kill him outright. After all, there was no reason at all for his chest to be constricted its not like anything had hurt him, or so he thought.
Pain was familiar to him. This did not feel like pain. It was something totally different.
It was…absence. It was not quite what he was used to; at least pain was something he could live with, but this unfamiliar feeling, absence, had to mean that he was longing for something. Now, that to him was a foreign feeling to him because when last had he needed or wanted something. When last did he even let himself feel?
He was sharpening his blade when he felt it happen again— it was a bit stronger this time. The knife slipped in his grip, slicing shallow gashes across his palm. He barely noticed the blood.
He did notice the pull, however. It was strong and so demanding, worst of all, it was not towards a thing. It was also not forward nor toward a place.
It was toward a person.
His jaw tightened.
“No,” he muttered. It could not possibly be. It had to be a prank.
The bond answered by tightening too. To further confirm his suspicion.
He straightened slowly, breath controlled, shoulders squared. He had survived exile, starvation, betrayal. He had torn himself out of worse things than fate; surely, he would not be held back by this.
Whatever this was, it would pass.
It did not.
- Writer
