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1267 Words
~Aleya~
The air shimmered with tension as my blade clashed against Garrick’s. Sparks flew, steel biting steel.
He was built like a mountain — all brawn and fury — but I was faster.
I ducked under his swing, slid past him, and spun. My dagger kissed his throat before he could blink. My chest rose and fell — not from exhaustion, but control.
“Dead again,” I said, stepping back.
Garrick grunted, wiping dirt from his tunic. “Sixth time this week. You trying to ruin me in front of the pups?”
“You ruin yourself,” I smirked, twirling my blade. Around us, younger trainees gaped. Some older warriors clapped. Others just nodded. They were used to it by now.
I was the best fighter in the camp — and they knew it.
“Aleya,” came Natania’s voice from the tree line, sharp and commanding. “Again. Two this time.”
I turned. There she stood beneath the boughs, her raven cloak fluttering in the breeze. Silver tattoos glowed faintly along her arms, and her single eye burned with pride and challenge. Her eyepatch, leather-bound and worn from years of battle, did little to soften the power she carried.
I grinned.
Two fighters stepped forward — agile, lean, quick as wind. They thought numbers would tip the scales.
They were wrong.
The fight was art. Fast. Fluid. My movements flowed like water, guided by instinct and fire. My wolf stirred beneath my skin, magic pulsing low in my bones. I struck, dodged, flipped, danced.
They never stood a chance.
Moments later, one was pinned beneath my knee, the other with my blade pressed lightly to his ribs.
Silence. Then a roar.
I rose, braid swaying behind me, chest thrumming with adrenaline.
Natania approached, expression unreadable but eyes blazing with something fierce. “Your wolf sings louder every day.”
“Let it sing,” I said. “I’m ready for war.”
She smirked. “War is always ready for you, Aleya.”
Before I could reply, the packhouse bell rang clear across the glade. The signal.
Cheers erupted. Time for breakfast.
“Well, our hunger for adrenaline’s satisfied,” Garrick said, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “Now let’s feed the real beast.”
I gave him a dangerous smile. “Last one there is a weasel.”
And then I shifted.
My wolf burst forward, howling with glee. The wind rushed through my fur, the soil soft beneath my paws, every nerve lit with wild joy.
“Hey! That’s cheating!” Garrick shouted behind me.
Too late.
We called this place Varrowood — the last haven. A hidden forest nestled in the shadow of the Weeping Peaks, where the trees whispered secrets and the moon always seemed to watch.
A magical barrier protected us from intruders. Raymond’s rot hadn’t touched this place. Not yet.
I had grown up here — among exiles, nobles, rebels, witches, warriors, and rogues who once called Aeryndor home. After the fall of Aeryndor’s last true king and queen — my real parents, though I didn’t know it then — the kingdom decayed beneath Raymond’s iron fist. But not everyone bowed.
Varrowood wasn’t just a camp.
It was a miracle. A rebellion built from ash and grief.
All thanks to Natania — our leader. My mentor. My not-quite-mother.
She never let me call her “mom.” Said the title belonged to a queen now gone.
Once a royal healer, Natania had been a warrior long before she lost her eye protecting the queen. They said she fought through a storm of blood and fire — held her ground until the king was beheaded and the queen took her last breath. And when the tower fell, she was the last to leave — carrying me, a bloodied newborn wrapped in a torn palace veil.
She gathered the broken.
Healers. Witches. Disgraced knights. Children of slaughtered lords. Survivors.
Together, they built Varrowood from the bones of what was stolen. We hunted together. Ate by the same fires. Shared stories, scars, and skills.
We became a pack.
Not by blood — but by survival. By the oath never to bow again.
Some say freedom without a crown is chaos.
They’ve never seen us.
We built harmony without thrones. Unity without kings.
But even peace can’t bloom forever under a shadow.
So I trained. Every day. Harder than the last.
Because I wasn’t just a fighter. I was raised to heal. To listen. To cast.
Under moonlight, Natania taught me old spells. Herbal cures. How to hear the trees. How to read the wind.
She made me a warrior.
A witch.
A healer.
But something else burned inside me. A fire that didn’t come from her.
Lately, it had been louder.
During sparring, it pulsed under my skin like a second heartbeat. In meditation, I saw flashes — not dreams, but memories that weren’t mine.
A girl in silks and chains.
Crying. Bleeding. Caged.
Always whispering from the dark: Find me.
I tried to ignore it.
Until one night, when the pack danced around the moonfire — the sacred flame that never went out. Smoke curled, music soared, and meat roasted on open pits. Joy thickened the air like honey.
But I couldn’t stay.
Something pulled me away.
I left the fire, retreating into my quarters, breath shallow, heart rattling in my ribs.
“You feel her, don’t you?”
Natania’s voice made me spin. She stood at the doorway, the firelight flickering in her silver-streaked braids.
“Feel who?” I asked.
“Your sister, Aleya.”
The world tilted.
No. That’s impossible.
How can I have a sister?
And why didn’t Natania tell me until now?
“I don’t know-“
“You do know. You feel her. I know I didn’t tell you but I wanted you to feel it. Your twin bond.That’s why I waited — so there’d be no doubt in your heart.”
My breath hitched. “Twin? I’m a twin?”
The world keeps spinning.
“You were born under a blood moon. Twin daughters.”Natania said, her voice thick with grief. You were smuggled out after the slaughter. We thought Lena was lost — until I found the truth. Raymond didn’t kill her.”
She stepped forward, pulling an old scroll from her cloak — brittle parchment, sealed with the royal crest: a sun and moon entwined in wolf’s claws.
“She’s caged.”
Lena.
My twin’s name was Lena.
Natania unrolled the scroll, whispering ancient words I’d only ever heard in lullabies — broken fragments passed around fires, too dangerous to speak aloud.
But now, she recited them whole:
“When the Blood Moon swallows the sun,
Two daughters of shadow shall rise as one.
One bound in chains, her spirit undone,
The other in wild, her fate left to run.
Claws of silver, hearts of flame,
Together they end the Rogue King’s reign.”
My vision blurred. My hands trembled.
That girl — the one crying in my dreams — was real.
My sister.
I rose, pacing, lungs tight. Rage and grief warred inside me. While I trained, while I lived, she suffered. Alone. Trapped. Forgotten.
Thanks to Raymond.
“I can’t... I can’t breathe—” I gasped.
“Aleya—”
“I have to go.”
I ran for the door, heart thundering. Shifted without thinking.
Then I ran.
Through trees, over roots, through the forest we’d made into a sanctuary. But nothing could quiet the storm in me now.
Not until I found her.
- Writer
