The Fragile Howl
1142 Words
POV: Aria
The days after the bond stir felt like limbo. The world moved, the pack lived, the moon cycled—but I was stuck in the space between pain and hope.
Each morning I woke up expecting to feel her, the wolf inside me, as strong and restless as she once was. But she barely stirred. She was quiet. Not absent… but broken. Like a voice behind a thick wall, muffled and fading.
I hated the silence.
I’d never known a moment without her presence before. Even in sleep, my wolf had always hummed beneath the surface—sharp, protective, fierce. Now, it was like a limb gone numb, and worse, I’d done this to her. To us.
Kael hadn’t come to see me. Not once.
I told myself it didn’t matter. That I had forced the bond to awaken, and he felt something now—something real. That was all I needed to hold onto. But each day that passed without a word from him added weight to my chest.
I buried myself in training. Every sunrise, I ran through the dense forests until my legs burned and my lungs ached. I forced myself through sparring drills with the warriors, even though they exchanged wary glances behind my back. I knew the whispers were spreading—about the outsider who claimed the Alpha but brought a strange kind of darkness with her.
Let them talk.
I was here for Kael. For us. For the prophecy. For the wolf who could barely whimper anymore.
“Again,” I panted, straightening my stance and nodding to Eli, the warrior I trained with most. “Harder this time.”
He frowned, wiping sweat from his brow. “You’re going to drop if you don’t take a break.”
“I won’t.”
“Aria…”
“I said again.”
He came at me, slower this time, almost as if out of pity. I ducked under his swing, swept his legs, and pinned him before he could blink.
“Don’t go easy on me,” I snapped, standing and brushing dirt from my knees.
He groaned, rising to his feet. “I’m not trying to get my face clawed off, that’s all.”
“You wouldn’t have to worry if I could shift.”
I hadn’t shifted since the night of the bond. My wolf hadn’t answered, hadn’t stirred when I tried to call her to the surface. I could feel her there—but distant, weakened, unsure.
The elders hadn’t offered any help. The healer just gave me sympathetic looks and brewed teas that tasted like regret.
I didn’t want sympathy. I wanted answers.
That night, I walked alone to the library hidden beneath the pack’s hall. A small fire burned low in the hearth, casting flickering shadows across the spines of books older than most bloodlines. I slid my fingers over worn leather, parchment edges, ancient glyphs inked by wolves long gone.
I was looking for something. Anything. A cure, a ritual, a sign that someone else had ever felt what I was feeling now—this disconnection, this fracture.
Hours passed. The fire turned to coals. I found a tattered journal bound in green leather tucked behind a stack of forgotten scrolls. The title was faded, but inside were notes—scrawled handwriting, frantic in places. A wolf who had lost her inner beast. Notes on moon cycles, blood rituals, emotional trauma.
One passage stopped me:
“A broken wolf can be healed—but only if the soul remains intact. If the soul begins to fracture, even the bond cannot save her.”
My fingers trembled on the page. My soul felt… off. Like threads being pulled tighter and tighter until something had to snap.
And yet, I kept going.
The next evening, as the pack gathered for a hunt I wasn’t invited to, I found myself wandering toward the ridge that overlooked the glen. It was the same place I’d first seen Kael, the place where the bond had stirred.
I closed my eyes.
“I’m still here,” I whispered into the wind. “Even if you don’t feel it the way I do.”
The forest was quiet. The stars blinked above like distant witnesses. Then, a scent on the wind—smoke, cedar, and something darker.
Kael.
He emerged from the trees behind me, silent as a shadow, his eyes like embers in the moonlight. My heart thudded painfully. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t leave either.
“I didn’t expect you to come,” I said softly, not turning around.
“I wasn’t going to,” he said. His voice was rough, unreadable. “But I… felt something.”
I turned, facing him fully. “The bond?”
He hesitated. “A pull. A whisper. Like I’m supposed to know you, but the more I try, the more it slips through my fingers.”
“It’s the curse,” I said, taking a step closer. “It’s trying to hold on. But we’re stronger than it.”
Kael looked at me, his jaw clenched. “You did something that night. I felt it. The pain… it was like I was being torn open from the inside.”
“I forced the bond awake.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t wait anymore.” My voice cracked. “Because I needed you to see me. Because I thought maybe, if I did it, you’d start to feel what I feel.”
His expression softened, just for a second. “And did it work?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s not clean. It’s not whole. But something changed. I feel it every time you’re near.”
Kael stepped closer. I could see the war behind his eyes—the conflict between instinct and fear, between the wolf and the man. “I dream of you,” he said finally. “But when I wake up, I don’t know your name.”
I swallowed hard. “My name is Aria.”
He nodded slowly. “Aria.”
I wanted to reach for him, to touch his face, to remind him that this wasn’t just magic—it was fate. But I didn’t. I let the silence stretch between us.
Then he turned, started to walk away.
“I’m scared I broke something that can’t be fixed,” I said quietly.
Kael paused, his back to me. “So am I.”
And then he was gone.
The glen was cold without him. I sat in the grass, staring at the moon, wondering how much more I could lose before there was nothing left of me to fight with.
But even in the stillness, I heard it.
A fragile howl—inside me. Weak, distant, but real.
My wolf.
She was still there.
- Writer
