Chapter 2
1508 Words
Elowen's POV
Weeks passed.
Living among the rogue wolves felt like walking a tightrope. Every word, every gesture had to be measured. I kept to myself, spoke little, listened more. Rima treated me with a quiet kindness, often handing me scraps of bread or wrapping an extra layer of cloth around my shoulders at night. Toren watched me from a distance but slowly warmed. Kael, however, remained cold and suspicious.
They taught me how to track and snare small animals, how to blend into the forest, how to disappear. I learned to walk without sound and breathe without giving away my presence. I was surviving. But not yet safe.
One morning, Kael stormed into camp, holding something clenched in his hand. It was a torn strip of royal silk—part of the lining of my old cloak, the one I had buried in the snow days ago.
“You said you were no one,” he hissed.
My heart thudded in my chest. “It’s just cloth”
“Don’t lie to me!”
Toren stood quickly, stepping between us. “Kael”
“She’s hiding something!” Kael snapped. “That scent. That blood. I should have known.”
He grabbed my arm roughly, pulling me into the center of camp. “Tell the truth. Now.”
“I’m no one anymore,” I said, my voice shaking. “My name... used to mean something. But that kingdom burned. Everyone I loved is gone.”
Kael narrowed his eyes. “You’re a royal, aren’t you?”
I didn’t speak. That silence was enough.
Rima stepped forward. “If her identity gets out, they’ll come looking. Soldiers, bounty hunters, worse.”
“She can’t stay like this,” Kael said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“What do you propose?” Rima asked.
Kael reached for his dagger. “We cut her hair. Change her look. Train her to survive as one of us. No titles. No memories. Just another wolf.”
I flinched as Rima nodded.
“You sure?” she asked me.
I looked at the fire, then at the faces around me the closest thing I had to family now. Slowly, I nodded.
Rima pulled out a knife. Her hands were gentle but firm. She cut through the long strands of my hair, letting them fall into the flames. The heat rose up, taking my old identity with it.
Toren handed me a leather strap. “For the pain,” he said.
But I didn’t cry. Not once.
That night, Kael led me into the woods. He didn’t speak. He just began to move swift, deadly, disciplined. The first lesson was pain. He knocked me down again and again. Bruises bloomed like petals across my arms and legs.
“Again,” he barked every time I fell.
I got back up.
And he knocked me down again.
He didn’t hold back. He didn’t teach like a mentor he punished like a soldier. My ribs ached, my lips split. My palms were raw from hitting the cold, wet ground. I bled. I cried, quietly. But I never begged him to stop.
Rima taught me the art of knives. Not swordplay the elegance of court fighting meant nothing in the wilderness. This was about survival. I learned to strike to disable, to m**m, to kill. My muscles burned every day, my hands blistered. My arms trembled at night.
“Faster,” she’d whisper. “Cleaner. One motion, one death.”
Toren, with his quiet ways, was no less brutal. He made me fight blindfolded, bound, half-starved. He tripped me into rivers, pushed me off low cliffs, taught me to fall without breaking bones.
“This world doesn’t give warnings,” he told me. “Neither should you.”
And then came the nights.
The nightmares never stopped. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the fire. The screams. The arrow piercing my aunt’s side. My father’s bloodied chest. My brother’s final words. The howl of betrayal in Derek’s voice as he shifted. The image of General Reed, standing tall while our home burned behind him.
I woke up screaming, gasping, clawing at the air. My hands shook. My heart thudded like a war drum. And every time, I buried my face into my knees and let the rage simmer.
I didn’t tell them about the dreams. I didn’t want their pity. I wanted their respect.
Each nightmare became fuel. Every vision of my family’s murder made my strikes harder, my runs longer, my training crueler. When Kael pushed me, I pushed back. When Toren tripped me, I got up faster. When Rima bloodied my knuckles with her blade, I clenched harder.
By the third week, my body was a map of bruises and scars. My knuckles had split and healed over more than once. My legs shook when I stood, but I stood anyway. Every morning before the sun rose, Kael dragged me into the clearing.
“No rest until your hands break,” he said one morning.
They almost did.
But I kept going.
After my final trial, Kael handed me a waterskin and said, “You’re one of us now.”
“But Elowen Valemont can’t survive in our world,” Rima added quietly. “She has to die so someone stronger can take her place.”
I nodded. “Then who am I now?”
Rima looked at me for a long moment. “Wen. Short for Elowen. Let it remind you who you were—but never let it define you.”
Wen. A name born from fire and pain.
From that night forward, I trained harder than any of them. I pushed until my bones ached. Until my hands moved faster than my thoughts. Until I could disappear in a breath and kill in a blink.
The nightmares still came. But now, I didn’t fear them. I welcomed them. Each one was a reminder of why I trained, why I endured.
And one cold dawn, standing at the edge of a cliff, overlooking the land that led back to Owu, I whispered to myself:
“I’m coming back.”
Not as the girl they betrayed.
But as a weapon they’ll never see coming.
That night, the air was too quiet.
Rima noticed first. She stood from the fire and turned slowly, her hand moving toward the blade on her belt. “Something’s wrong,” she muttered.
Kael sniffed the air and tensed. “Wen. Get ready.”
Before I could grab my knife, shadows burst from the trees. Fast. Silent. Feral.
The warriors of Esu had come.
Their eyes glowed crimson in the dark. Their movements were inhuman blurs of speed, flashes of steel. One moment, Rima was beside me, the next, she was knocked backward into a tree, coughing blood.
Kael roared, shifting partially into wolf form, slashing and striking. Toren stood his ground with twin blades, taking down two of them before a third sank fangs into his neck.
Screams pierced the night. Blood sprayed across the snow.
I fought. I fought with everything I had.
But they were too many.
And too fast.
One of them grabbed me from behind. I twisted and stabbed into his thigh, but another struck me across the face, and the world spun. My training kicked in I rolled, slashed, kicked, but it wasn’t enough.
Kael’s voice rang out in the chaos. “RUN, WEN!”
But I didn’t.
I saw him fall. A vampire pinned him by the throat. Rima was bleeding, crawling toward a fallen dagger. Toren lay still.
I tried to get to her.
I didn’t make it.
A blow landed at the base of my skull.
Darkness.
When I woke, my wrists were bound, and the night had shifted to silence.
The camp was gone.
The bodies of the rogues lay still, some torn apart, others pale, drained.
But not all were dead.
I saw Kael, half-conscious, chained beside me. Blood poured from a wound on his side. Rima was barely alive, her arm limp, face bruised. Two others from the outer watch, twins named Fen and Elric, had been captured as well. They looked around in a daze, eyes wide with fear.
The vampires had taken us not just for sport, but for something worse.
A cold voice spoke beside me.
“She’s awake.”
A vampire, tall and pale with silver eyes, stared down at me.
“Interesting. This one has fire. We'll keep her alive.”
Another vampire with a scar across his throat growled, “And the others?”
“Slaves,” Silver-Eyes answered. “Strong wolves fetch a good price.”
I screamed and thrashed, but the chains held tight.
Kael groaned beside me. “Don’t give them what they want...” he whispered.
But I could feel it the rage, the loss, the helplessness burning through me.
For the second time in my life, everything I knew had been turned to ash.
And this time, I swore it would be the last.
- Writer
