Threadless

Chapter 2

Three days had passed since the Matchmaker’s decree, and not one wolf in the Silver Sable Pack had looked Mickle in the eye.

Not the warriors she had sparred with since she could hold a blade.

Not the healer who once nursed her through a broken leg.

Not even her childhood friend, Cael, who used to steal bread with her behind the supply tent and swear they'd run the pack together someday.

Now they looked at her like she had grown fangs in the wrong place. Like she was a shadow of bad luck hanging just too close.

Mate-less.

Not cursed. Not evil. But something worse.

Irrelevant.

The silence of exile was louder than rage.

Mickle stood alone in the cold stone courtyard outside the Alpha Hall, snow just beginning to fall in soft, slow flakes that refused to settle. Her travel satchel had been packed for her. She hadn’t been given the courtesy of doing it herself.

The double doors creaked open, and Alpha Maris Silvers emerged, flanked by two guards in black steel. His silver-streaked hair was slicked back as always, his uniform immaculate. He looked at Mickle like she was a task, not a person.

“You’ve been reassigned,” he said, without greeting.

“To where?” she asked, jaw locked.

He handed her a scroll. “To the Wolfen Realm. You’ll serve in the king’s military as conscription labor. Mate-less wolves have no breeding prospects and no bond obligations. Therefore, you will serve with your body until death or war claims you.”

Mickle didn’t flinch. “So I’m disposable.”

“Useful,” he corrected. “We don’t waste resources. You may yet find honor there.”

It was almost amusing—the way he acted like it was a generous offer. Like she should thank him for not chaining her to a rock and forgetting her.

“You could have let me stay,” she said quietly. “I earned my place in this pack. Years of training. Victory in three trials.”

“You were training for a future that was never yours.”

He turned to go, but Mickle’s voice rose, sharp and low. “Tell me something, Alpha. Do you even believe in the threads? Or do you just use them to sort us like cattle?”

Maris looked back at her over his shoulder. “Belief is for those who have something to gain from it.”

Then he was gone.

The guards led her toward the waiting cart with cold efficiency. Mickle climbed in without protest, back straight, eyes forward. She could feel the brand already—though it had not yet been placed—pressing against her skin like a whisper of what was to come.

As the gates of the Silver Sable Pack creaked shut behind her, Mickle let herself grieve for one breath. One heartbeat.

Then she swallowed it down like an iron and made a vow.

If this realm has no use for a Mate-less wolf, I’ll show them what one can become.

---

The cart wheels creaked through the narrow pass, thick snow muffling all but the sound of leather reins and the occasional grunt of the driver’s mount. Tall trees, skeletal and rimmed with frost, loomed on either side like silent sentinels.

Mickle sat shackled in the back, her wrists bound—not tightly, just enough to remind her she was no longer trusted. No longer one of them.

She didn’t speak. Neither did the guard riding with her.

The air was sharp and wet. She could smell a storm coming—something bigger than snow.

As the hours passed, the cold sank deeper into her bones, and her thoughts drifted—not to home, not even to the word Mate-less, but to the strange moment during her match-reading.

The silence.

The way Eyla hesitated before speaking. Not just confusion—fear.

There had been something there. Not nothing. She felt it.

A thread not absent… but hidden?

The memory flickered again. That haunting pressure in her chest during the ritual. The Matchmaker’s eyes, wide for just a blink, before she sealed her fate.

What did she see?

Mickle closed her eyes.

For the first time in days, she dreamed.

---

She stood in a field of ash, beneath a sky of cracked moonlight. Threads hung down like silver vines from above, swaying as if underwater. Hundreds—no, thousands—danced in the air, each thread pulsing with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Except for one.

A single black thread, tangled in itself, hovered before her chest. It writhed, like something alive. She reached out, and as her fingertips brushed it—

A symbol burned across her forehead, hot as a brand.

She screamed—no sound. Only flame.

---

Mickle jerked awake.

The cart had stopped. The forest was gone. In its place, a gray cliff face rose from the snow like a wall between worlds. The sky above was darker than it should’ve been. The wind tasted wrong—bitter and dry.

The guard jumped down and unlatched the back. “End of the road,” he said.

“But this isn’t—” Mickle stepped out. “This isn’t a barracks.”

He didn’t answer.

Ahead of her stood a massive iron gate, crusted in frost, carved with ancient runes.

This wasn’t the Wolfen military.

This was something else.

And her threadless story had only just begun.