Scent of His Regret

The forest of the Blood Moon Pack was alive with a symphony of sound, but for Kiara, it was a cemetery of absolute silence. Around her, the elite warriors shifted their positions with fluid, predatory grace. Their eyes glowed a dangerous amber as they tracked the rogue werewolf trespassing on their eastern border. Kiara could see the tension in their shoulders. She could see their jaws moving, their expressions shifting from grim focus to predatory amusement. They were communicating. The Mind-link. To her, the pack’s mental network was a locked door she had been pounding her bloody knuckles against since birth. Born without the ability to hear or speak within the pack's telepathic bond, Kiara was a ghost in her own home. A "Mute Wolf." An evolutionary mistake. "Keep up, defect," a harsh voice spat near her ear. Kiara flinched, her boots skidding on the damp mud. It was Cynthia, the Beta’s daughter. Cynthia didn't use the mind-link to speak to Kiara; she used her physical voice, laced with enough venom to burn. "If you trip and give away our position to the rogue, I will personally strip your skin off and hang it on the border post. Alpha Richard only let you join this hunt so you could act as meat shields." Kiara clenched her fists, her knuckles turning white. She didn’t reply. She couldn't, not in the way they wanted. Deep inside her chest, her inner wolf, Naura, curled into a ball, whimpering in frustration. We are not broken, Naura whispered in Kiara’s mind—the only place where a voice existed. They just cannot hear us. Suddenly, the air shifted. The warriors ahead froze. Kiara didn't need the mind-link to know what was happening. Her nose, sharp and hyper-sensitive to compensate for her mental deafness, caught the scent first. It was the stench of rotting flesh and sour sweat—the unmistakable odor of a feral rogue. But beneath that stench, her nose picked up something else. A sudden flare of fear from the pack warriors. The wind was changing. The rogue wasn't alone. There were three of them. Kiara desperately wanted to scream a warning. She wanted to tell them that two more rogues were flanking them from the blind spot in the western ravines. But when she opened her mouth, only a breathless gasp came out. She couldn't send the warning into the mind-link. Crack! Before the warriors could react to the telepathic commands their lead Gamma was undoubtedly shouting, two massive, scarred gray wolves exploded from the bushes to their left. "Ambush!" someone screamed physically. Chaos erupted. The serene forest turned into a battlefield of tearing flesh, snapping jaws, and agonizing howls. Kiara backed away, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She was a delta-ranked wolf, untrained for frontline combat because the pack refused to waste resources on a "faulty asset." A massive brown rogue, his eyes completely bloodshot with madness, locked his gaze onto Kiara. He saw her small frame. He tasted her fear. To a rogue, she was the easiest prey. With a terrifying snarl, the rogue lunged at her. Kiara scrambled backward, her hands scraping against sharp rocks. She reached into the small leather pouch strapped to her thigh—the only thing that belonged entirely to her. Inside were small glass vials of crushed wild roots and herbs she secretly experimented with to soothe her own anxieties. Just as the rogue's jaws snapped inches from her face, Kiara didn't shift into her wolf. Instead, she smashed one of the vials directly against the rock beneath her, shattering the glass. A sharp, explosive burst of concentrated Wild Pepper and Distilled Silver-Mint vaporized into the air. The rogue froze mid-air. The moment the microscopic particles hit his sensitive nasal cavities, the giant beast let out a pathetic shriek. The madness in his eyes was instantly replaced by blinding agony. He crashed to the ground, clawing frantically at his own nose, sneezing violently as blood began to seep from his nostrils. The scent had completely short-circuited his nervous system. Kiara gasped, staring at her hands. The rogue was completely immobilized, whimpering like a pup just from a broken bottle of her scent mixture. "What did you do, you freak?!" Kiara snapped her head up. The battle was over. The pack warriors had killed the other two rogues. Cynthia was standing a few feet away, her clothes stained with rogue blood, staring at Kiara and the groveling rogue with a mixture of horror and disgust. "Did you use witchcraft?" Cynthia marched over, grabbing Kiara by her hair and pulling her up brutally. "You didn't fight. You used some foul, human trick! You are a disgrace to the Blood Moon Pack!" Kiara bit her lip, refusing to let a tear fall despite the blinding pain in her scalp. She looked past Cynthia, catching the eye of the lead Gamma. He didn't look at her with pride for neutralizing a threat; he looked at her with pure revulsion. To them, anything they couldn't understand or control through the mind-link was dangerous. Unnatural. Cynthia threw her to the ground. "Get up and carry the rogue carcasses back to the village. Tomorrow is the Alpha Succession Festival. Future Alpha Devandra is taking the throne, and we don't want your pathetic, cursed presence ruining the ceremony." Devandra. Hearing his name made Kiara’s chest ache with a strange, hollow throb. The future Alpha was turning eighteen tomorrow, the age where werewolves finally recognized their fated mates. Kiara wiped the mud from her face, her eyes staring coldly at the ground. She knew she was garbage in their eyes. But as she secretly slipped another intact vial into her pocket, a small, dangerous ember ignited in her chest. They thought she was silent because she was weak. They had no idea that her silence was the only thing keeping the monsters at bay. And tomorrow, at the festival, she would find out if fate had cursed her with a mate who would join the pack in stepping on her, or someone who would finally give her a reason to stay.