Chapter 5 - Before She Goes
699 Words
Dawn came gray and cold over the Ashveil Mountains.
Kaela packed her bag: a single battered canvas sack holding everything she valued. Inside was a change of clothes, her mother's knife, and a small roll of coins she'd saved over two years. She also had a dried herb bundle that Luna had given her a month ago for reasons she had forgotten.
She was lacing her boots in the corridor when Elder Voss appeared.
He walked with surprising steadiness for a seventy-year-old. His steps were so quiet that she didn’t hear him until he reached the end of the corridor. She went still.
Kaela rarely interacted with Voss. As the pack's oldest advisor, he had served even Alpha Blackthorn's father. He had a sharp face and pale eyes, holding a calm stillness like a man who knew power didn't need to move.
His gaze shifted to her bag.
Then his eyes met hers.
"You're leaving," he said.
"Yes."
He was quiet for a moment. The keep was asleep around her. She had chosen this still hour to leave, before the house began to wake up.
"Let me give you some advice," Voss said.
"I didn't ask for any."
"No. I'm offering it regardless." He took three steps toward her, close enough to lower his voice, not close enough to crowd. "Whatever you find out when you leave here, whatever you learn about yourself, keep it to yourself. Don't announce it. Don't prove it in front of pack wolves or strangers who haven't earned your trust."
Kaela looked at him.
"What exactly do you think I'm going to discover about myself?"
His expression didn't change. "You have more questions than you realize. The answers will come faster than you're prepared for. I'm suggesting you handle them with care."
The morning light was brightening at the end of the corridor.
"You know something," Kaela said. Not a question.
Voss maintained a steady gaze on her. "I know several things. I've kept most of them for good reasons."
"Did those good reasons include letting me grow up in a servants' corridor believing I had nothing?"
Something shifted in his face. Guilt, though not for the first time this morning. "Yes," he said. "They did."
It was a strange kind of honesty, the kind that contained its own indictment.
Kaela adjusted the strap of her bag.
"Then you can keep your advice," she said, and walked past him toward the door.
"Be careful, child," he said in a gentle voice as she walked away.
She did not turn around.
✦ ✦ ✦
No one manned the pack's main gate this early. She went through it without incident, without ceremony, without anyone to watch her go.
The forest opened up before her: dark pines, mist, and the cold, clean smell of high-altitude morning. The pack's territory spread for miles. But the boundary markers were only ten kilometers north. She would cross them by midday.
She walked.
Her boots were good for walking. She'd been wearing them for two years.
She did not think about Ryker.
She thought about the light in her hands. She thought about Voss's face when he said he'd kept his knowledge for good reasons. She thought about her mother’s name. She had only a faint recollection of it. The pack had told her almost nothing about her.
She thought: I am twenty-one years old, and I am alone in the world, and I am starting from nothing, and this is terrifying.
She thought: good.
Starting from nothing meant no one owned her future yet. This blank slate allowed her to decide what it would become.
She walked faster.
Behind her, in the keep she'd already stopped thinking of as home, Voss watched from his window until she was gone.
He picked up a small communication stone. It cost real money and was for pack use only. He pressed his thumb to its surface.
"She's moving," he said when the connection opened. His voice was low, careful. "She'll survive the first night. After that." A pause. "I can't guarantee anything."
The stone pulsed once.
He set it down.
Outside, the mist rolled in off the mountains.
The girl was already gone.
- Writer
