Rescue Under Moonlight Part 2
1120 Words
Ashen
The rogue slammed sideways into a tree hard enough to crack bark and bone.
Novett did not slow.
Moon shifted in my arms, a soft sound escaping her lips.
I looked down.
Her lashes fluttered.
“Stay with me,” I whispered.
Her head lolled against my chest.
The pull between us throbbed once.
Weak.
Alive.
Veyra screamed something behind us.
Silver light split the forest ahead.
A portal.
Not clean.
Not wide.
But open.
Novett leapt through.
I ducked over Moon.
The world tore.
We landed in a clearing not far from their old camp, snow spraying beneath Novett’s paws. Veyra tumbled after us, hit the ground, and rolled onto her back with a groan.
The portal should have closed.
It did not.
A rogue crashed through.
Then another.
Then another.
Ten in all.
They spilled into the clearing like shadows with teeth, snarling, wild, half-starved, and blood-drunk.
I slid from Novett’s back and laid Moon gently near the base of the pine, still wrapped in his sweater.
“Nara,” he said.
Novett moved in front of Moon immediately.
Veyra pushed herself up on one elbow. “Ashen, wait—”
The first rogue lunged.
I met it.
No hesitation.
No servant’s bow.
No lowered eyes.
I stepped inside the wolf’s attack, caught its throat with one hand, and drove ice through the ground beneath its paws. The rogue slipped, crashed down, and I brought my knee into its ribs hard enough to silence the snarl.
Another came from behind.
I turned and lifted my hand.
The air tightened again.
The rogue’s body jerked forward as if pulled by an invisible hook. I slammed my palm into its chest.
Frost exploded outward.
The wolf flew back, hit the ground, and did not rise.
Three circled left toward Novett.
Wrong choice.
My eyes flashed.
The temperature in the clearing plunged.
Ice spears erupted from the snow in a crescent wall between the rogues and his sister.
One impaled its shoulder trying to leap through.
The other two veered.
I was already moving.
I was not the biggest wolf there.
I was not shifted.
I was injured, starved, bruised, and still half-healed from chains.
But the forest did not know me as omega.
The snow did not know me as a servant.
The ice did not know the names SilvaFrost had used.
It only knew my blood.
And for the first time, I stopped asking it to be quiet.
A rogue rushed me in human form, blade raised.
I caught the wrist, twisted, and drove my elbow into the man’s jaw. The blade fell. I caught it before it hit the snow and threw it into the thigh of another rogue racing toward Veyra.
The rogue dropped with a scream.
Veyra blinked. “I had that.”
I did not answer.
Another wolf launched at my back.
Novett snarled, but I moved first.
I ducked beneath the body, grabbed fur and flesh, and used the wolf’s own momentum to throw it over my shoulder. It hit the ice wall. I flicked two fingers, and the ice folded around it like a cage.
Temporary.
Enough.
Two more came together.
I backed up one step, then slammed both hands toward the ground.
The snow burst upward.
Not soft.
Sharp.
A storm of ice shards exploded between them, cutting across muzzles, eyes, shoulders. They staggered, blinded.
I crossed the distance and struck one in the throat.
The other shifted, claws tearing through the air.
It caught my arm.
Blood sprayed hot over the snow.
I looked at the wound.
Then at the rogue.
The rogue hesitated.
That was its last mistake.
My hand closed around its wrist.
The flesh froze beneath my grip.
The rogue screamed.
I stepped in and drove my shoulder into its chest, sending both of us crashing down. I rose first.
A howl shook the clearing.
The last rogue came through the fading portal.
Huge.
Bigger than the others.
Bigger than me by a head and half again in shoulder. A scar split one side of his face, and his wolf form was monstrous, dark gray with jaws wide enough to close around a man’s skull.
The other rogues fell back.
Even they feared me.
The huge rogue’s eyes locked on Moon.
Then Nara.
Then Veyra.
I stepped into his path.
The rogue laughed in a broken human growl.
“Move, omega.”
I went still.
Behind him, Moon stirred.
Her eyes opened halfway.
Not fully awake.
Not safe.
But enough.
Enough to see.
I did not look back.
I only lifted my head.
The clearing fell silent.
For years, I had let that word pass over me like dirt thrown on a grave.
Omega.
A chain.
A joke.
A sentence.
Tonight, it landed at my feet and froze.
The huge rogue charged.
I waited.
At the last second, I shifted sideways, but not away. I grabbed the rogue’s mane with one hand and drove the other into the creature’s chest.
Ice crawled over the wolf’s ribs.
The rogue roared and slammed me backward.
I hit a tree hard enough to crack the trunk.
Pain flashed white.
The rogue lunged again.
I dropped under the jaws and rolled, coming up with blood on my mouth and cold in my eyes.
The ice beneath the rogue’s paws thickened.
Its legs slipped apart.
I moved.
Fast.
Too fast for a boy who had been beaten two nights before.
I slammed into the rogue’s side, drove it down, and climbed onto its back as it thrashed. Claws tore across my shoulder. Teeth snapped inches from my arm.
Novett started forward.
“Stay,” I ordered.
She froze.
The rogue bucked, trying to throw me off.
I wrapped one arm beneath its jaw and grabbed the back of its skull with the other hand.
For a breath, the clearing held still.
Moon’s vision blurred in and out.
But she saw me.
The beautiful servant boy.
The masked wolf.
The one with winter in his blood.
My face was calm.
Not cruel.
Not wild.
Calm.
Then I twisted.
The snap cracked through the clearing.
The huge rogue collapsed beneath me.
I rose slowly, blood on my arm, frost smoking from my hands, the dead rogue at my feet.
Moon stared up at me through the haze of pain.
I looked nothing like the kneeling servant in the snow.
Nothing like the nervous boy in the courtyard.
Nothing like the false face Callan had worn.
I looked like a prince carved from winter and wrath.
I turned toward her.
Our eyes met.
For one impossible second, the world went quiet.
Then Moon whispered, barely conscious, barely breathing, but certain this time.
“Ashen.”
- Writer
