Chapter 14: The Girl Everyone Feared
606 Words
The rain had finally stopped.
Morning sunlight filtered through the trees, turning every leaf into polished emerald.
The forest felt alive again.
Selene wished she did.
She had wandered for two days with little food and even less sleep.
Her legs ached.
Her thoughts ached more.
Still...
She kept walking.
A sharp cry shattered the silence.
"Help!"
Selene froze.
The voice came again.
A child.
Without thinking, she ran.
Branches whipped against her face as she followed the sound deeper into the woods.
She burst into a small clearing.
A boy, no older than eight, clung desperately to the roots of a fallen tree that hung over a steep ravine.
The earth beneath him crumbled with every movement.
One more slip...
And he would fall.
"Don't move!"
The boy looked up.
The moment he saw Selene, fresh tears spilled down his face.
"The cursed lady..."
His tiny voice trembled.
"They said you lived in these woods."
For just a heartbeat...
Selene stopped.
Even here.
Even a child who had never met her knew the stories.
Then the ground shifted again.
The boy screamed.
Selene didn't think.
She dropped to her knees and crawled across the unstable earth.
"Look at me."
His frightened eyes met hers.
"Not the ground."
"Me."
He nodded through tears.
"Good."
"Now when I tell you..."
"You let go."
His eyes widened.
"I'll fall."
"No."
"I'll catch you."
He hesitated.
"You promise?"
Selene smiled.
The first real smile she'd worn in days.
"I promise."
The earth cracked.
"Now!"
The boy let go.
Selene lunged forward.
Their hands collided.
For one terrifying second...
She felt herself sliding toward the ravine with him.
She dug her boots into the muddy earth.
Pain shot through her shoulders.
Slowly...
She pulled him back onto solid ground.
The boy collapsed into her arms, sobbing.
"You kept your promise."
Selene held him gently.
"I always will."
A twig snapped behind them.
Selene turned.
Lucian stood at the edge of the clearing.
He had arrived only moments before.
Just in time to see everything.
Relief washed across his face.
It lasted only a heartbeat.
Then he noticed the boy clinging to Selene.
The child's fear had vanished.
He wasn't holding the cursed girl.
He was holding the person who had saved his life.
Lucian said nothing.
He didn't want to interrupt the moment.
The boy finally looked up.
His wide eyes found Lucian.
"Alpha!"
Lucian walked over slowly.
"You wandered a long way from home."
The child nodded miserably.
"I wanted to find moonflowers for my mother."
Lucian knelt beside him.
"And instead you found trouble."
The boy gave a tiny, embarrassed nod.
Then he looked back at Selene.
"They lied."
She blinked.
"What?"
"The village."
He wiped his nose with his sleeve.
"They said monsters live in the forest."
"They forgot to tell me..."
His small hand reached for hers.
"...one of them saves people."
Selene's eyes filled before she could stop them.
No one had ever looked at her like that.
Not with fear.
Not with pity.
With trust.
Lucian watched quietly.
He finally understood something.
Selene didn't become kind because the world had been kind to her.
She became kind...
Despite it.
That realization settled somewhere deep inside him.
Somewhere the curse could not reach.
Not yet.
As they prepared to leave the clearing, none of them noticed the weathered stone hidden beneath tangled vines nearby.
Its surface bore a symbol almost identical to the one carved into the Moon Temple.
One of the seven seals.
A hairline c***k stretched silently across its center.
And as Selene stepped past it...
The c***k grew just a little wider.
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