Episode 2
988 Words
– Dreams of Wolves
The forest was alive that night.
Mist clung to the trees, weaving ghostly patterns between the branches. The wind whispered through the leaves like voices carrying secrets. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled long, mournful, and unearthly.
She woke up with a gasp.
The girl no longer an infant but grown into her sixteenth summer bolted upright in bed, chest rising and falling like she’d just been hunted. Beads of sweat clung to her skin, though the air was cool.
It was the same dream.
Always the same dream.
A field of silver grass beneath a blood-red sky. A man with eyes like molten silver standing on a cliff. His gaze locked on hers, piercing, possessive.
And the wolves. Dozens, no hundreds of them, circling her, their howls vibrating through her bones until the ground itself shook.
And then… always darkness.
She pressed her hands to her face, trying to steady her breath. The mark on her collarbone glowed faintly, pulsing as if alive. She yanked her blanket up to cover it, as if hiding it could silence the truth of what she was.
A knock at the door startled her.
“Selene?” It was her father’s voice, gravelly from years of labor. “You’re awake again.”
She swung her legs out of bed, her feet brushing the cold wooden floor. “I’m fine, Papa.”
A pause. She could hear the worry in his silence. Then: “Breakfast. Don’t keep your mother waiting.”
The village had grown colder toward her with each year. When she was small, they whispered and stared, but as she aged, whispers turned to suspicion, suspicion to distance.
People crossed the street to avoid her. Mothers pulled children behind their skirts when she passed.
She tried to pretend it didn’t sting.
Selene kept her head down as she carried a basket to the river, ignoring the muttered words that followed her.
Cursed girl.
Moon witch.
The Heir.
When she knelt by the river to wash clothes, her reflection rippled back at her: long dark hair, pale skin kissed with moonlight, eyes a startling shade of violet. Eyes that didn’t belong in this world.
She splashed the water, distorting her reflection until it disappeared.
But when she looked up, she froze.
There on the other side of the riverbank stood a wolf.
It was massive, its fur black as night, its eyes silver-bright. The same eyes from her dreams.
Selene’s heart thundered in her chest. The wolf didn’t move. It only watched her, unblinking, like a sentinel.
Then, slowly, it lowered its head in something like acknowledgment before fading into the mist as if it had never been there.
Her hands shook. The clothes slipped from her grasp into the water.
“What… what are you?” she whispered.
Far across the kingdom, in the shadow of an ancient castle, Lucien Michael King sat at the head of a war council.
Maps stretched across the stone table, littered with markers of enemy movements. Generals debated, voices sharp and urgent.
But Lucien wasn’t listening.
His mind had drifted again, unbidden, to her.
For years the bond had been a whisper, a faint pull he barely acknowledged. But now it was stronger, an ache in his chest, a tether tugging relentlessly at his soul. He could feel her waking. Dreaming. Struggling.
His wolf prowled beneath his skin, restless.
“My King?” one of his generals pressed, bowing. “What do you command?”
Lucien’s jaw tightened.
He had commanded armies, crushed empires, built a kingdom that could not be touched. And yet this bond, the one thing he wanted most, remained beyond his grasp.
He rose suddenly, the council falling silent at the sheer force of his presence.
“Prepare the riders,” he said. “Double the patrols. The winds are shifting.”
His generals exchanged wary glances. None dared question him.
When they bowed and filed out, Lucien remained alone, staring out the high windows at the endless stretch of forest below.
“Where are you, little one?” he murmured, his voice low, almost broken.
The bond throbbed in response. He closed his eyes, and for the briefest moment, he swore he smelled river water and wildflowers.
Selene’s nights grew worse.
Every dream pulled her deeper.
Wolves circling. Silver eyes consuming her. A voice whispering her name, though she’d never told it to anyone.
She stopped sleeping.
One evening, unable to bear the weight of it anymore, she crept into the forest. The moon hung full and heavy, lighting her path like it had been carved only for her.
Her bare feet pressed into the earth, leaves crunching softly.
She didn’t know where she was going, only that something inside her demanded she keep walking.
And then she heard it.
A howl. Low, deep, vibrating through the trees.
She froze, her breath catching.
A shadow moved ahead. Tall, broad-shouldered, human but not. His silhouette shimmered in the moonlight, every line of him both terrifying and magnetic.
Selene’s body went rigid. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
The figure turned. For the first time, she saw his face not in a dream, not in her imagination, but real.
Silver eyes.
Her mark flared, searing her skin with light. She gasped, stumbling back, clutching at it.
And then, just as suddenly, he was gone.
The forest fell silent again, as if he had been nothing more than mist.
Selene dropped to her knees, her chest heaving. Tears pricked her eyes.
“What’s happening to me?” she whispered.
But the only answer was the echo of a wolf’s howl rolling across the night, closer than ever before.
---
Selene kneeling in the moonlit forest, a mark glowing against her skin.
Lucien standing on his balcony, gripping the railing, the same mark faintly shimmering across his chest.
Two souls, tethered by fate, pulled closer with every passing breath.
- Writer
