Chapter 1
458 Words
Mia had always felt… different.
Not in the way people liked to pretend.
Not in the soft, harmless way that meant you were “special.”
No.
This felt deeper.
Older.
Wrong.
She sat cross-legged at the edge of the pond, a book resting in her lap, though she hadn’t turned a page in several minutes.
The water was still, reflecting the pale morning sky. A breeze stirred the surface just enough to distort her reflection.
She barely recognized herself some days.
Her hair—long, thick, and impossibly red—spilled over her shoulder in heavy curls, streaked with strange black shadows and faint golden-rose highlights that caught the light in ways that didn’t seem natural.
Her eyes…
She avoided looking at them too long.
They changed.
Not visibly—at least not to anyone else—but she felt it.
Something behind them.
Watching.
Waiting.
One month.
That’s all she had left before her eighteenth birthday.
Before everything changed.
The pack could feel it.
So could she.
A ripple moved across the pond.
Mia frowned, lowering her book.
There was no wind.
Slowly, she leaned forward, peering into the water.
For just a second—
She swore she saw something glowing beneath the surface.
Her breath caught.
Then it was gone.
Mia sat back quickly, heart pounding.
“Okay,” she muttered under her breath. “That’s new.”
But deep down…
She knew it wasn’t.
Mia dipped her fingers into the pond.
The water was colder than it should have been.
Not freezing—just… wrong. Like it didn’t belong to the same world as everything around it.
She stilled, watching the faint ripples spread outward from her touch.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
A pulse.
Soft. Barely there.
But she felt it.
Not against her skin.
Inside her.
Mia jerked her hand back, heart skipping. The surface of the pond went still again, as if nothing had happened at all.
“…Okay,” she whispered, glancing around.
The clearing was empty.
Quiet.
Too quiet.
She frowned, slowly curling her damp fingers into her palm. There was no mark, no sign anything had changed—but the feeling lingered. A faint hum beneath her skin, like something had stirred and then settled again.
This wasn’t the first time.
Little things had been happening all week.
Shadows stretching just a second too long.
Reflections that didn’t quite match her movements.
Dreams—too vivid, too real—of red light and twisting vines and something watching her from beneath the surface of dark water.
Waiting.
Mia swallowed hard, pushing herself to her feet.
“One month,” she muttered.
But the words didn’t feel comforting anymore.
If anything—
They felt like a countdown.
- Writer
