Beneath the Howl
1582 Words
Kael
The mountains never slept. Even when the fortress did.
I stood on the highest ledge of the King’s Tower, the wind biting through my shirt as I stared out across the vast stretch of trees. The moon had dipped behind thick clouds, and still her presence lingered like a brand on the back of my mind.
She’s out there.
I didn’t know her name, what pack she belonged to—if she belonged to one at all—but I could feel the bond stretching tighter each night. An invisible thread winding itself into my soul like it had always been there, just waiting to be found.
And I hated how much it calmed me.
Because nothing about this should be calming.
I was the Alpha King. Feared, respected, obeyed. I built this realm on the backs of burned treaties and shattered thrones. Love was a luxury. Mates were a myth we used to keep the weak comforted.
Or so I told myself.
Until she appeared in my dreams with eyes I couldn’t remember and a presence I couldn’t shake.
She wasn’t begging for rescue.
She wasn’t bowing for favors.
She was simply… there.
As if the moon had placed her in my path for no one’s sake but her own.
“Your Highness,” came Arden’s voice behind me. “The boy survived the fever.”
I didn’t turn around. “And the wound?”
“Healed faster than expected. Not clean, but functional. The healer in the outer hill pack—she’s the one who stabilized him.”
He waited for my reaction, but I gave none.
I already knew.
Not her name. Not her face.
But the feel of her energy, lingering around the edges of reports and rumors like perfume in the wind.
“She’s an omega,” Arden added cautiously.
“I’m aware.”
Another pause. “You want her brought in?”
I turned, meeting his gaze. “No. That would only spook her.”
“So we wait?”
“No. We watch. Quietly. If she’s the one…” I let the words hang.
If she’s the one the prophecy spoke of.
If she’s the one the Seer warned me about.
If she’s the one who will either destroy or save me.
Then I needed to know exactly who I was dealing with—before the rest of the world did.
That night, I summoned my most trusted Shadow Tracker.
“Find the healer,” I ordered. “She’s young. Omega. In the hills past Thornridge.”
He gave a nod and vanished into the dark.
And still… it wasn’t enough.
A part of me—the part with teeth and a growl and a crown of instinct—wanted to go myself.
To find her.
To see if she would recognize me.
To see if the bond pulled at her the way it did at me.
But I couldn’t.
Not yet.
Not without unraveling the silence I’d spent years mastering.
So instead, I stood in the dark and listened for her across the stillness—hoping the wind might carry a whisper of her name.
Elira
The air had changed again.
It wasn’t the weather—though the wind had grown colder, heavier—it was something beneath the wind. A hush. A weight. The same feeling I used to get as a child when something was about to happen and the trees held their breath.
I stood behind the clinic with a fresh bucket of herbs and bandages in my arms, squinting toward the tree line. The morning sun spilled across the hillside, painting gold across leaves and rooftops, but I still felt the prickle at the back of my neck.
Like something unseen had just stepped into my world and was watching... waiting.
I wasn’t paranoid.
I was aware.
A healer’s life teaches you to notice what others ignored: subtle signs, quiet shifts, pain hidden in silence. And lately, the silence has been thick with warning.
It had started with the dreams.
But now it was in everything—the way the raven followed me from roof to roof, the way the boy’s pulse had matched my own, the way the shadows moved just a little too deliberately outside my window at night.
And the pulse… gods, the pulse.
It wasn’t just mine anymore.
I could feel his.
Far away. Powerful. Focused.
It wasn’t constant, but when it came—like a slow heartbeat from across a canyon—it set my skin alight.
He knows.
Not my name. Not my face.
But me.
He knows I exist.
Inside, Liri was folding gauze into neat piles on the center table. I joined her silently, keeping my hands busy while my thoughts spun in slow, tight circles.
“You’ve been different lately,” she said after a while.
I blinked. “Different how?”
“Distracted. Quiet. Like you’re… somewhere else.”
I swallowed, trying to find an answer that didn’t sound like madness. “Do you believe in the old stories?”
She paused. “The ones about Moon-Blessed and Star-Fated?”
I nodded.
“My grandmother used to say they were just pretty names for cursed women.” She forced a laugh, but her eyes didn’t match it. “Why?”
I hesitated. “No reason.”
Because how could I explain that I felt like I was being summoned—not with a voice, but with instinct? That something sacred, buried in my bloodline, had begun to stir?
That every cell in my body was bracing for something I couldn’t name?
Later that evening, when the village slept, I sat beside the small creek behind the healer’s hut with my feet in the water and the moon overhead.
I didn’t call out loud. I didn’t whisper his name.
I didn’t need to.
Because he was already listening.
I could feel it—an echo not unlike my own thoughts, pulsing faintly beneath my skin. Not invasive. Not violent.
Just present.
Like a shadow draped in power, watching from the edges of my world.
Who are you? I asked silently.
Why do I feel you in my blood?
The moon drifted higher, and the creek whispered past my ankles.
And for just a second…
I swore I heard a voice in the wind.
“Soon.”
The next morning was unnaturally quiet.
The clinic had no new patients. The villagers passed by with polite nods but didn’t linger for small talk. Even the birds seemed reluctant to sing.
The stillness would’ve comforted me once.
Now it made my skin itch.
I walked the perimeter of the outer garden, basket in hand, gathering roots and dried herbs. The wind stirred the trees, rustling the tall grass just beyond the boundary fence. I paused near the edge, where the forest met field, and stared into the treeline.
That’s when I saw it.
Something small. Smooth. Half-buried in the dirt.
I crouched and brushed the soil away.
A stone.
No—not just any stone. It was obsidian-black, flat, and etched with a symbol I hadn’t seen since the tin box under the floorboards.
Two wolves.
One cloaked in flame.
The other bathed in silver.
My breath caught in my throat.
It wasn’t there yesterday. I was sure of it.
Someone had been here. Close. Watching. And they’d left this behind—not as a threat, but a message.
Confirmation.
I wasn’t imagining the pull.
He was reaching back.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I barely moved from my cot. I stared at the ceiling, fingers tracing the edges of the stone hidden under my pillow, over and over until the pattern was memorized by my skin.
And in the space between thoughts…
I heard him again.
Soon.
Kael
The tracker returned at dawn.
He didn’t enter through the front gates. He knew better.
He met me in the Shadow Courtyard, just beyond the old fountain, where the stones were slick with moss and the moon rarely reached.
“She’s real,” he said without ceremony. “Lives in the hills, runs a quiet clinic. Not ranked. Works as a healer. Most call her 'Elira.'”
I let her name settle in my chest like a stone in water.
“Elira,” I repeated.
It sounded... right.
“She tends to her work like a soldier,” the tracker continued. “Precise. Focused. No sign she knows about the bond directly, but she’s aware. Something’s pulling at her.”
He hesitated, then handed me something.
A piece of parchment. Torn. Faded. The edges worn with age. On it was the symbol I had seen in my dreams.
Two wolves—again. One cloaked in flame. The other in shadow.
“She keeps it hidden,” the tracker added. “Like it’s sacred.”
A slow exhale left my lungs. The space between fate and coincidence had just collapsed.
“She’s touched by something old,” I said.
The tracker nodded. “She’s not like the others.”
No. She wasn’t.
And every instinct in me knew—
This woman wasn’t just part of the prophecy.
She was the prophecy.
The wind picked up, sending dead leaves spiraling across the courtyard floor. I clenched the parchment in my hand, already burning with the knowledge that this was only the beginning.
If Elira had been marked by the moon...
Then the storm about to fall would not just test us.
It would remake us both.
- Writer
