The Ring Know Part 2
1044 Words
Princess Moon
The silver-thread rope burned wolf skin, but it did not stop the teeth.
I shifted my wrist just enough to let the binding cut deeper. Blood slicked my skin. Pain sharpened everything.
Storm rose.
Not fully.
Not yet.
But enough.
I snapped the loose shard of metal from the chair leg where I had been working it free for the last ten minutes and drove it into the guard’s thigh.
He howled.
I kicked his knee sideways.
The chair toppled.
I hit the floor hard, rolled, and let the silver burn one final strip across my wrist as I pulled free.
Dorian turned.
Too late.
I shifted enough for claws.
Not full wolf.
Not yet.
Claws.
Teeth.
Speed.
The second rogue lunged.
I slashed across his face and drove my shoulder into his chest. He slammed into the stone wall. The third grabbed for my hair. I ducked, caught his arm, and twisted until bone cracked.
Callan shouted something behind me.
Dorian’s fire burst across the room.
I threw myself under it.
Heat scorched my shoulder.
Pain flared.
I did not stop.
A princess did not need to be helpless to be stolen.
And a stolen princess did not need permission to become dangerous.
I ran.
The hallway beyond the room was narrow, carved into stone beneath the lodge. More rogues waited there, drawn by the noise.
One came at me with a blade.
I caught his wrist, slammed it into the wall, and drove my knee into his stomach.
Another shifted halfway, jaws snapping.
Storm surged harder.
My bones cracked.
Not fully.
Not yet.
I forced her back just enough to stay upright, just enough to use hands and claws together.
A bite tore into my side.
I screamed through my teeth and slashed the wolf’s muzzle open.
Blood hit the wall.
Mine.
His.
I did not care.
I fought through the corridor.
Through smoke.
Through shouting.
Through hands that grabbed and claws that caught.
By the time I reached the stairs, my gown was torn, my shoulder burned, my side bleeding, and my left wrist slick with blood from the rope.
The door above was barred.
Of course it was.
I grabbed the iron handle and pulled.
Nothing.
Behind me, rogues thundered closer.
Storm roared.
This time, I let her.
My body broke and remade itself in moonlight.
Bones shifted. Skin split into fur. Pain turned into power. The world sharpened into scent, sound, heartbeat, blood.
Storm hit the door with both front paws.
The bar snapped.
Wood exploded outward.
Cold night swallowed us.
Rogue forest stretched in every direction.
Black trees.
Thick fog.
No moon visible through the canopy.
The air stank of wild wolves, old magic, wet earth, and things with too many teeth to be called wolves at all.
Storm ran.
Behind us, the lodge erupted in howls.
Rogues chased.
She tore through the trees, paws striking frozen ground, side burning where the bite had carried into the shift. Blood marked the snow behind her.
Too much blood.
Not enough speed.
A wolf slammed into us from the left.
Storm rolled, kicked him off, and tore into his shoulder. Another came from the right. She ducked beneath his lunge and ripped across his belly.
But there were too many.
Always too many.
A claw opened our flank.
Teeth caught our hind leg.
Storm snarled and spun, snapping down on the attacking wolf’s ear until cartilage tore.
He screamed.
We ran again.
The forest changed.
The trees grew wider. Older. Their branches twisted like black fingers above the path. Strange eyes glowed between trunks. Not wolves.
Worse.
Storm slowed, limping now.
Rogue territory.
Not just rogue wolves.
Rogue forest.
The kind of place mothers used in stories to frighten pups away from borders.
A low growl rolled through the dark.
Storm stopped.
Ahead, something massive moved between the trees.
A bear stepped into the path.
Not an ordinary bear.
Too large.
Too scarred.
One eye milky white, the other black and wet with hunger. Its fur was matted with old blood and burrs, and the scent of it was rot, musk, and wild magic.
Storm’s lips curled.
Behind us, rogues approached.
Ahead, the bear.
My body was already failing.
Storm lowered herself, injured leg trembling.
The bear charged.
She met it.
Claws struck her shoulder and sent her crashing sideways into a tree. Pain exploded white-hot through my skull. The bear reared, roaring, and came down again.
Storm rolled beneath the blow and sank her teeth into its foreleg.
The bear bellowed.
She held on.
It slammed her into the ground.
Once.
Twice.
The world went black at the edges.
No.
Not here.
Not before I found him.
Not before I knew why his wolf was chained.
Not before I told him I knew.
Storm released the bear and lunged upward, catching its throat—not deep enough to kill, but enough to make it rear back in shock.
We ran.
Not gracefully.
Not proudly.
We limped.
Stumbled.
Dragged blood through snow and dead leaves.
The rogues were still behind us.
The bear roared somewhere to the left.
The territory line was ahead.
I felt it before I saw it. A pressure in the air. A boundary. Not safe, but different.
Storm collapsed just before it.
Her paws scraped the frozen ground.
Get up, I begged her.
She tried.
Her front legs shook.
She fell again.
The world blurred.
Blood loss made everything distant.
The trees.
The howls.
The cold.
Storm’s voice came soft, too soft.
Moon.
I could not tell if I was in wolf form or human again. Could not tell if my fingers were claws or hands. Could not tell if I was breathing or only remembering how.
One name remained.
Not Callan’s false face.
Not Dorian’s fire.
Ashen.
The name opened something inside me.
A thread.
A bond not fully formed, not fully claimed, but blessed beneath a Rare Moon and stubborn enough to survive witch fog.
I reached for it without knowing how.
Not with my hand.
Not with my voice.
With every broken, bleeding piece of me.
Ashen.
The forest tilted.
Rogues howled behind me.
I pressed my mind into the dark and sent the only words I had left.
Help me.
- Writer
