Chapter 6:The departure
800 Words
The carriage was waiting, a dark silhouette against the flickering torchlight of the courtyard. The air had turned foul, thick with the iron scent of blood and the acrid sting of distant woodsmoke.
Luna stood before her parents, the silver ornaments on her gown feeling like lead weights. She embraced her mother briefly, a silent goodbye pressed into the fabric of the older woman’s cloak. But when she turned to her father, Alpha Silas, her lips remained a thin, bloodless line. She didn't speak. She only stared, her eyes twin pits of cold resentment that seemed to pierce right through his ceremonial armor.
Silas flinched, his hand reaching out as if to catch a falling glass, but the words died in his throat. Before he could voice the pain etched into the lines of his face, the heavy iron-bound doors of the courtyard swung open with a deafening crash.
A guard, breathless and splattered with fresh mud, stumbled toward them. "Alpha! The Red Moon has breached the western gates! The city is under fire!"
The news snapped Silas back to the brutal reality of the war. The flicker of fatherly guilt in his eyes was instantly replaced by the hard, flat look of a commander. "Gather the men!" he bellowed, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "Move! Send the third battalion to the western front!"
Harland didn’t hesitate. He was already moving toward his black stallion, his movements sharp and predatory. "Alpha Silas, my men will ride with yours!" he shouted over the rising din of clashing steel and panicked shouting.
As he mounted his horse in one fluid motion, Harland caught the eye of his lead commander. He gave a sharp, silent nod—an eye signal that sent a dozen Snow Pack warriors galloping toward the city gates to bolster the defense.
Luna watched the chaos unfold from the steps of the carriage. The screaming of the war horns drowned out the silence she had maintained. As the first plumes of black smoke rose over the treeline, the weight of the wolf skin on her shoulders suddenly felt different. It wasn't just a cage anymore; it was a shroud.
She looked at Harland—the man she had hated only moments ago—and remembered with a sickening jolt why this marriage had to happen. The Red Moon wasn't coming. They were already here.#######
The Journey: Through the Frozen Pass
The transition from the burning heat of the Blood Wolf stronghold to the biting cold of the north was swift and merciless.
For three days, the small convoy moved in a grim, hurried silence. Harland remained on horseback, his gaze constantly sweeping the ridgelines of the jagged mountains. He rarely spoke, and when he did, it was only to give curt orders to the guards. Luna sat inside the carriage, the purple silk of her wedding dress now hidden beneath layers of heavy furs, watching the world turn from autumnal browns to a blinding, jagged white.
The "Snow Pack Territory" was not a land of rolling hills; it was a fortress of ice. The wind howled through the mountain passes like a wounded beast, rattling the carriage doors. Every bump in the road sent a jolt of pain through Luna’s rigid back.
On the fourth night, the convoy slowed as they reached the "Glacial Gate"—a narrow passage between two towering cliffs of blue-tinted ice.
"We stop here for the night," Harland’s voice cut through the wind as he pulled his horse alongside the carriage window. His face was dusted with frost, his eyes narrowed against the cold. "The pass is too dangerous to navigate in total darkness. The ice shifts at night."
Luna finally looked at him, her first words in days feeling like shards of glass in her dry throat. "Are we being followed?"
Harland looked back toward the path they had traveled, where the horizon was a blur of grey and white. "The Red Moon is occupied with your father’s lands for now," he said, his voice dropping to a low, gritty register. "But don't mistake silence for safety, Luna. In the North, the cold kills more men than the sword ever will."
He reached out, his gloved hand resting briefly on the carriage door. "Try to sleep. Tomorrow, we reach the Frost Fortress. Your new home."
Luna pulled the wolf-skin cloak tighter around her. As the shadows of the ice cliffs grew long and jagged, she realized that the war she had left behind was only the beginning. In this frozen wasteland, she wasn't just a bride or a piece of junk—she was a survivor in a land that wanted her dead.
- Writer
