CHAPTER ONE THE GIRL WHO RAN
984 Words
Rachel always woke before her alarm rang.
Some mornings, she didn’t know whether it was the weight of memory on her chest or the quiet breathing of her son pressed against her side that dragged her back from sleep. But it was always something.
Today, it was the dream.
The one where the forest burned. Where her foolish dreams of a utopia was razed by fire.
Where the moon turned red.
Where a pair of golden eyes, familiar and devastating, watched her run, never to return.
She jolted awake in the suffocating darkness of her cramped room, her heart already sprinting. Her breaths came sharp and shallow, too loud in the quiet.
Kylian was curled beside her, small hand clutching the fabric of her nightshirt like he was afraid she would vanish if he let go.
He had no idea how close that fear came to truth.
Rachel slowly pried his fingers free, pressing a kiss to his warm forehead. He stirred, murmuring something only half formed, and settled again. The innocence in his face made her chest ache.
He looked too much like him.
She pushed herself up and swung her legs off the bed, inhaling deeply as she steadied her shaking hands. Her room smelled of baby powder, pencil shavings, and the faint dampness of the leaky ceiling. Home. Safe. The only place she had carved where the world didn’t feel like it was closing in.
She lied to herself a lot these days.
She walked to the single window and forced it open. The morning air slid in, cool against her sweat damp skin. Outside, the street was waking up, hawkers setting up tables, old men arguing over nothing serious, bicycle tires squeaking in the distance.
Normal. Human. Ordinary.
Everything she craved and everything she was terrified of losing.
Her phone buzzed on the rickety table.
She frowned. Nobody texted her before sunrise, unless it was the university’s broken portal sending another useless announcement.
She picked it up.
One message.
No contact name.
Just one word where a number should be:
UNKNOWN.
Amina’s pulse stuttered.
Her fingers trembled, a cold panic crawling from her stomach to her throat as she tapped the notification.
The message opened with a stark white background, the letters sharp like teeth:
"We are watching. Don't act funny. That child must never be found."
Her knees nearly buckled.
For a second, the room flickered out of focus. Her lungs refused to fill. Her grip weakened, and the phone slipped from her hand, slamming against the concrete floor with a crack that echoed like a gunshot.
“Mummy?” Kylian blinked awake, rubbing his eyes. His voice was soft, still heavy with sleep. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” She forced a smile that felt like glass cracking. “Nothing, baby. Go back to sleep.”
But her body was trembling so hard she had to hold onto the wall.
Her eyes stayed on the fallen phone.
Unknown.
A warning.
A reminder.
She knew exactly what kind of people sent messages like that.
People who shouldn’t know she existed anymore.
People who had promised to kill her if she ever returned.
Her skin prickled. The tiny hairs on her arms rose. And then—
A faint, burning ache flared beneath her collarbone.
Her mark.
Dormant for years.
Silent, like a scar she had convinced herself meant nothing.
Now thrumming with power, like a heartbeat that wasn’t hers.
“No,” she whispered, pressing her palm hard against it as if she could snuff it out. “Not now. Not again.”
The mark pulsed once more, sharper this time, like something tugging at her from far away. Like a call and an answer both happening in her blood.
She stumbled back until her spine hit the wall.
Her mate bond had awakened.
That should have been impossible.
She had left that world.
She had escaped.
She had done everything in her power to stay hidden.
She paced the tiny room in tight, frantic lines.
Class at ten.
Tutor shift at three.
Groceries. Rent overdue.
Life she was still piecing together with threadbare hope.
And now this.
The fear she had swallowed for years crawled back up her throat like smoke.
Her hands shook again.
She picked up the phone, wiped it with her shirt, and turned it over. The screen blinked, fractured from the fall. A new bubble appeared…
Message delivered.
Delivered.
Meaning the sender was still close enough to be in network range.
Meaning someone was here.
Rachel's breath faltered.
A sound drifted in through the window.
A rumble.
Slow.
Heavy.
Predatory.
A car engine she seemed to recognise even though she didn't see it.
She froze.
No.
No, it couldn’t be.
She darted to the window, heart pounding so violently she heard the blood rush in her ears. She moved the curtains by just an inch.
A black SUV rolled into view, gliding down the narrow street like it didn’t belong there. Windows tinted. Frame large and imposing. The kind of car that swallowed light.
Her entire body went cold.
Her wolf-world instinct, the one she had tried so hard to kill, roared to life:
Hide the child. RUN.
Kylian whined again, confused by her tension. She snatched him into her arms, clutching him against her chest.
Because she didn’t need to see the man inside the car.
She didn’t need to hear his voice.
Her mark pulsed a third time, sharp, electric, painful like something inside her had snapped awake after years of forced sleep.
Her soul knew.
Her blood knew.
Her womb knew.
The bond she thought she had severed burned fiercely alive.
After six years of running,
six years of silence,
six years of raising their child alone.
He had found her.
And the most terrifying part?
Rachel didn’t know if she was more afraid now that he was here…
Or relieved.
- Writer
