Chapter One- Rye. Present day: That Night.
1430 Words
The house was quiet.
Outside, the low hum of London traffic rolled in from the street, buses rumbling by, the occasional siren cutting through the night. Neon signs from the corner shop flickered against the curtains, casting pulses of red and green onto the living room walls. Even at this hour, the city never truly slept.
But inside their house, it felt like another world.
Birdie had gone to bed hours ago, her footsteps long faded. The rest of the house stood still. Still enough that the ticking of the mantel clock sounded too loud, the kind of sound that pressed on your chest.
Rye sat in his old armchair, slouched forward, hands clasped. The room was dim. Shelves laced with worn-out, well-read books. Birdie’s sketch pads lay scattered across the coffee table, edges curled, pages filled with charcoal lines and drawings she didn’t yet understand. A few mugs of tea sat beside them, having gone cold hours ago.
The fireplace glowed faintly.
Electric.
Efficient.
Clean.
But it did nothing to chase the chill from his bones.
Bonnie’s voice still lingered in his mind, sharp and relentless.
“You know the consequences.. if she doesn’t find her fated mate. Or worse.. if she rejects him.”
His jaw locked.
He told himself, like he always had, that this was the only way.
That shielding Birdie from the truth, about herself, about her mother, was the only way to keep her safe. Birdie was safest in the dark. That untold truths were easier to carry than the weight of what she really was.
But tonight, the cracks in that belief felt too wide to ignore.
He looked toward the window, eyes unfocused. A streak of headlights smeared across the glass. His mind pulled away from the city street, away from the quiet house in London and back into memory.
Eira.
She had been wildfire when they first met; untamed, impossible to look away from. Her wolf was strong, her instincts stronger and the grief she carried sat beneath her skin like kindling waiting for a spark.
And when it finally came, when her mother was killed in front of her.. she broke.
Just for a moment.
But her pack didn’t forgive moments.
They feared what she might become. Not what she was.
They didn’t care that she came back from it. That Rye had reached her, steadied her. That she had regained control. They didn’t care that she had left their lands and lived in the Black-Thorne pack with her fated mate.
Rye had calmed her, brought her back from the edge, but they made their choice regardless.
They chose fear.
And she paid with her life because of it.
And just like that, Rye was back in that moment again. The memory so real, he could almost smell the forest, the lingering scent of his mate wrapped in blood.
He could still see it. Could still feel it, the cold in his bones, the ache in his chest.
The forest.
The blood in the snow.
The silence after the screaming stopped.
There hadn’t been time to bury her. The snow had already started falling again, thick and soundless, but he couldn’t leave her there. Instead Rye had gently lifted her into his embrace.
He’d carried her to one of her favourite places in the forest and made a ring of wildflowers around her body. The last thing he could offer her, the last act of love he could show to her. He kissed her forehead, tucked their daughter against his chest and turned away.
He walked away into a new life and left everything else behind.
The life he’d built, the dreams they’d shared, the future they’d planned, had all been laid to rest with Eira in that snow covered grove.
Birdie had been nearly five at the time. They’d been planning her birthday party that very morning.
Fate didn’t care about their plans, she was cruel. But Eira’s pack had been crueler. They had acted as fates hands that day.
Birdie hadn’t understood what had happened. She still believed in the fairy tales that ended with a happy ever after. In her mind, her Mum was sleeping in the forest and she would spend night after night sitting by the window, waiting for her Mum to come home.
But Rye knew the truth. He understood the weight of what Eira’s death meant.
He knew her pack wouldn’t stop at her.
They would come for her child too, afraid of what Eira’s blood might live on to become.
So he ran.
He fled to cities where the woods were nothing more than parks and full moons were barely noticed. No Titles. No Territory. No Blood ties.
He built a life for Birdie far away from her destiny; one filled with buses and bookstores, busy streets, days out and art supplies.
He told her werewolves were myths. That fairy tales were just that, tales. But secretly he told her stories designed to teach her their history, so she held the knowledge of her own kind if she ever needed it.
He had buried her truths but he knew that most truths don’t stay buried. And deep down, he knew the forgetting wouldn’t last forever.
He’d gone to Bonnie first. Begged her. Pleaded.
“Take the memories, they’re too painful for her” he said. “Erase what’s inside her before it grows into something no one can control.”
She refused.
Her eyes, sharp as always, narrowed. “That’s not love, Rye. That’s fear.”
She told him Birdie deserved her truth. Deserved Eira’s truth. That it wasn’t his choice to take it. It wasn’t his place to erase Eira from her heart.
So he went to someone else.
A different witch.
Older. Isolated. She was willing to do what Bonnie wouldn’t. She didn’t care about Birdie, she only cared about what she would be paid.
So she took the memories. The instincts. The knowing.
And when it was done, Birdie forgot.
She forgot the forests.
Forgot the freedom of riding on a beast running on four legs.
Forgot her mother’s voice, her warmth.
She forgot who she came from.
She forgot Eira.
Bonnie never forgave him for it. For betraying Eira and forcing her to betray the oath she had promised in the crossfire.
Eira had asked something of her, something sacred, not long before she had died.
“If we don’t make it… promise me you’ll help Nora look after her. Birdie will need my sisters”
There had been five of them once; Eira, Bonnie, Nora, Nyx, and Rita. A friendship, a sisterhood forged in fire and truth and unbearable things. Each of them carried something unspoken. Power, yes but also burden. Sight. Knowing. Purpose.
They had fought off fate together once.
Now they were scattered.
Rye hadn’t heard from Nyx or Rita in years. But Bonnie and Nora tried. They tried to be the light Eira had hoped they would be.
They begged Rye to come back.
And once, when Birdie was still small, full of laughter, scribbled drawings and questions about the moon, he had agreed.
When she turned fifteen, she’d go to Nora. Just for a while. Begin to learn, slowly. Carefully. Bonnie would move in, help her settle. They planned it all.
Then the time came.
And Rye couldn’t do it.
He told himself it was to protect Birdie. But deep down he knew… it was to protect himself.
He couldn’t bear the quiet of the house without her. Couldn’t wake up in the dark and not hear her voice.
He couldn’t return to that land either. To that house.
He couldn’t breathe in a place that smelled like Eira’s absence.
Even now, eighteen years later, he couldn’t set foot there without feeling the weight of snow in his lungs.
So fifteen became sixteen.
Then seventeen.
..Nearly eighteen.
And Birdie still didn’t know.
Didn’t know the danger closing in. The truth curled behind her art. The meaning buried in her dreams.
Rye stood, jaw clenched.
He looked at her sketchbook again.
Another forest. Another faceless figure reaching into something unknown. Always unknown.
She drew like Eira used to.
Not copying the world, but glimpsing something just beyond it.
It wasn’t just art.
It never had been.
Bonnie was right. Time was a trick.
He crossed the room and went to the kitchen, hand hovering over the landline. It was dusty, old, barely used. But the number was burned into him.
Nora’s.
He picked up the phone.
It rang once.
Twice.
Then…
“Hello?”
- Writer
