When the Storm Remembers
1141 Words
Her voice was barely audible. “What’s your name?”
The Lycan’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. “Theron.”
She tasted it—Theron. The name lingered on her tongue, heavy as iron and old as frost. It didn’t just sound powerful. It felt carved from something ancient. Not a title. Not a mask. A truth.
Aeryn swallowed. “Why did you really come for me?”
Silence.
Not cold, not cruel. Just full.
The fire snapped softly between them. The trees swayed gently beyond the clearing, their leaves whispering stories to the wind. Somewhere an owl cried out, long and low.
Theron didn’t answer right away. He didn’t look at her.
Instead, his gaze turned inward, past the flames, to something distant. Memory. Legacy. Weight.
Finally, he said, “Because you are more than what they told you.”
Her breath caught. It was a simple statement—but it hit with the force of a lightning strike. She’d been told all her life what she was. A warrior. A healer. An asset. A mistake. Never once had someone said she was more.
Her brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”
He stirred, slowly—like a mountain shifting under its own weight. He looked into the fire again, his voice low and calm, yet thick with something unsaid. “There’s a prophecy,” he murmured. “One the old packs buried. One most pretend never existed. It speaks of a child born beneath the thunder moon. A daughter of storm and fang, untouched by bloodlines, shaped by chaos.”
He glanced at her then—eyes like molten silver.
“A child who would rise when the world tried to silence her. Who would burn the old order down and forge something new from the ashes.”
Aeryn sat frozen, heart pounding.
“That’s a story,” she said quietly.
“It was,” Theron agreed. “Until you were born.”
The fire snapped again, spitting sparks into the air.
Aeryn’s pulse roared in her ears. “I’m not special. I was barely tolerated. Daric—he treated me like I was dangerous.”
“He was right to be afraid,” Theron said without flinching. “But he mistook power for threat. He thought if he broke you early enough, you’d forget who you were. But the storm never forgets. It only waits.”
She wanted to laugh, to dismiss it as madness. She wasn’t a prophecy. She wasn’t salvation. She was broken, discarded, crawling out of a cage that still clung to her skin. But her wolf stirred at his words, ears flicking forward. Alert. Listening.
“You think I’m going to… what? Lead a rebellion?” she asked, trying to sound skeptical. But even as she said it, something sharp shifted inside her.
“I think,” Theron said slowly, “you’re waking up. And when you fully do, you’ll remember what was stolen from you.”
He turned toward her fully now, his voice lowering.
“You weren’t born wrong, Aeryn. You were born outside their rules. That’s why they feared you.”
She shook her head, unable to accept it. “I tried everything to fit in. I bent to their ways. I bled for that pack. I loved—”
She stopped.
Theron waited.
“I loved him,” she whispered, the ache sharp and bitter. “Even when he stopped believing in me. I thought if I just kept giving, he’d remember. That he’d see me.”
Her voice cracked. “But all he saw was the storm. And he hated it.”
Theron’s expression didn’t change, but something softened around the edges. “He didn’t hate the storm. He hated that he couldn’t control it.”
She stared at him, the truth behind those words settling like a stone in her gut.
“He wasn’t your mate,” Theron added.
“He was,” she snapped back, too fast.
“No,” he said, voice calm. “He was chosen for you. Marked. Bonded by tradition, not by fate.”
She recoiled.
“You feel the difference now, don’t you?” Theron said softly. “This pull—it’s not chains. It’s calling.”
The bond between them pulsed, not loud, not forceful—but steady. A beat against her ribs. Familiar. Patient.
Aeryn swallowed hard. Her walls were still up. Every instinct screamed at her to run. But she didn’t move. Didn’t flee.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, quieter now.
Theron’s eyes never left hers. “Nothing.”
She blinked. “What?”
“I didn’t come to take. I came to stand beside you.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice like nightfall. “Whatever you become, I’ll face it with you. But it’s you who has to choose. Not me. Not your old Alpha. Not fate.”
Aeryn’s throat tightened. She turned away, staring into the trees.
She thought of the first time she summoned lightning—age ten, standing barefoot in the rain, the storm coming to her like an old friend.
She thought of her mother’s last words: Don’t let them make you small.
She thought of the cage, the way the pack howled when she fell.
She thought of Daric.
And then she thought of the way the sky trembled when the bond snapped—how the storm had cried out with her.
Maybe she was more.
Maybe the fire in her blood hadn’t been a curse.
Maybe she wasn’t born to serve, or kneel, or fade.
Maybe she was born to rise.
Her hands curled in her lap, the faintest shimmer of lightning dancing along her fingertips. She didn’t suppress it this time. She watched it flicker—tiny, beautiful, real.
When she turned back to Theron, her voice was steadier. “What comes next?”
His answering smile was small, but it reached his eyes. “That depends on you.”
“I want to know everything,” she said. “What I am. What they hid. What this power means.”
“You will,” he promised. “But slowly. Your body needs rest. Your soul needs mending.”
She nodded.
For once, she didn’t feel rushed. She didn’t feel like she was running out of time or space or worth.
For once, she felt.
She lay down again, curling into the moss near the fire, but not to retreat.
She was listening.
To the earth.
To the wind.
To the voice inside her that had never stopped whispering:
You were made for more.
Theron didn’t touch her. He didn’t speak again. But she felt him watching.
Not like a warden.
Like a sentinel.
And when she closed her eyes, the storm inside her didn’t scream.
It waited.
Not with hunger.
But with purpose.
- Writer
