Chapter 4
1653 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
LEIGH
The road out of Silver Ash should have been busy that time of morning, but it wasn’t.
That was the first thing that unsettled me, though I tried not to name it as fear.
Pack roads were never empty. There was always movement—farmers moving livestock toward market, patrol wolves marking territory, traders calling out prices before sunrise fully settled into the land. Even silence in Silver Ash had a kind of rhythm to it, a background hum that told you the pack was alive, breathing, watching.
But today, there was nothing.
Only the dull grey sky pressing low over the trees, the soft crunch of my boots against wet gravel, and the weight of my bag cutting into my shoulder like it was trying to remind me that I didn’t belong anywhere anymore.
And then there was the bond.
That invisible thing in my chest that had never once stopped hurting since I left him behind. It pulled at me constantly, like a chain wrapped around something I couldn’t see but could always feel. Every step away from Silver Ash felt like I was walking against my own body’s instincts.
Still, I didn’t stop.
Because stopping meant going back.
And going back meant dying in a way I would never be able to explain out loud.
The air changed before I heard anything.
That was always how it started with wolves.
A shift….A pressure like the world tightening its grip.
My steps slowed instinctively, my senses stretching outward without permission. The forest felt… wrong. Even the wind seemed to hesitate.
Then I heard it.
Heavy controlled Footsteps that was sending a low warning .
My throat tightened and I saw Four shadows behind me.
I didn’t need to see them to know. Something deep in me recognized the formation, the spacing, the discipline. These weren’t random patrol wolves or border guards just doing rounds.
These were sent for me.
Sola.
Of course.
The thought didn’t even feel like surprise anymore. Just confirmation of something I had already known would happen eventually.
“Leigh!”
The voice behind me broke everything open.
So I ran without looking back
Not because I thought I could outrun them, but because standing still meant accepting whatever they had been sent to do.
Branches tore at my arms as I left the road and pushed into the trees, my breath catching painfully as wet earth slipped beneath my boots. The forest thickened fast, swallowing light, turning everything into shades of green and shadow.
But behind me, the distance was already closing.
They were faster than I was and trained to stay that way.
“Stop running!” One of them yelled but I didn't look back, I didn't have time to shift either wo what's the need?
“She’s heading for the boundary!”
The voices came closer, sharper now, no longer pretending this was anything other than what it was.
These bastard were on a hunt for me
My lungs burned as I forced myself forward, leaping over roots and fallen branches until pain shot through my ankle and nearly took me down. I caught myself on instinct, teeth clenched hard enough to hurt.
I could not fall here, at least not like this.
But the moment I thought it, something slammed into my back and sent me crashing into the ground so hard the air vanished from my lungs completely.
Mud soaked into my skin instantly as hands grabbed at me from every direction, pinning me before I could even fully register the impact.
“Got her!”
A fist tangled in my hair and yanked my head back, forcing a sharp gasp out of me.
The wolf above me was close enough that I could feel his breath against my skin. “Should’ve left quietly like a good girl.”
Something inside me snapped at that.
“No…” I tried to breathe it out, but it came out fractured.
The grip on my wrists tightened.
Four bodies over me with their weight, heat and pressure.
My vision blurred and then—
It started.
At first it was just sensation.
A wrongness under my skin, like something waking up that had been asleep too long. My heartbeat changed and it's not even faster.
It's Deeper like it wasn’t just mine anymore and the air around me shifted violently.
The wolves froze mid-motion.
One of them frowned. “What the hell—”
But the sentence never finished because the siphon in me broke loose.
It didn’t feel like something I controlled. It felt like something that used me.
Energy tore outward from them in invisible threads, and I felt it the moment it connected—raw wolf strength, instinct, vitality, ripped straight out of their bodies and pulled into mine.
The sound that followed wasn’t loud. It was wrong.
A choking collapse of breath and bone and shifting power all happening at once.
The man holding my wrists screamed first, stumbling backward like something inside him had been emptied.
Then another.
Their bodies buckled, convulsed, collapsing into partial wolf forms that couldn’t hold shape properly anymore. Limbs trembled violently as their strength drained out of them like water spilling through broken glass and everything was being poured into me like cold ice.
One tried to shift back but failed halfway.
And stayed there—stuck, weakened, shaking, no longer fully wolf and no longer fully man.
The Silence hit the forest like a weight.
I scrambled backward, shaking violently, staring at them as if I was seeing something impossible.
I hadn’t touched them properly but they were still broken
My breath came too fast and shallow as I stared at the scene before me.
“No…” I whispered again, but this time it wasn’t refusal.
It was recognition of what I did.
This was why I was forbidden in the pack and I was living under the influence of Garrick.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me and my head jerked up instantly.
Panic surged again, sharp and disorienting, and I forced myself to stand even though my legs barely responded. My body felt drained and overloaded at the same time, like it didn’t know whether to collapse or explode.
I grabbed my bag and ran, not toward safety.
Just away.
The rain came minutes later, heavy and cold, soaking through my clothes until I couldn’t feel where my skin ended and the world began. By the time I reached the road again, I was barely upright.
My mouth tasted like blood.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
And my power….whatever it was—felt like a bruise beneath my skin, waiting until I heard it.
Loud roar of Engines.
Four motorcycles came around the bend, cutting through rain like they belonged on a different road entirely. Their headlights burned through the grey morning, and for a moment, I just stood there, unable to move.
Because the air shifted again but this time it didn’t feel like danger alone.
It felt like dominance.
The first bike slowed immediately.
Then the others followed.
All four lined up without effort, like they had done it a hundred times before without needing to speak.
The man who got off first didn’t rush.
He simply turned off the engine and the sound disappeared like it had never existed.
Even the rain seemed quieter around him.
He's Tall and Broad. Dark jacket soaked at the shoulders. Tattoos rising up his throat like ink refusing to stay hidden.
But what hit me wasn’t his size.
It was the way the others reacted to him without thinking. Respect built through violence or survival or both.
My eyes moved before I could stop them.
The quiet one scanning the forest first, glancing through his phone, the one with grease on his hands looking like a mechanic, but watching everything.
The blond one already tracking movement behind me.
And the leader himself, watching me like I was something he hadn’t decided whether to help or remove.
“You hurt?” He asked those simple words but nothing about him felt simple.
I swallowed. “I’m fine.” He didn’t believe me.
The irritation on his face was obvious.
“You’re bleeding,” he added, staring at my arms and I nodded.
“I noticed.”
A flicker crossed his expression like I had just answered correctly in a language I didn’t know I spoke.
“Grave,” one of them said behind him.
So that was his name.
Grave stepped closer, slow enough not to startle me, but deliberate enough that I understood it wasn’t caution—it was control.
“You alone?” he asked me again and this time, I hesitated.
He caught that hesitation. “Yes,” I lied anyway.
His gaze shifted briefly toward the trees behind me like he knew something was wrong.
He just didn’t know what yet.
“We’re headed east,” he said after a moment. “Theres a town called Dust…..”
Silence stretched between us and the rain kept falling heavily.
My body was reaching its limit now, the siphon aftermath dragging at my bones like gravity had doubled.
“We’ve got space,” he added like it was a necessity and a decision whether I liked it or no..
I looked at him properly then and at all four of them. I realized something simple but dangerous.
I had survived wolves but I had no idea what I was standing in front of now.
“Why?” I asked.
Grave tilted his head slightly. “Because you’re standing in the middle of a road bleeding like you lost a war you’re still pretending didn’t happen.”
Oh..okay, he's smart and Uncomfortably accurate.
I exhaled slowly, then nodded once.
“Okay.”
That was the moment I got on the bike with him and left Silver Ash behind for good.
- Writer
