Chapter 3
1045 Words
Selena POV
Selene didn't have time to be afraid. Fear was a luxury for people who had somewhere safe to run to, and she had nothing left but the wall at her back and the baby inside her she had already promised to protect.
The first wolf lunged. She dropped low and drove her shoulder into his stomach, a clumsy move she had only half learned, more instinct than skill. He grunted and stumbled, more from surprise than pain, but it was enough.
The second one grabbed her hair from behind.
She screamed, more from fury than fear, and slammed her elbow back into something soft. He swore and let go just long enough for her to spin and shove him into his friend, sending them both crashing into the alley wall.
"Walk away," she said, breathing hard, her voice shaking but her words steady. "Or I make sure you regret every step you took into this alley."
For a moment neither of them moved. Then the first one laughed, low and ugly, like her warning was something to laugh at.
That was when Marta's voice cracked through the alley like a whip.
"Touch her again and I'll have the whole block know your names by morning."
The two men froze, then backed away, muttering threats that meant nothing now that they were already running. They disappeared around the corner.
Marta walked over and looked Selene up and down, checking for injuries with the eyes of someone who had patched up worse. "You're shaking," she said.
"I'm fine," Selene lied.
"You're not," Marta said, not unkindly. "But you didn't run. That's something. It's also not enough. Not for what's coming."
That night was the first of many where Selene lay awake in the dark, her whole body aching from a fight she had barely survived, wondering if she had made a terrible mistake walking into a world she knew nothing about. She had no pack behind her. No training. No name that meant anything. Just a stranger's kindness and a stubbornness she didn't know she had until she needed it.
Marta started training her the very next week, before sunrise, in a clearing behind the diner where no one would see how badly she fumbled. She fell more times than she could count. She took a hit to the ribs that left her unable to breathe right for two days. She cried more than once, quietly, after Marta had gone inside, angry at her own body for not being strong enough yet to match what she was carrying.
There was one morning she still remembers clearly, weeks into the training, when she froze in the middle of a sparring drill. Her body locked the second Marta raised her hand toward her face too fast. She didn't see Marta. She saw the circle, the torches, Damian's flat voice. She dropped to her knees in the dirt and couldn't move for almost a full minute, her own heartbeat the only sound in her ears, until Marta crouched in front of her and waited, silent, until she came back to herself.
"You're not fighting like you have something to lose," Marta told her one morning, after she fell for the third time in a row. "Fight like you already lost it once."
Selene thought of the circle. She thought of Damian's voice saying five words that ended everything. The next time she got up, something in her had changed.
By the second month, she could hold her own against wolves twice her size, not because she had grown stronger than them, but because she had learned exactly where to hit and when to run. Marta said that was its own kind of strength. Selene was starting to believe her, even on the mornings her whole body still ached from the day before.
Marta sat her down one morning with two cups of tea and a look on her face that said this talk had been coming for a while.
"You can't keep working here forever," she said. "Word travels. Sooner or later, someone is going to figure out what you are. Or worse, who you used to belong to."
"I don't belong to anyone," Selene said, sharper than she meant to.
Marta's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "Good. Keep that fire. You're going to need it."
She told Selene about a settlement two days south, a place rogues called Crimson Hollow, built by wolves who had been thrown out or rejected by their packs for one reason or another. No Alpha bloodline ruled there yet, not officially. Whoever was strong enough, smart enough, and brave enough to fight for it could claim it.
"You think I could run a place like that?" Selene asked, half laughing at the idea. Two months ago she had been a girl crying behind a watchtower, falling on her face in a training yard. Now Marta was talking about her leading wolves who had nowhere else to go.
"I think you don't have a choice," Marta said. "Not if you want your child to grow up somewhere safe. You can keep hiding, or you can build something nobody can take from you twice."
Twice.
The word settled into Selene's chest and stayed there.
"Take me there," she told Marta. "Show me Crimson Hollow."
Marta studied her for a long moment, then nodded once, satisfied.
"Pack your things," she said. "We leave at dawn."
Selene didn't sleep that night. She sat by the window with her hand on her stomach, watching the road that would carry her toward a place full of wolves who had nothing left to lose. She knew she would have to become someone they feared crossing before she could ever become someone they trusted. She had no idea yet how many times she would nearly fail before that happened, or how close she would come to losing everything she was trying to build.
She only knew that somewhere out there, the men who had ruined her life were still walking free, sure she would never learn the truth of what they had done. And she swore, sitting alone in the dark with one hand on her stomach, that one day she would make them regret being so sure of that.
- Writer
