Chapter 2 — What They Hid
691 Words
Nyra woke to the smell of dried herbs and the sound of someone humming.
For a moment she didn't remember. There was only the low ache in her body, the rough wool blanket, and the flickering orange light of a single candle. Then it all came back at once. The scent. The eyes. Reject you as my mate. The memory hit so hard she made a small broken sound before she could stop herself.
The humming stopped.
"So." A voice, dry and cracked like old parchment. "You're awake. Good. I was starting to think that fool boy had killed you after all."
Nyra turned her head. Old Marrow sat on a stool beside the cot, her milky blind eyes fixed on nothing, her gnarled hands folded in her lap. The pack healer. The only one who had ever bothered to be kind to the charity girl.
"He rejected me," Nyra whispered. Saying it out loud made it real. Her eyes burned. "In front of everyone. He looked right at me and he threw me away. Marrow, he was my mate. The Goddess gave him to me and he threw me away like I was nothing."
"I know, child."
"How did I even have a mate?" Her voice cracked. "I don't have a wolf. Everyone knows I don't have a wolf. The whole pack has spent nineteen years reminding me I'm empty inside. So how?"
"Hush." Marrow's hand found hers in the dark, and her grip was surprisingly strong. "Listen to me now, and listen well, because I can only say this once and the walls in this pack have ears."
Something in her tone made Nyra go still.
The old woman leaned close. Her blind eyes seemed, somehow, to look straight into Nyra's. "You were never empty, girl. You were hidden. There is a difference, and it is the most important difference in the world, and it is the only reason you are still alive."
Nyra's heart began to pound. "What are you talking about?"
"Nineteen years ago," Marrow said quietly, "a woman came to the edge of Ironmoon territory in the dead of winter. She was dying. She had run a very long way, and something very large had been hunting her, and she was carrying a newborn wrapped inside her own cloak." The healer's fingers tightened. "She begged me to hide the child. To bury her scent. To make her small and forgettable and safe. She said if anyone ever learned what the baby was, they would come, and they would burn this whole pack to the ground just to reach her."
The candle guttered. Shadows crawled up the walls.
"I did what she asked," Marrow whispered. "I wove the concealment into your blood before you could even crawl. I made you look wolfless. I let them call you names, let them treat you like dirt, because a girl no one wants is a girl no one looks at too closely. It was the cruelest kindness I have ever done. And it kept you breathing."
Nyra couldn't get any air. "What am I?"
For a long moment, Marrow said nothing.
Then, "The rejection tonight. The Alpha tearing that bond. It cracked my concealment. I felt it break from across the pack, like a bone snapping clean. Your wolf woke up, child. After nineteen years asleep, she is awake." The old woman's voice dropped so low that Nyra had to strain to catch it. "And every Alpha within a hundred miles is going to start dreaming about your scent tonight. Including the one who threw you away. Including worse ones than him."
A knock came at the door.
Both of them froze.
It came again. Three slow raps, deliberate, unhurried. Then a voice from the other side, smooth and deep and completely unfamiliar. A voice that made the hair on Nyra's arms stand straight up.
"Old woman," the voice said pleasantly. "I'm looking for someone. A scent I lost a very long time ago just walked back into the world tonight, and it led me all the way to your door."
Marrow's blind face went white.
"Hide," she breathed. "Now."
- Writer
