Scent of His Regret

The Ghost of Blood Moon

The storm from the night before had left the eastern border of the Blood Moon Pack shrouded in a thick, ghostly fog. The air was heavy with the scent of damp pine, mud, and the distant, metallic tang of fear.

Kiara stood near the edge of the jagged ravine, a heavy wicker basket filled with laundry in her hands. This was her assigned chore for the morning—a deliberate punishment from Cynthia to ensure Kiara was exposed to the biting cold after her public humiliation. The high-ranking wolves wanted her to suffer, to feel the weight of her rejection in every freezing breath.

But under her oversized grey uniform, Kiara wasn’t wearing her usual rags. She was wearing sturdy, dark human clothes. Hidden beneath the sheets of laundry in her basket was her canvas backpack, packed with every single cent of her savings and her most precious scent vials.

Inside her mind, Naura was on high alert, her ears twitching. They are coming, Kiara. I can smell them. Three... no, four wild rogues. They are bypassing the western sentries.

Kiara’s heart hammered against her ribs, but she kept her face entirely blank. She pretended to scrub a bedsheet against the wooden washing board near the riverbank, her ears straining for the physical sounds of the forest.

Crack.

A twig snapped in the dense thicket across the river. Within seconds, the wind carried a foul, rotting stench. The sentries stationed fifty yards away finally noticed. A sharp, frantic howl echoed through the trees, followed by the heavy thud of paws as three pack warriors shifted and sprinted toward the border.

"Rogue ambush! Hold the line!" a warrior shouted physically before his voice drowned in a chorus of telepathic battle commands.

Chaos erupted instantly. Four massive, scarred rogues exploded from the bushes, their eyes bloodshot with feral madness. They lunged at the pack warriors with reckless, suicidal fury.

This was her moment. The only window of escape she would ever get.

Kiara didn't run away from the fight; she ran toward the edge of the rocky ravine, right where the combat was spilling over. She grabbed her canvas backpack from the basket and strapped it tightly to her back.

"Hey! You stupid defect, get back to the bunkers!" a pack warrior yelled, his wolf’s jaws snapping at a grey rogue. He couldn't mind-link her to stay away, and his physical distraction cost him. The grey rogue tore into his shoulder, sending them both crashing into the dirt.

Another rogue—a massive, pitch-black beast with half its ear torn off—spotted Kiara. It let out a guttural snarl, seeing an easy target, and charged directly at her.

Kiara backed up until her heels were dangling over the precipice of the steep, rocky cliff. Below her, fifty feet down, the raging, rocky river of the eastern border roared like a hungry monster. A fall from this height onto the jagged rocks below was considered a certain death sentence for any low-ranking wolf.

As the black rogue leaped at her with open jaws, Kiara reached into her pocket. She didn't pull out a weapon. She pulled out a volatile, highly concentrated vial labeled “The Fire-Ashes.” It was an experimental blend of sulfur-root and highly flammable pine-resin pheromones.

She threw the glass vial directly into the rogue’s open mouth, while simultaneously ripping a piece of her own grey uniform, plunging it into a pool of rogue blood on the ground, and leaving it snagged on a sharp rock at the edge of the cliff.

Smash!

The rogue swallowed the glass, and the chemical reaction inside its throat was instantaneous. The beast let out a muffled, agonizing shriek as the flammable resin ignited its internal airways. In its blinding, thrashing pain, the heavy rogue violently collided with Kiara’s side.

The force of the impact threw her completely off the cliff.

As she fell backward into the foggy abyss, Kiara didn't scream. She looked up at the foggy sky, watching the dark canopy of the Blood Moon Pack shrink away. She saw the black rogue collapse at the edge of the cliff, thrashing in its own blood, right next to her torn, blood-stained uniform.

To any warrior looking back, it would look like the Mute Wolf had been brutally mauled and knocked into the deadly, churning rapids below.

Splash!

The freezing, chaotic water swallowed her whole. The impact knocked the wind from her lungs, and the current instantly dragged her under, slamming her body against the smooth river rocks. The pain was blinding. Her vision blurred, dark spots dancing at the edges of her consciousness.

Hold on, Kiara! Breathe! Naura’s voice echoed frantically in her mind, pumping a sudden rush of adrenaline through her veins. We are free! Don't let the river take us now!

With the last ounce of her strength, Kiara fought the current. She didn't try to swim against it; she let it carry her away, down the mountain, past the invisible magical borders of the pack territory, and straight into the human lands.

Nearly an hour later, a miles away from the Blood Moon borders, a bruised, shivering figure crawled out of the shallow banks of the river.

Kiara collapsed onto the muddy grass of a human public park, coughing up water. Her body was covered in scrapes and bruises, her grey uniform was gone, and her muscles ached with an unbearable fatigue. But as she looked up at the distant, towering glass skyscrapers of the human metropolis gleaming under the morning sun, a breathless, raspy laugh escaped her throat.

She checked her backpack. It was waterproofed with a thick layer of animal fat she had secretly prepared. Inside, her money was dry, and her scent vials were completely intact.

Back in the Great Hall of the Blood Moon Pack, Alpha Devandra would soon receive the morning report. He would be told that his rejected, defective mate had been killed in a rogue ambush, her bloodied clothes found at the edge of the fatal ravine, her body swept away by the unyielding river. They wouldn't waste resources searching for a corpse they didn't value. They would cross her name off the pack ledger and forget she ever existed.

Kiara pushed herself up onto her trembling legs. She took a deep breath of the city air. It smelled of exhaust fumes, hot asphalt, and cheap human street food—but to her, it was the sweetest scent she had ever inhaled.

It was the smell of freedom.

The Mute Wolf of Blood Moon was dead. And in her place, a master of scents was about to be born.