The White Wolf Healer

Chapter 5 :Ghosts we Carry

The first time I had a nightmare in Kael's presence, I woke up swinging.

His reflexes were faster than mine. He'd already rolled away by the time my fist flew through the space where his head had been. I came up in a defensive crouch, gasping, my mind still half-caught in the dream where I was being hunted by my own pack.

"It's me," Kael said from across the small cave we'd claimed as sleeping quarters. "It's just me."

I was shaking. Actually shaking—something I hadn't done since I was eighteen years old, since the night of my exile. The nightmare had felt so real. I could still feel phantom claws at my shoulder, could still smell the blood.

Could still hear my brother's voice: She's cursed. She'll poison us all.

"Aria?" Kael's voice cut through the memory. "Come sit. Come back to here."

I wanted to argue that I was fine. That I didn't need help. That I'd survived six years alone without a babysitter.

Instead, I sat down next to him. My breathing was still ragged. My wolf-half was still trying to convince me that we weren't safe.

"Want to tell me?" he asked.

"Not particularly."

"That's fair." He handed me a water flask. "I have nightmares too. About the night my pack died. Want to hear about it?"

I almost said no. But something in his tone—something that said he understood what it meant to wake up screaming—made me nod instead.

Kael was quiet for a long time. Then: "I was seventeen. It was my first full moon as an adult wolf. We were celebrating, my whole clan. Dancing, shifting, being happy. My parents were laughing." He paused. "And then I heard it—the sound of gunfire. Not the old silver-shot kind. Modern ammunition mixed with cursed rounds. The hunters had learned."

He held up his scarred hand. "My father told me to run. My mother pushed me toward the back caves. They stayed to fight, to buy me time. I can still hear their screams sometimes. The way the other hunters laughed as my pack fell."

"How did you escape?" I asked softly.

"I didn't escape. I crawled through the caves and hid in a spring pool for three days. I drank the water. I tried to drown myself twice, but some part of me was too cowardly to finish it." He looked at me. "By the time I came out, my entire clan was gone. Every single one."

I didn't know what to say. My exile had been painful, but it was a choice—Daemon's choice to turn the pack against me. I had been rejected. Kael's family had been slaughtered.

"That's why I hate hunters," he continued. "And that's why I should hate you, because you come from a pack that hunts rogues like me."

"I would never—" I started.

"I know," he interrupted. "Which is why I'm telling you this. Not to make you feel guilty. But to show you: I understand having a past that tries to define you. I understand being convinced that everything good in your life is about to be torn away."

He shifted closer, and this time I didn't tense. "After my clan died, I lived for revenge. I tracked hunters. I studied their patterns. I became harder and harder, trying to make myself into a weapon. And you know what I found?"

"What?"

"That revenge doesn't bring anyone back. It just makes you more alone." He looked at me. "And then I met a girl in the forest who healed me without knowing who I was. Who risked her life for a stranger. And I realized: Maybe there's something worth living for besides anger."

I felt something crack inside my chest. Something that had been sealed shut since the night I was exiled.

"The nightmare," I said quietly. "I was back in that night. When Daemon took the throne."

Kael nodded like he'd been waiting for me to tell him.

"I was eighteen years old," I continued, the words pouring out now that I'd started. "I'd just completed my coming-of-age trials. I was supposed to be crowned the next alpha. My father was proud. My mother was getting ready for the ceremony." I swallowed hard. "And then the full moon came."

"The night you shifted white," Kael said.

"Yes. I thought something was wrong with me. The transformation hurt in ways I wasn't expecting. My body changed, and when I looked at my reflection in the spring, I was silver instead of grey." I met his eyes. "I knew immediately that I was wrong. That the pack would see it as a sign. But I didn't know Daemon would weaponize it."

"What did he do?"

"He went to the elders. Told them that white was the color of corruption. That it was a curse that skipped generations, and that I was proof of it. That allowing me to lead would poison the entire pack." My voice was steady now, but it had taken everything to get it there. "The elders believed him because they wanted to. Because it was easier to believe in a curse than to accept that maybe their understanding of the world was incomplete."

"So they exiled you."

"Not immediately. First they took everything. My title. My home. My family." The words were coming faster now. "My mother looked at me like I was a stranger. My father said nothing. And Daemon... Daemon smiled like he'd won a prize."

Kael reached over and took my hand. Not in a romantic way. In a way that said: You're not alone in this.

"I left before they could make me stay," I continued. "I thought maybe if I was gone, the pack would start to heal. That I was the poison and my absence would be the cure." I laughed bitterly. "Instead, I've just spent six years wondering if I should come back and let them kill me, just so I could be useful one last time."

"That's not what's happening," Kael said firmly.

We sat like that until the sun started to rise. Not touching much, but present. Sharing the weight of our ghosts instead of carrying them alone.

And for the first time since my exile, I realized something: Maybe I wasn't broken. Maybe I was just healing. And maybe—just maybe—I didn't have to do it alone anymore.

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